Published Work

Menstruation: A blessing or a curse?

Abstract

Thirty years on from her last period, the author reflects on the impact of menstruation on the developing girl, leaving childhood behind as she embarks on the project of ‘becoming a woman’. The author looks at the guilt and shame still subconsciously or unconsciously still lying beneath the surface in the 21st century, and reflects on how this may silently affect how life proceeds after this developmental stage. Unconscious shame continues to shape women’s identity and analysts and analytic psychotherapists need to become more attuned to it. It is a bio-psycho-social model, and the author examines how these three aspects of life are intertwined in a situation of ‘hyper-complexity’, using some clinical material to illustrate her theme, and showing how our views, psychoanalytic,
sociological and biological, may change over time. from the ‘curse’ visited on the ‘Eve’ of Genesis to patients who may visit us in the 21st century. The paper includes memoir, clinical work and cultural considerations. The paper is a clarion call to current colleagues to look at their own caseloads, and uses a poem about Truth, written by John Donne in the 17th century, to indicate how those who seek ‘the ultimate Truth’ ‘about must and about must go’. There is no single answer, but this paper raises some issues which have been largely overlooked, even by current thinkers.

Keywords
puberty, menstruation, the Curse of Eve, Genesis, current psychoanalytic views
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It is now 30 years since I had my last period, and in many ways I have had
much time to appreciate this new ‘period’ as one of liberation, from sanitary
pads, from anxiety about the odour, unpredictable cycle times, and the risk of
leaking through one’s clothes.. in Margaret Rustin’s book Finding a Way to the
Child (2023)she talks of working with a mother whose anguished cry was ‘stop
the leaks’ (p234)..while Rustin does not mention menstruation specifically,
these ‘leaks’ could be seen as physical as well as emotional.....one can reflect on
the meaning ot ‘TamPax’...so much peace..if only… one can wonder, was the
coiner of this sales term a man or a woman? In the film ‘Period: End of
Sentence’ the women in India were taught (by men) to make their own sanitary
towels when before they had used old clothes to mop up the ‘leaking’blood.
They called their product Fly..and for them it did represent a flying away from
previous restrictions. In the same book (op.cit) Rustin speaks of Holly, a
psychotic child..’she always wore trousers because she needed the reassurance
of layers of clothing over her vagina and anus to prevent hostile assault (p.55)..
‘not talking about and not writing down disturbing observations are examples of
the avoidance of thought’ (p. 154)
Due to poverty, some women cannot afford commercial feminine hygiene
products. Instead, they use materials found in the environment or other
improvised materials. ‘Period poverty’ is a global issue affecting women and
girls who do not have access to safe, hygienic sanitary products. In addition,
solid waste disposal systems in developing countries are often lacking, which
means women have no proper place to dispose used products, such as pads.
Inappropriate disposal of used materials also creates pressures on sanitation
systems as menstrual hygiene products can create blockages of toilets, pipes and
sewers.
Now I have time to reflect on the impact of menstruation on the developing
female girl, as a window on what will be her role as an adult woman in society,
whether or not she has children. And if she does have children, and die in
childbirth as many did before our more medical times, Martin Luther echoed
the prevailing male trope ‘it’s what they are made for’. The first menstrual
period occurs after the onset of pubertal growth, and is called the menarche. The
average age of the menarche is 12 to 15 years. However, it may occur as early
as eight. The average age of the first period is generally later in the developing
world , and earlier in what we call the developed world.
I wrote about my own first encounter with the idea of periods in my memoir
Pieces of Molly. it was a mystery, an area full.of questions and uncertainty, as I
sat under the kitchen table in.my childhood home and interrogated my.mother’s
legs. ..silently,they gave me precious little information, but at least some. And
later she recommended gin in warm milk to ease the griping pains. Menstrual
cramps, also known as dysmenorrhea, are common pains experienced during
menstruation. They are typically felt in the lower abdomen, but can also radiate
to the back and thighs. While most women experience mild cramps, some
experience severe pain that interferes with daily activities. In the film ‘Period.
End of Sentence’ which I mentioned previously, the young women are seen
rocking backwards and forwards to ease their pain, and it is not only in rural
India where the taboo involved with menstruation persists, even in the 21st
century, despite Penelope Shuttle’s writing, with Peter Redgrove, in The Wise
Wound: Menstruation and Everywoman ( 1978) Nearly fifty years ago......it was
hailed by the Guardian as the first accessible book about menstruation as a
human reality..and seen as being entirely praiseworthy. What on earth is this
menstruation which half the world undergoes...has it any use, any purpose, apart
from shedding the unused eggs in the endometrial lining for that month? The
gradually thickening lining of the uterus sheds this lining, rich in blood and
tissue, which has been built up each month via hormones from the ovaries in
preparation for a potential fertilised egg to implant.. no implantation, therefore
no need for preparation, the hormone production decreases, hence the
menstrual flow. Once the period is over, the whole cycle begins again...oobla di
oobla da, life goes on—or doesn’t. The cycle is a series of natural changes in
hormone production . The ovarian cycle controls the production and release of
eggs and the cyclic release of oestrogen and progesterone . The uterine cycle
governs the preparation and maintenance of the lining of the uterus (womb) to
receive an embryo . These cycles are concurrent and coordinated, normally last
between 21 and 35 days, with an average length of 28 days. The onset of the
first period usually occurs around the age of 12 years; menstrual cycles continue
for about 30–45 years.
The average volume of menstrual fluid during a monthly menstrual period is 35
millilitres with 10–80 millilitres being considered typical. Menstrual fluid is the
correct term for the flow, although many people prefer to refer to it as menstrual
blood. Now that’s a new fact! Menstrual fluid is reddish-brown, a slightly
darker colour than venous blood. About half of menstrual fluid is blood. This
blood contains sodium, calcium, phosphate, iron, and chloride, the extent of
which depends on the woman. As well as blood, the fluid consists of cervical
mucus, vaginal secretions, and endometrial tissue. Vaginal fluids in menses
mainly contribute water, common electrolytes, and at least 14 proteins. The
amount of iron lost in menstrual fluid is relatively small for most women.
Heavy menstrual bleeding, occurring monthly, can result in anaemia.
Shuttle and her colleague were talking about the power of women and of this
fluid or blood..can we bring about shifts in attitudes towards this natural
phenomenon? It has been both reviled and denigrated over the centuries, both
by men and for women perhaps wanting to please their menfolk- here below
was my own description of the dawning realisation,:
‘When I was sixteen, I thought, as I sat on a fallen tree-trunk in a sun-swamped
glade where life teemed overhead and underneath my feet, I’d have no more
problems, I’d really be a grown-up after all this counterfeiting since the age of
three, but my mother, seeing a spot of blood in my knickers, had told me (but
briefly) about periods. I sat under the kitchen table as she baked cakes or pies,
and said with shock and disbelief, so this will happen to me every month until
I’m fifty? Her mute legs led upwards from under the table to further mysteries.
It was another insurmountable hurdle it seemed to me, and being a grown-up
became a more problematic project.’ (p.167) In my boarding school a little
girl.who had no preparation for this somewhat unmentionable transition sobbed
fearfully when the bleeding started that she was dying...and this sad drama has
been confirmed by adults well.past their.menstrual.years when I put to them the
question.of how it all 'started'.. this from a former colleague: ‘I thought I was
dying when I had my first period, and was devastated when my mum said I
would have one every month..there was no explanation as to what it was all
about. I always had bad pains and sickness..so it was probably a curse!’
Neither Sigmund Freud nor Melanie Klein expatiated on the subject of
menstruation: it was Karen Horney the German psychoanalyst and Helene
Deutsch the Polish American analyst (who worked with Freud) who later
opened up what had previously been deemed a forbidden subject. Karen
Horney (1885 - 1952) and Helene Deutsch (1884-1982) )were only two of the
eminent psychoanalysts who offered a more realistic view of Freud’s long
standing phallocentric view of women. As Deutsch said in the work ‘The
Psychoanalysis of the Sexual Function of Woman’ menstruation was seen as a
crucial marker of womanhood, signally the onset of what she called ‘the
feminine core’.Rozsika Parker, Alessandra Lemma and Dana Birksted-Breen
have followed this up in their own published work, but menstruation is largely
bypassed by most of them. The late Bruno Bettelheim (Free Press 1954) had
also set out something rather more nuanced in his Symbolic Wounds: Puberty
Rites and the Envious Male, as I indicated above..
Indian boys, when asked about menstruation, (mentioned previously as an
attempt to grapple with this ‘unmentionable’ subject)in the film ‘Period. End of
Sentence.’ thought it was 'an illness.' The book Emotional Exposure tracks via
film the developmental journey from.babyhood to young adulthood, and
through it I came to new thinking via this film about the trajectory of puberty
for girls..for some it represents a welcome transition, an automatic route to
adulthood, the capacity to have babies if they so wish, and for others , perhaps
less prepared, the bridge is rickety and unstable..this may be affected by the
amount of discomfort felt as menstruation begins, which may also be marked by
intergenerational anxieties. and taboos. Is there a strand of male unconscious
envy here as Bruno Bettelheim suggested, even further back in the twentieth
century? (1954 Free Press Symbolic Wounds: Puberty Rites and the Envious
Male) Bettelheim presents an account of initiations in relatively present day pre
literate societies, suggesting that circumcision and related rituals may be the
expression of male fascination with, and jealousy of, the female sex organs and
their functions- while male sperm fertilises the egg, it then grows inside the
womb for nine months- fathers may be seen as a relatively modern idea, as
Kraemer indicated in Explorations in Fatherland (Edwards 2025) ....My small
son, aged three, said, aghast..’I’ve just realised I can’t have babies’! Not ever, of
course. Perhaps much springs from this realisation... There is as always a
problematic relationship between the issues, and in psychoanalytic work the
task when this is a presenting problem is to unravel the tightly wound knot, this
infinite fashioning of hyper complexity. More recently, the Palgrave Handbook
of Critical Menstruation Studies (2020) Bobel, Freidenfelds, Clancy and Martin
have added their own stories to the field. Going back again, both Horney and
Deutsch examine how the issues are intertwined: is this societal, evolutionary,
or personal? One of my contributors, whose younger sister has no recall.of the
'starting' event, talked of gleaning information from.older girls..and of course
this then stretches back in.linear time..was the knowledge of this 'illness' always
conveyed by older girls rather than mother, and why did mother not relay the
information to her own daughters ? Do guilt and shame, those two unconscious
and subconscious feelings, play a role here? And what was the shame about?
Here I revert to my own ‘story’..I recall ‘accidentally’ leaving a bloodstained
pad by the lavatory, and my mother berated me, the reason being ‘Dad wouldn’t
like it’. While a few of my contributors saw this transition as being exciting ‘I
was thrilled to bits’--’the eve of my first kiss!’ many were overwhelmed and
confused about this new transition, ‘starting’...but starting what? This ‘starting’
to be a fledgling woman means the loss of childhood...no small issue in itself...
and enter the dreaded PMS..Premenstrual syndrome is a disruptive set of
emotional and physical symptoms that regularly occur in the one to two weeks
before the start of each menstrual period. Symptoms resolve around the time
menstrual bleeding begins. Symptoms may vary,[ though commonly include
one or more physical, emotional, or behavioural symptoms, that resolve when
the period begins.. The range of symptoms is wide, and most commonly are
breast tenderness, mood swings, depression, anger and irritability. To be
diagnosed as having PMS, rather than the ‘normal’ (?) discomfort of the
menstrual cycle, these symptoms must interfere with daily living, during two
menstrual cycles of prospective recording. PMS-related symptoms are often
present for about six days. The late Dame Hilary Mantel’s endometriosis was
for years dismissed as being ‘all in her mind’.
Menstruation across cultures.
This is not a complete view of the complexity of human beliefs in the world, nor
is it meant to be...In ancient Egypt menstruation was considered a sign of
fertility, but still women were at times isolated or subject to specific rituals, and
used grasses to mop up their menstrual flow. In Ancient Greece and Rome,
where moss and leather were commonly used, it was seen as a natural part of
life, but it was also associated with danger and impurity...sometimes it was seen
as a source of power, associated with spiritual power, magic and
healing..specific ceremonies often marked the onset of menstruation, and these
views reflect the wide diversity and complexity of human belief throughout the
world. In many Native American cultures it was seen as a time for spiritual
retreat; time for reflection and renewal. This was also true in Aboriginal
Australian culture, connecting women with their land. So in these few examples
we can see the split which occurred between women, their culture and the
particular view of a particular culture, between spirituality and impurity. Again
in some African cultures menstruation was seen as a sign of fertility and
womanhood, with different rituals to mark the transition. In Afro-Caribbean
cultures menstruation, seen as a natural part of life, was associated with female
ancestors, spiritual power, intuition and inner wisdom. Such a rich and diverse
view...the menarche (beginning of periods) is celebrated like a coming of
age..herbal teas such as ginger and raspberry leaf, plus plants like Aloe Vera and
Chamomile, may be used to alleviate any discomfort, (as well as my own
mother’s gin and warm milk!) in various cultures world-wide. In the Hindu
tradition menstruation was associated with that symbol of female power, the
goddess Kali. Again Buddhist tradition reflected the split between something
natural and something impure, as happened in Latin American cultures. Some
countries, mainly in Asia, have menstrual leave to provide women with either
paid or unpaid leave of absence from their employment while they are
menstruating. Countries with such policies include Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia,
and South Korea. The practice is controversial, due to concerns that it bolsters
the perception of women as weak, inefficient workers, as well as concerns that it
is unfair to men, and that it furthers gender stereotypes and the medicalization
of menstruation. Hmmm. When as a young woman I went on a demonstration
about the pro abortion Corrie bill, one placard read ‘if men had abortions they
would be a sacrament’...maybe the same holds true of menstruation?Seclusion
during menstruation
In some cultures, women are still isolated during menstruation, because they are
seen as unclean, dangerous, or may bring bad luck to those who encounter them.
These practices are common in parts of South Asia, including India. A 1983
report found that women were not allowed to do household chores during this
period in India. Chhaupadi is a social practice that occurs in the western part of
Nepal for Hindu women, which prohibits a woman from participating in
everyday activities during menstruation. Women are considered impure during
this time and are kept out of the house and have to live in a shed. Although
chhaupadi was outlawed by the in 2005, the tradition is slow to change.Women
and girls in cultures which practice such seclusion are often confined to sheds or
huts, places of isolation used by cultures with strong menstrual taboos. The
practice has recently come under fire due to related fatalities. Nepal
criminalized this in 2017 after deaths were reported after the elongated isolation
periods, but "the practice of isolating menstruating women and girls continues.
Not all cultures denigrate menstruation however:, the Beng people of West
Africa consider menstrual blood to be sacred, and recognize its significance in
reproduction.
What can we glean about menstruation via religion?
Many religions have menstruation-related traditions, for example: Islam
prohibits sexual contact with women during menstruation in the second chapter
of the Quran. In Judaism , a woman during menstruation is called Niddah, and
may be banned from certain actions. The Jewish Torah prohibits sexual
intercourse with a menstruating woman. In Hinduism, menstruating women are
traditionally considered ritually impure. and are given rules they must follow.
In many religions, Islam, Christianity and Judaism in particular, then, women
are considered ‘unclean’ when they have their periods. It was Eve who was told
she would bear the brunt of her curiosity about the ‘Tree of Knowledge' and our
inevitable mortality .as it was recounted in Genesis: ‘Now the serpent was more
subtil than any beast of the field which God had made. And he said unto the
woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And
the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the
garden,but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath
said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent
said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day
ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing
good and evil. When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it
was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of
the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he
did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were
naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons . Then
they heard the voice of God who was walking in the garden in the cool of the
day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of God amongst
the trees of the garden. God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art
thou? Adam said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I
was naked; and I hid myself. God said, Who told thee that thou wast naked?
Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not
eat? Adam said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of
the tree, and I did eat. God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast
done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. Then God
said to her , I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow
thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he
shall rule over thee (no specific mention of menstruation, but it is surely
implied). And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice
of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou
shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it
all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and
thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,
till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art,
and unto dust shalt thou return. And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because
she was the mother of all.’ (Genesis) No mention specifically of menstruation
here, as I said.but a pile of guilt ,shame and blame....
Satan cursed Eve’s curiosity..no wonder we called it The Curse..what a curse to
enact upon the developing female girl, as a window on womanhood...again at
my boarding school, we shuddered and giggled simultaneously about the Lady
of Shalott’s fate..’the curse has come upon me! cried the Lady Of Shalott..when
‘the mirror cracked from side to side’...because she had the temerity to look
away from the mirror out of the window at Sir Lancelot, passing beneath. So
fancying boys rather than looking in the narcissistic mirror would land you,
bleeding, as the Curse ‘came upon’ you...
One small clinical vignette.
When I was a Special Needs teacher working in a mainstream primary school, I
had experienced an incident which I took in supervision to my Tavistock trained
psychotherapist, little knowing at that time that I too would follow the same
route of becoming a supervisor..One of my pubertal girl pupils came to tell, or
rather announce, to me, that she had started her period. I was naive, ignorant,
and I congratulated her, saying that this was the next step on the road to
becoming a woman and having babies. Then I went to lunch. When I came
back, the chair I usually sat in was swimming in red paint. There was no paint
left in the original pot. The girl, of course, denied all knowledge of this. What I
subsequently found out was that this girl’s mother had lately become pregnant
herself. While later I came also to understand that asking about the girl’s own
feelings was key, at that time I projected, rather mindlessly, my own ‘orthodox’
view. When do our ideas become ideals, and then idealisations? Even now, so
many years later, I believe that we learn from our mistakes, and we carry on
making them over our lifetime. It was Anne Alvarez (Live Company 1992 and
The Thinking Heart 2012) who was one of the first in our profession to address
the notion that therapists are not omniscient, and may get it ‘wrong’ on the way
to better understandings and interpretations. It’s only by forgiving ourselves that
we can learn something new, via what Neville Symington called ‘the fire in the
belly’. I hope my colleagues may offer their own clinical work around
menstruation. It is indeed a subject of ‘hyper-complexity’ as the analyst
Gregorio Kohon said,(IOPA Research Lecture May 2025) versus the idea of
non-complexity, which we of course understand through our clinical work: there
is no single answer. As the 17th century poet and scholar John Donne said, ‘ On
a huge hill, Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and he that will reach her (!) about
must and about must go. And what the hill’s suddenness resists, winne so. Yet
strive so, that before age, death’s twilight, Thy soul rest, for none can work in
that night’.. Truth is seen as a lofty and difficult goal to attain, requiring a
journey of exploration and perseverance, with obstacles and challenges
cropping up along the way throughout life. This was a poem I used to read each
year at the start of Child Development seminars.
By sharing the singularity of case studies, (bear in mind Freud only used seven,
including his work with the father of Little Hans, to produce twenty four books)
via self-reflection, we can hopefully develop a new horizontal language and
new methods of investigation that bypass the idealisation of ‘scientism’. We are
thinking about a mode here, not a method... When I asked her, a senior
colleague in my profession sent this message ‘ I was seeing a pubertal girl with
Asperger’s Syndrome, who on the one hand was hugely excited when she began
to menstruate (she had been saying before ‘I can’t wait to go to secondary
school’)but who on the other hand reinforced the underneath part of her
drawings with thick, thick lines – as though she was confusing losing menstrual
blood with losing all her body contents, as had been indicated by Bick
(1986)and Tustin (1981).’ Leaking down, indeed...
Menstruation education is frequently taught in combination with sex education
at Western schools , although girls may prefer their mothers to be the primary
source of information about menstruation and puberty, but this is as we have
seen a relatively rare thing. Information about menstruation is often shared
among friends and peers, which may promote a more positive outlook on
puberty, depending on the attitudes of these friends and peers.. The quality of
menstrual education in a society determines the accuracy of people's
understanding of the process. In many Western countries where menstruation is
nevertheless still a taboo subject, girls tend to conceal the fact that they may be
menstruating and struggle to ensure that they give no sign of it. Effective
educational programs are essential to providing children and adolescents with
clear and accurate information about menstruation. Schools can be an
appropriate place for menstrual education to take place. Programmes led by
peers or third-party agencies are another option. Low-income girls are less
likely to receive proper sex education on puberty, leading to a decreased
understanding of why it occurs and the associated physiological changes that
take place. This has been shown to cause the development of a negative attitude
towards menstruation- but as I have indicated, there may be underlying
subconscious and unconscious issues quietly at work.
Do we reach a Truth here?
As my own chapter in Psychoanalysis and Other Matters asks, ‘where are we
now, and what do we see?’ (P 174) and as the psychoanalyst Roger Money-
Kyrle so succinctly put it ‘as in physics, so in psychology, ultimate truth is
perhaps of infinite complexity, only to be approached by a series of
approximations;’ (p xvi) As Stephen Weinberg the Nobel prize-winning
physicist said ‘most physicists today are resigned to the fact that we will always
have to wonder why our deepest theories are not something different’ (p. xx
Weinberg, 2015). I have indeed started a few hares here, and gone down a few
rabbit holes, to reveal the warren underneath.
Etymology and terminology
The word menstruation is etymologically related to the moon. The terms
menstruation and menses are derived from the Latin mensis 'month', which in
turn relates to the ancient Greek mene 'moon' and to the roots of the English
words month and moon. With this in mind, the inaccurately named menopause
is actually a menostop even though it may happen gradually.
Some organizations have begun to use the term "menstruator" instead of
"menstruating women", a term that has been in use since at least 2010.
Menstruator is used by activists and scholars in order to "express solidarity with
women who do not menstruate, transgender men who do, and intersexual
individuals". The term can be contentious between different schools of feminist
thought; however, the majority of feminist scholars consider the term to
correctly reflect the reality that people of different genders menstruate. The
term "people who menstruate" is also used. Here is another rabbit hole, for
colleagues to enter into.
Effects of the moon
Even though the average length of the human menstrual cycle is similar to that
of the lunar cycle , in modern humans there is , according to current research,no
relation between the two. The relationship is believed to be a coincidence: light
exposure does not appear to affect the menstrual cycle in human women.A
meta-analysis of studies from 1996 showed no correlation between the human
menstrual cycle and the lunar cycle,nor did data analyzed by period-tracking
app Clue, submitted by 1.5million women, of 7.5 million menstrual cycles;
however, the lunar cycle and the average menstrual cycle were found to be
basically equal in length. But there is clearly still a huge amount of prejudice,
acknowledged and unacknowledged, about menstruation.
So this is a clarion call to my colleagues, to think about their clinical work,
especially with pubescent girls, in a new light, bearing in mind cultural mores
which lean onto the individual in a variety of ways, some conscious, some
unconscious. I may have started a few hares, and gone down a few rabbit holes,
but there are warrens underneath, waiting to be explored. Let’s see how we
go... This is how we, and our discipline, evolves. I’d like to end with another
Donne notion:
‘Dar’st thou dive seas, and dangerous dungeons of the earth?
Has thou courageous fire to thaw the ice
Of frozen North discoveries?’
References
Alvarez, Anne (1992) Live Company London: Routledge
Alvarez, Anne (2012) The Thinking Heart London, Routledge
Bettelheim, B (1954) Symbolic Wounds: Puberty Rites and the Envious Male
Free Press
Bick, E., (1986) ‘Further considerations on the function of skin in early object
relations’ British Journal of Psychotherapy 2(4): 292-299
Bobel, Freidenfelds, Clancy and Martin, (2020) Palgrave Handbook of Critical
Menstruation Studies
Edwards, Judith (2001) Pieces of Molly: An ordinary Life.London. Karnac
Shuttle , P., and Redgrove P., (1978) The Wise Wound: Menstruation and
Everywoman , London, Gollancz
Kohon, G., (IOPA Research Lecture May 2025)
Tustin, F. (1981) Autistic States in Children London: Routledge and Kegan Paul