When Edward Eichel came up with the coital alignment technique, he wrote a book about it with Philip Nobile. It was called The Perfect Fit: How to Achieve Mutual Fulfilment and Monogamous Passion Through The New Intercourse.
In that book, Nobile said the coital alignment technique was the first “original” sex position created for many centuries.
Who, then, was Edward Eichel, the man who came up with this remarkable development in lovemaking?
He was a Manhattan psychotherapist who ran encounter groups in the late 60s in Greenwich Village. He also taught couples to make love in a new way, a way that derived from the principles of Wilhelm Reich.
Reich was a body therapist and “wild sex genius”, a man who was interested in creating more powerful orgasms.
The History of Coital Alignment
Eichel took Wilhelm Reich’s formula for more powerful orgasms and added a specific sexual position – the riding high, or override position.
In this position the man is on top, but he shifts upwards along the woman’s body so that the base of his penis is pressing against her clitoris.
And then, using this “riding high position” as the basis of the Coital Alignment Technique or CAT, Eichel put another spin on his technique. He changed the traditional male thrusting movement into a slight rocking and rolling motion.
That two consequences. It made the override or riding high position more comfortable for the woman, and it produced strong emotions and orgasms among Eichel’s clients.
And in fact, the frequency of simultaneous orgasm rose to 50% among women who previously had barely been orgasmic during intercourse.
Not only that, but the Coital Alignment Technique also increased couples’ desire to have intercourse, and improved the intensity of their orgasms.
At the time this seemed revolutionary. Indeed, Eichel told a newspaper in 1989 that this new position “changed the whole concept of sex”.
Essentially Eichel saw the coital alignment technique as a way of not only improving orgasms, but also the very relationship between a man and a woman.
And indeed, he was right! In recent years, there’s been a lot of research which has proved that the more orgasms a couple have, the more motivated they are to have sex, and the better the quality of the relationship outside the bedroom.
But Eichel’s new sexual technique was not received warmly by sex therapists.
You will, of course, see whether the coital alignment technique is of any value to you within your relationship when you try it for yourselves….
Coital Alignment
Let’s start from an idea which is obvious to everyone. The female orgasm is something, as Nobile so amusingly remarked, about which “nature has been quite nonchalant”.
In other words, because female orgasm isn’t necessary for the reproduction of the species, it has never been a biological trait favoured by evolution. It is, in short, a byproduct of being human.
Pioneering sexologist Alfred Kinsey had something to say about the female orgasm in 1953. He searched in vain for the vaginal orgasm, and, like Masters and Johnson, concluded that all orgasms in women result from stimulation of the clitoris.
Popularising The CAT Was Not Easy
Edward Eichel said that the CAT’s combination of a particular sex position and a very coordinated form of movement produced complete genital contact and made female orgasm during lovemaking easy.
The clitoris was, as he described, “caught in the attraction between the female pubic bone and the male pubic bone,… Both have to supply exactly equal motion… And it has to be coordinated consciously and intentionally.… I thought that was the only factor creating a synchrony… The rotation between the male and female pubic mons produces a deep pressure….. One thing that I must mention is that the male does not hold his weight on his elbows. The whole positioning matter is that his weight must be evenly distributed. It must be higher up. And any tensions in the shoulders – let’s say from the upper back region – would probably cut off motility to the genitals. That would be felt as a cut-off of sensation.”
More recently Eichel has acknowledged the importance of G spot stimulation. Stimulating what we call the G spot produces stimulation of the woman’s urethra. We know this helps women to reach orgasm.
And, sure enough, in the coital alignment technique, a woman’s urethra receives deep and steady pressure which can help in achieving orgasm.
Masters and Johnson wrongly believed clitoral contact was impossible during sex.
But as Eichel pointed out, that’s because the man tends to speed up thrusting during intercourse. Not only does this move the penis further away from the clitoris, but it also means the positioning and angle of his penis in the woman’s vagina can be uncomfortable or even painful.
Furthermore, Masters and Johnson used a hard plastic dildo in their investigations. This unrealistic tool doesn’t mirror the way in which the male penis can flex to stimulate various areas of the vagina including the G spot.
Eichel produced a film of the movements involved in the coital alignment technique and explained the theory behind his technique. Sadly, there was no widespread acceptance of this revolutionary sex position and technique.
The real point was that Eichel believed he’d actually found a way to achieve simultaneous massive orgasm for both the man and woman using a new way of making love.
However, many couples who responded to Eichel’s request for information said his technique had produced very significant improvements in their sexual pleasure.
What it amounts to is that CAT was not an overnight sensation: it took many years for it to become well-known. And in many ways Eichel worked hard to overcome the resistance of the sex therapy community.
CAT – A Summary
Coital Alignment Technique
So the coital alignment technique is a way of producing orgasm during intercourse which is independent of any need for a penis to be a certain size, or for a vagina to have a certain level of sensitivity.
The coital alignment technique requires the man to move in a certain rhythmic way together with his partner who responds to his movements, or vice versa.
The ultimate objective of the coital alignment technique is for the man’s pubic area and the base of his penile shaft to stimulate the region of the woman’s clitoris in a rhythmic way during intercourse. Then, the woman’s level of sexual tension gradually increases and releases in orgasm at the moment of climax.
Simultaneous orgasm has been touted as one of the benefits of the coital alignment technique. And it certainly seems to be easier to achieve it using this technique. There’s some kind of synergy or feedback or mutual arousal mechanism going on – it can seem almost magical – which allows the couple to reach the point of orgasm at the same time.
For couples who are really keen on experiencing female orgasm during intercourse, the options are rather limited.
You could use a vibrator to stimulate the woman’s clitoris during lovemaking, which can be awkward and somewhat clumsy, or you can learn the coital alignment technique.
Now, one of the problems with coital alignment technique is that is actually quite difficult to learn. So it’s worthwhile getting tuition from a decent website, book or even the original paper written by Eichel himself.