micmic encounters

No doubt, there is a double standard in the assessment of a person’s mental condition among psychologists and psychiatrists; one for men and another for us, women. For a woman to be mentally healthy, she must obey, follow or  ‘adjust’ to  accepted behavioral norms given to her sex — passivity, obedience, self-sacrifice, lack of ambition; basically to forget one self  for others. (Phyllis Chesler 1972b cited in Elaine Partnow 1977, p. 442) Irritatingly speaking, these traits are somehow, well generally speaking, regarded as socially undesirable traits, but when associated to women, they seem attractive.

Looking at the masculine biased DSMII (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders II) and DSM III, these psychiatric manuals has these lists of assumptions as to what healthy behaviors are and what behaviors are codified as crazy; these criteria are sooooo powerful that they influence the diagnosis and treatment rates and patterns of patients. But one may ask who voted for these lists? What are their backgrounds? How many are males vis-à-vis to females (although I must admit that their biology doesn’t necessarily imply their feminist consciousness)? Another important question would be what does the term impairment in social and occupational function mean? According to Marcie Kaplan, “these criteria contain assumptions and then generate diagnoses accordingly. For instance, is a woman unemployed outside the home impaired in occupational functioning? If a man is employed outside the home and thus never there when his children come home from school considered impaired in social functioning?” It is therefore assumed that ‘healthy individuals’ plays the traditional sex roles for them to be labeled as normal; those women who neglects their children and men who can’t hold down a job are considered and labeled impaired by their doctors. (Marcie Kaplan 1983, pp. 786, 788-9) Given the patriarchal nature of the DSM, she invented two ‘disorders’ based on stereotypical male traits. One is the Independent Personality Disorder (which characterizes love of work and career above personal relationships, traveling a lot and works long hours, makes career decisions without considering others’ needs, and is unable to express emotions) and the other is the Restricted Personality Disorder (which characterizes appearance of being self-assured, showing limited emotional expressions, resisting to answer other people’s needs, is stoic). (Ibid p. 791)

Clinically speaking, hysteria is one of those ‘medically associated disease’ exclusive to women.

Hysteria, interestingly, originated from the Greek words hystera and hysterikos, or womb, for it was believed then that this mental disorder, to which women were particularly subjected to, is caused by disorders of the womb. (Mary Ellmann 1968, p. 12 and Joanna Bunker Rohrbaugh 1979, p 397) On the other hand, the Womb is considered to be an orgiastic religious festival (yep it’s an orgy-aistic gathering) of the goddess Aphrodite in Argos, where the Womb of the Word was adored and symbolically ‘fructified.’ (Barbara Walker 1983, p. 431) The current medical definition of hysteria was coined by the father of the medical profession, Hippocrates, who thought that suffocation and madness arose in women whose uteri had become too light and dry from lack of sexual intercourse and, as a result, wandered upward, compressing the heart, lungs, and diaphragm. This theory was also used during by Renaissance period physicians who ‘scientifically’ explained that the womb sometimes became detached from its place and wanders about the inside of the body therefore causing uncontrolled behavior. (Ibid) To cure such an unfeminine behavior, women were subjected to sex toys and or to a hysterectomy, surgically removing the uterus.