A Woman's Unconscious Use of Her Body

The mind-body connection in women is complex and intriguing: women can develop rashes, abdominal pains, or asthma at moments of stress; they may become pregnant or miscarry in response to unconscious conflicts; and they are deeply influenced by bodily changes - from menstruation to menopause - throughout their lives. In this perceptive and engrossing book, an eminent psychoanalyst explores key moments of women's lives and sexuality, examining how their unconscious minds are expressed through their bodies and, conversely, how their body experiences impinge upon their minds. Drawing on numerous examples from her clinical practice, Dinora Pines tells vivid stories of how young, pregnant women learn to integrate reality with unconscious fantasies, hopes, and daydreams; how women cope with the psychological antecedents and consequences of miscarriage, abortion, and infertility; and how older women adjust to the end of fertility and to old age, with the attendant issues of loss. Pines concludes by discussing her work with Holocaust survivors and children of survivors who unconsciously somatize their emotional distress about the horrors of the war and postwar years. Throughout she enables us to see how the analytic encounter can reveal and relate the secrets of the mind and body and provide a space for thought and change.