Psychic shame about menstruation produces real physical illness in women

Evidence

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

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to psychosomatic medicine and Foucault on the medical gaze — but the sharp contrast is with Beauvoir herself rejecting biological determinism: she inverts it by showing psychic attitude creates the somatic disorder. — connects to: Modern hygiene conceals rather than cures the psychic ills it represses; Parental warnings about rape convert menstruation into crippling fear of men; Sexual ignorance and fear can produce crippling obsessive phobias in young women (+3 more)
• DEFINE: ‘Hysterical’ body defined here: no distance between psychic life and physiological realization — a core Beauvoirian concept worth keeping verbatim.

Broader Connections

• Psychic identification can cause severe physical pregnancy symptoms #corroborates (0.78) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1456
• Menstruation horrifies girls because it signifies a descent into subordinated femininity #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1977