Menstruation and Psychoanalysis

Lupton (co-author of The Curse: A Cultural History of Menstruation ) doesn't quite deliver on her claim that she ``fully examines . . . the impact of menstruation on a theory of sexual difference.'' For instance, she says that menstrual blood ``separates and defines women'' without asking what it means to define women and sexual difference in terms of something that is not lifelong. However, she offers a useful overview of how menstruation has been addressed and--more often--suppressed in psychoanalytic discourse. Most interesting is her discussion of Freud and Wilhelm Fliess (particularly their faulty treatment of Emma Eckstein's dysmenorrhea) and her argument that the ultimate Freud-Fliess split led to a deemphasis of menstruation in Freud's theory, a deemphasis that influenced his dream interpretation and rejection of the seduction theory. Lupton considers the writings of some male analysts, particularly Claude Dagmar Daly, who theorized a ``menstruation complex'' that precedes and forms the ``nucleus'' of the Oedipus complex, as well as the writings of female analysts who, Lupton says, are inclined to ``undervalue'' menstruation and are unlikely to challenge phallocentric assumptions about gender. (Sept.)