What it Means to Bleed: An Exploration of Young Women's Experiences of Menarche and Menstruation

Abstract

As a topic of psychoanalytic inquiry, menstruation is surprisingly absent from psychoanalytic literature: menstruation as a part of female psychosexual development is in need of further empirical exploration. The research uses semi‐structured interviews with six young women to explore individual experiences of the menarche and menstruation. The data is analysed using narrative and thematic analysis and interpretations, made within a (broadly classical) psychoanalytic frame, drive the results. In this condensed version of the research, three central findings will be discussed: (1) the role of mother in negotiating the menarche; (2) the difficulty of irregular periods and the fear that something internal has ‘gone wrong’; (3) the link to ideas of mess, dirt and shame, potentially reflective of feelings about sexuality. The research concludes that menstruation is an area worthy of careful psychoanalytic consideration in theory and in clinical practice.