The Formless Luxury of the Female Orgasm
Feminine sexuality, like the polymorphously perverse, is indifferent to reproduction.
This is a theme that Freud picks up in the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) and then drops (presumably out of fright). It will regain dominance in the psychoanalytic discourse from mid-century onwards.
Mary Jane Sherfey, in her magisterial paper The Evolution and Nature of Female Sexuality in Relation to Psychoanalytic Theory describes the human female orgasm as being perhaps unique in the animal kingdom and the culmination of human evolution, “the final event (thus far) in a long progression of adaptations” (Sherfey, 1966 p. 29).
Kurt Eissler follows this view describing the “problem” of female sexuality as an anomaly of biology: “Thus as a rule female orgasm is not observed outside the human species… The potential dissonance between female orgasm and reproduction, which by and large has dominated the evolution of the mammalian class for millions of years, possibly is the deepest biological force underlying the problem of female orgasm in the human species” (Eissler, 1977, p. 48-49).
And again with W.J. Barker, responding to Sherfey’s paper. “The female orgasm could be considered a luxury” (Barker, 1968, p. 127).
The free nature of female orgasm indifferent to reproduction is again remarked upon and compared to the male’s “teleological orgasm” in Abraham and Bolton’s 2002 paper, The Psychodynamics of Orgasm:
Clearly, and despite all that could be said, male orgasm is primarily functional because, on the one hand, it enables the ejection of sperm and, on the other, it has a very simple physiological mechanism. It is largely a question of what could be described as a teleological orgasm, i.e. aimed primarily at reproduction. The expected satisfaction, which, in principle, is linked to physiological functioning, involves using the whole of the reflex circuit. Female orgasm, on the other hand, is a ‘free’ orgasm and, consequently, unpredictable in its methods and organic functioning. A priori removed of all reproductive purpose it is, by nature, essentially erotic (Abraham, G. & Bolton, E. 2002, p. 326).
We might otherwise describe the polymorphous perverse as “essentially erotic.” The unpredictable nature of the female orgasm is yet another feature that is noted in the literature. ‘Female orgasms,’ declares Alcira Mariam Alizade: ‘are neither exact nor measurable. They are erratic, changing, elusive. They take place in an area where anything goes, free from any reference to a precise form’ (Alizade, 1999, p. 63). The lack of form is again a feature of the polymorphic, if not the libido itself.
So the female orgasm is both excessive, mysterious and non-teleological.
Sherfey likewise notes the difficulty of representing the orgasm: “One wonders if this well-known difficulty women have in reporting their sexual sensations does not stem from the fact that they deceive themselves and us about the nature of these feelings-because they are afraid that what they do feel is not what they should feel” (Sherfey, 1966, p. 34).
But in this instance the difficulty is due to repression rather than the elusive nature of the orgasm. The should in “what they should feel” is determined by the greater repressive apparatus: it is the influence of androcentric/phallocentric sex and its implicit and explicit fear of female sexuality. Strict ignorance regarding feminine sexuality is the default program of patriarchy; see for instance those textbooks of anatomy that do not include the clitoris (Blechner, 2017, p. 193).
works cited:
Abraham, G. & Bolton, E. (2002) The Psychodynamics of Orgasm. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 83:325-338
Alizade, A. M. (1999) Feminine Sensuality, Routledge
Barker, W. J. (1968) Female Sexuality. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 16:123-145
Blechner, M. J. (2017) The Clitoris: Anatomical and Psychological Issues. Studies in Gender and Sexuality 18:190-200
Eissler, K. R. (1977) Comments on Penis Envy and Orgasm in Women. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 32:29-83
Sherfey, M. J. (1966) The Evolution and Nature of Female Sexuality in Relation to Psychoanalytic Theory. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 14:28-125
