Anorgasmia
From Encyclopedia of Sex and Sexuality
The inability of women to experience orgasm in the course of masturbation or sexual activity with a partner; the term can also apply to men. Before the development of modern sex therapy, the term “frigid” was often applied to women who did not achieve orgasms through the efforts of their husbands (it was almost unthinkable for grown women to attempt masturbation). As a pejorative term it was meant to portray the image of a woman totally unresponsive to male sexual activity. Although it was not a clinical term, it appeared in textbooks on human sexuality as late as the 1970s and was incorrectly considered to be a female counterpart to male impotence. The word frigid then masked what we now consider to be two separate sexual dysfunctions: an inability to achieve orgasm even when sexually aroused, and a general lack of sexual desire. Sigmund Freud suggested that this problem is rooted in the unsuccessful transition to the “genital stage,” resulting in female “immaturity.” Sex therapists now find that the problem is more likely due to sexual illiteracy on the part of both the woman and her lover, or to religious and social prohibitions that have precluded learning orgasmic responses through masturbation.
An alternative term for anorgasmia is preorgasmia, implying an expectation that almost any woman who desires it can become orgasmic through techniques suggested by sex therapists—first by masturbation and then, often, by transferring this skill to successful orgasm in coitus.
