"I can be a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister and a woman without having periods." This book explores two of the oldest and most important symbols of all time: menstruation and secondary amenorrhea. Women of menstruating age commonly experience secondary amenorrhea – a cessation of periods – but most people have never heard of the term, nor do they realise what it represents. Danielle Redland’s curiosity as to why this is posits that menstrual conditions need to be decoded, not just simply treated. Surveying menstruation and Secondary Amenorrhea (SA) principally from a psychoanalytic perspective, with sociocultural, historical, political and religious angles also examined, Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Women, Menstruation and Secondary Amenorrhea draws secondary amenorrhea out of the shadows of its menstruating counterpart, and explores how narratives of womanhood and statehood dominate. Chapters on blood ideology and war amenorrhea, on Freud’s treatment of Emma Eckstein and on the psycho-mythology of Pygmalion, present the reader with visions beyond patriarchy towards more thoughtful ideas on the feminine, challenging assumptions about gender, identity and what is deemed "good" for women. Rich in clinical examples, the book locates menses and their cessation at the heart of personal experience and examines psychosomatic phenomena, the link between psyche and body and the value of interpretation. From the author’s own analysis to a variety of cases linked to hysteria, anorexia, stress, trauma, abuse, helplessness and hopelessness, individual stories and narratives are sensitively recovered and carefully revealed. This refreshing example of multi-layered research and psychoanalytic enquiry by a new, female writer will be of great interest to psychologists, psychotherapists, healthcare and social work professionals and readers of gender studies, history, politics and literature.

This book provides a psychoanalytic perspective on female psychology and includes articles with divergent theoretical viewpoints. It is useful for both research and clinical study and may also provide a bridge to scholars, teachers, and clinicians outside of psychoanalysis itself.

In this scholarly compilation of a major event in the life of every woman, editor Ruth Formanek has adopted an avowedly multidisciplinary mandate: to illuminate menopause as both an event and a stage of life by gathering together a variety of discipline-specific meanings and research perspectives. The result is an admirably comprehensive study that not only charts the premodern meanings of menopause, but proceeds to examine menopause from current biomedical, endocrinological, culutral, and psychological perspectives. Ample attention is give to the psychosocial influences on menopause and to cross-cultural variations in the experience of, and life adjustments that follow, menopause. Societal and familial attitudes toward menopausal women are also explored through an examination of women in classical and modern literature. Clinical contributions review psychoanalytic perspectives on menopause, elucidate the individual meanings of the menopausal experience uncovered in therapy, and consider male views of menopausal women. Collectively, the contributors to this volume remedy the scant attention menopause has heretofore received in the psychological and psychotherapeutic literature. They not only explore the range of issues associated with menopause, but address these issues in the context of the various myths and superstitions about menopause that have endured over the centuries. Essential reading for students of human development, gender issues, and women's studies, The Meanings of Menopause is, for helping professionals, an invaluable source book on a life event fraught with psychological significance.

Looks at the special causes of stress at each stage of a woman's life and describes various ways to manage stress.

Stricker gives an overview of the nature and treatment of psychological disorders. Chapters include: the nature of psychological disorder address issues in defining what constitutes abnormality; and the classification and epidemiology of psychological disorders.