Psychogenic Influences on the Appearance of the Menstrual Period

In his engaging Book of the It, Georg Groddeck remarked the frequently observed phenomenon that 'many women who have been parted from their husbands for a long time start their period on the day they are united'. He put forward the explanation first, that the menstrual flow is aphrodisiac to the man, secondly, that it is an attestation on the part of the wife of her faithfulness—'See', she says, 'if I now have a baby it must be from you, for I was menstruating when you came and hence could not have been pregnant then'—and thirdly, it is a hostage against rejection, i.e. if the man fails to be as sexually attracted to her as she hopes and wishes, she has the best of excuses to offer her offended vanity. 'If the embrace is tempestuous all is well, the more so because the prohibition of custom is defied, and if it is not then that is because custom forbids.'

Clinical psycho-analysts, who have such frequent occasion for observing this phenomenon, would wish to add to its determining factors (1) the hostility on the part of the woman towards the husband, (2) her wish to prevent or avoid coitus, 1 and (3) the punitive symbolic self-infliction of her unconscious wish to castrate her husband. These functions support and are often supported by the phantasies that it is he who has castrated her (instead of vice versâ) and that the act of cohabitation is a bloody and pseudo-sadistic performance.

These latter psycho-analytic observations are so well known that I have nothing to add regarding them, but some recent observations of my own so sharply recalled the intuitive interpretation of Groddeck that I thought it worth while to set down the details. It will be recalled that Groddeck expanded his idea at some length to the effect that eczema about the face, cold sores on the lips, halitosis, clammy hands and other repellent aspects of the points of contact serve the purpose of testing out the lover and at the same time guarantee against