CORRESPONDENCE

To the Editor:

In an otherwise excellent review of “Nymphomania: A History” by Carol Groneman (Book Review, Nov. 5) Peter Green asks, “Have no advances been made?” I found myself asking the same question. Several paragraphs earlier I had read (and reread) the reviewer’s parenthetical aside asserting the physical impossibility of Freud’s notion of vaginal orgasm. When I got to “Masters and Johnson finally killed the fantasy of vaginal orgasm,” I almost fell off my boudoir chaise.

I agree Dr. Freud was sexist and wrong a good deal of the time, but this was not one of them. Masters and Johnson did some very important work, however in 1982 a crucially important book was published, after extensive research, debunking the myth that the female vaginal orgasm is itself a myth. (“The G Spot And Other Recent Discoveries About Human Sexuality” by Alice Kahn Ladas, Beverly Whipple and John D. Perry, published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston).

It goes without saying that sexuality is a very personal thing, the experience of which differs for each individual. But rest assured, the vaginal orgasm lives, and thank God for it! I’m sure I speak for innumerable satisfied couples when I say that incontrovertible evidence of such orgasmic capability exits due to a substantial body of research accomplished in our own beds, with husbands and lovers the world ‘round.

Em Loring

Thousand Oaks, Calif.