Modern hygiene conceals rather than cures the psychic ills it represses

Evidence

There is indeed a goodly portion of psychoanalysis in this philosophy—analysis without Freud’s fundamental insight that the patient’s trouble is rooted in a general sickness which cannot be cured by analytic therapy. Or, in a sense, according to Freud, the patient’s disease is a protest reaction against the sick world in which he lives. But the physician must disregard the “moral” problem. He has to restore the patient’s health, to make him capable of functioning normally in his world. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 674 (#expands, via linked claim)

This escape, this sadomasochism in which woman persists against both objects and self, is often precisely sexual. “The kind of housecleaning that calls for bodily gymnastics amounts to a bordello for women,” says Violette Leduc. It is striking that the taste for cleanliness is of utmost importance in Holland where women are cold, and in puritanical civilizations that juxtapose the joys of the flesh with an ideal of order and purity. If the Mediterranean Midi lives in joyous filth, it is not only because water is scarce there: love of the flesh and its animality is conducive to tolerating human odor, squalor, and even vermin. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1239 (#complicates, via linked claim)

The young man’s erotic drives only go to confirm the pride that he obtains from his body: he discovers in it the sign of transcendence and its power. The girl can succeed in accepting her desires: but most often they retain a shameful nature. Her whole body is experienced as embarrassment. The defiance she felt as a child regarding her “insides” contributes to giving the menstrual crisis the dubious nature that renders it loathsome. The psychic attitude evoked by menstrual servitude constitutes a heavy handicap. The threat that weighs on the girl during certain periods can seem so intolerable for her that she will give up expeditions and pleasures out of fear of her disgrace becoming known. The horror that this inspires has repercussions on her organism and increases her disorders and pains. It has been seen that one of the characteristics of female physiology is the tight link between endocrinal secretions and the nervous system: there is reciprocal action; a woman’s body—and specifically the girl’s—is a “hysterical” body in the sense that there is, so to speak, no distance between psychic life and its physiological realization. The turmoil brought about by the girl’s discovery of the problems of puberty exacerbates them. Because her body is suspect to her, she scrutinizes it with anxiety and sees it as sick: it is sick. It has been seen that indeed this body is fragile and real organic disorders arise; but gynecologists concur that nine-tenths of their patients have imaginary illnesses; that is, either their illnesses have no physiological reality, or the organic disorder itself stems from a psychic attitude. To a great extent, the anguish of being a woman eats away at the female body. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 837 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Culturally puritanical societies develop obsessive cleanliness as displaced sexuality — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1239; Psychoanalysis normalizes patients into a sick society rather than curing it — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 674; Psychic shame about menstruation produces real physical illness in women — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 837

Broader Connections

• Psychoanalysis normalizes patients into a sick society rather than curing it #expands (0.85) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 674
• Culturally puritanical societies develop obsessive cleanliness as displaced sexuality #complicates (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1239
• Psychic shame about menstruation produces real physical illness in women #exemplifies (0.72) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 837