Women's Psychological Experience Research Articles

Refleksi Pengalaman Perempuan dalam Memoar Berteman dengan Kematian karya Sinta Ridwan

This research aims to reflect women's biological experience, women's language, women's psychology in the memoir Berteman dengan Kematian by Sinta Ridwan. This research uses the approach of Ginokritik Studies. The method used in this research is descriptive method with content analysis technique. The results of the data on the gynocritical analysis of the memoir Berteman dengan Kematian by Sinta Ridwan showed that there are three gynocritical models, namely: (1) women's biological experience, namely women's bodily experience, expressing all feelings, inner voices, women's desires, the appearance of the female body. (2) women's language expression, namely using their own style and language to model women's language, women's language can be seen from the aspects of conversation, intonation, and strategies in women's language (3) women's psychological experience, namely the experience and psychology of the author of all the emotions depicted in the work based on the author's psychological situation, female authors write stories with a background of suffering and madness as a form of expressing all the emotions that occur to women.

"Hair is your crown and glory" - Black women's experiences of living with alopecia and the role of social support.

Alopecia is an autoimmune condition that results in hair loss, mainly from the scalp. There are three specific types of autoimmune alopecia: alopecia areata (AA; small patches of hair loss), alopecia totalis (AT; total hair loss from the scalp) and alopecia universalis (AU; total hair loss from the scalp and body). Whilst research has explored the experiences of White women living with alopecia, there is a lack of research exploring the impact of alopecia on women in the Black community. The current study aimed to explore Black women's experience of living with autoimmune types of alopecia with a focus on the cultural importance of hair within the Black community and the impact of social support. Seven Black women (age range: 37-68 years; mean age: 51 years) were recruited purposively through alopecia support group organisations and social media to participate in a semi-structured interview; four participants were diagnosed with AA, two participants were diagnosed with AU, and one participant was diagnosed with AT. One-to-one interviews were conducted online, and interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to guide data collection and analysis. Participants discussed the significance of hair specifically within the Black community and the complex relationship between psychological wellbeing, coping and seeking support. This novel area, specific to Black women's psychological experience of alopecia, acknowledges the influence of cultural and ethnic differences. The findings suggest that proactive awareness from health professionals and social support groups are needed due to the nuances of Black women's alopecia experience to provide better support and to enhance the quality of life for Black women to manage their alopecia.

Women's Psychological Experiences in a Narrative Therapy‐Based Group: An Analysis of Participants' Writings and Beck Depression Inventory–Second Edition

AbstractThe purpose of this study was to explore women's experiences in a narrative therapy‐based group conducted to help participants re‐author their stories. Seven women who were either patients or individuals enrolled in Transition Support for Employment at a psychiatric clinic participated in the meetings, one every fortnight. Each session explored a theme based on narrative therapy techniques such as externalization. The participants wrote their reflections during each session, and completed the Beck Depression Inventory‐Second Edition (BDI‐II) during the initial and final sessions. An affinity diagram was developed to classify their written reflections into 22 lower categories (e.g., new understanding of self, forward‐looking‐understanding of life) and 4 upper categories (“Insight,” “Sharing with others,” “Changes with understanding of lives,” “Higher motivation”). The relationship among five lower categories comprising “Insight” was explored, and it became apparent that clarification of participants' own thoughts about social problems functioned as a mediator promoting the process. The largest portion of depressed feelings emerged during the initial session, and four participants had lower scores for BDI‐II items such as self‐criticism in the final session. The results suggest that the group's purpose was realized. However, future studies should examine participants' feelings more closely, especially during the initial session.

Evaluation of quality of life and subjective experience of the disease before and after vaginal hysterectomy among women admitted to the University Hospital in Brazzaville

Toute maladie est un mal en soi qu’il faut éradiquer car elle altère souvent de façon significative la qualité de la vie. L’hystérectomie vaginale est indiquée pour les patientes qui présentent certaines affections gynécologiques graves, elle est donc bénéfique mais, peut également avoir une répercussion néfaste sur la qualité de vie de la femme. Ainsi nous avons voulu explorer le vécu de la maladie et de l’hystérectomie vaginale (HV) des femmes avant et après l’intervention chirurgicale. Nous avons effectué une étude prospective qualitative, à recueil clinique sur une période de 12 mois; qui a concerné les femmes, ayant subi une hystérectomie vaginale. Celles n’ayant pas accepté de participer à l’étude, ou n’ayant pas de contact téléphonique n’ont pas été incluses. Pendant la maladie, le vécu des femmes a été: l’inconfort sexuel 26/40 (65%); les saignements génitaux 12/40 (30%); les douleurs pelviennes 13/40 (32,5%). En Post-opératoire, ont été noté les dyspareunies transitoires30/40 (75%) ; les céphalées secondaires à l’anesthésie 4/40 (10%). Le vécu psychologique a été dominé avant l’HV par la peur de la chirurgie chez toutes les patientes, les troubles du sommeil 38/40 (95%), l’angoisse 30 /40(75%), un sentiment de honte lié aux difficultés à accomplir l’acte sexuel en raison du prolapsus 26/40(65%) et/ ou en raison des saignements génitaux, dus au fibrome utérin 14/40(35%). Le sentiment de la perte de féminité était déclaré par 26/40 femmes porteuses de prolapsus utérin (65%), la modification de l’estime de soi 26/40 (65%). Ces appréciations subjectives ont été améliorées avec l’HV, contre balançant la perte de leur organe de reproduction. Aucune information n’a été donnée par les femmes à leurs proches et aux membres de la famille avant la chirurgie, traduisant ainsi leur sentiment de gène ou de honte. L’arrêt des symptômes a été observé dans tous les cas, même si dans un cas (1,25%) un nouveau signe au titre des complications (plaie rectale) a éténoté. Concernant l’activité sexuelle, tous les couples ont déclaré leur satisfaction après le traitement. Le vécu dramatique de la maladie et de l’hystérectomie vaginale avant, est nettement amélioré après l’intervention chirurgicale.

Multifetal pregnancy reduction: psychodynamic implications.

New reproductive technologies, such as advanced infertility treatments, may have significant implications for women's psychological experience of pregnancy and motherhood. This paper examines some of the psychodynamic implications of multifetal pregnancy reduction, a medical procedure in which some of the fetuses in a multiple pregnancy are aborted while other fetuses are carried to term. Forty-four women who had undergone pregnancy reductions were interviewed about their emotional experience of this medical intervention and their subsequent pregnancies. A qualitative analysis of their experience was conducted from five psychoanalytically-informed vantage points: drive theory, ego psychology, object relations theory, self psychology and a developmental perspective. Women experienced having to abort some of their fetuses as a stressful and distressing life event, and a fourth of the women experienced bereavement reactions which impaired their functioning for at least two weeks. Conscious and unconscious responses to the procedure included ambivalence, guilt, and a sense of narcissistic injury, increasing the complexity of their attachment to the remaining babies. However, the achievement of the developmental goal of parenting healthy birth children helped most women feel that they had made the right decision for themselves and their families. Further research is indicated, including interviews before the reduction and long-term follow-up of mothers and surviving children.

Constructing Women's Psychological Health in Anti-Abortion Rhetoric

This paper considers the ways in which anti-abortion activists construct women's psychological experience of abortion and explores the rhetorical significance of this discourse in advancing the anti-abortion project. In particular we examine how the psychological concept of ‘denial’ contained in the (proposed) diagnostic category of ‘Post-Abortion Syndrome’ allows anti-abortionists to ‘psychologise’ and therefore undermine alternative constructions of the experience of abortion. Further, we explore how this construction of women's experience allows particular constructions of the foetus (ie, ‘unborn child’) to be advanced (and naturalised) without reference to overtly political argumentation. The significance of this development of the abortion debate and its implications for the dynamics of political mobilisation are discussed.

Psychoanalytic Constructions of Female Development and Women's Conflicts About Achievement—Part II

Central to the dynamics that underlie women's conflicts about their own autonomous achievements are the reappraised psychoanalytic concepts of penis envy and masochism. These ideas need not be abandoned because of the phallocentric bias that is responsible for their initial formulation. When they are conceptualized as serving defensive ego-maintaining functions for the woman, their richness in expressing aspects of women's psychological experiences becomes evident. Both culturally ascribed meanings to physiological differences and the physical differences themselves have an impact on an individual's developing psychological sense of self, and of self in relation to others. Girls and boys have different anatomies, which give rise to different bodily sensations, different definitions of what is acceptable and what is taboo, and arouse different feelings and reactions in caretakers on whom the child is dependent. The girl's developmental task of separation and individuation is complicated in two major ways that are relevant to adult women's achievement-related conflicts. First, as a female child, she is both more closely identified with her mother and more closely identified with by her mother. Her sensitivity to relationship and loss--particularly in her bond to her mother--grows in part from the intensities of these reciprocal identifications and from the capacities for empathic, affective relating that cultural and maternal expectations impart to daughters. Because mothers are so identified with their same-sex children, and because, as women, they themselves have learned to sacrifice aspects of their autonomy for either nurturant or dependent functions, mothers communicate ambivalent wishes and expectations to their daughters. On the one hand, a daughter receives the injunction that she carry on for her mother by fulfilling her thwarted longings and by compensating, with her own achievements, for her mother's disappointments. On the other hand, the daughter receives the simultaneous message that her accomplishments arouse her mother's envy and potential retaliation, but, most destructively, threaten to leave her empty, without a dependent appendage through whom she can live and bolster her self-worth. The second, complicated, aspect of the girl's task of separation and individuation, which relates to her adult conflicts around achievement, lies in the relationship between the cultural devaluation of whatever women have to do, and the kinds of fantasies and experiences to which the more hidden, internal and mysterious female genitals lend themselves.

Psychoanalytic constructions of female development and women's conflicts about achievement. Part I.

Central to the dynamics that underlie women's conflicts about their own autonomous achievements are the reappraised psychoanalytic concepts of penis envy and masochism. These ideas need not be abandoned because of the phallocentric bias that is responsible for their initial formulation. When they are conceptualized as serving defensive ego-maintaining functions for the woman, their richness in expressing aspects of women's psychological experiences becomes evident. Both culturally ascribed meanings to physiological differences and the physical differences themselves have an impact on an individual's developing psychological sense of self, and of self in relation to others. Girls and boys have different anatomies, which give rise to different bodily sensations, different definitions of what is acceptable and what is taboo, and arouse different feelings and reactions in caretakers on whom the child is dependent. The girl's developmental task of separation and individuation is complicated in two major ways that are relevant to adult women's achievement-related conflicts. First, as a female child, she is both more closely identified with her mother and more closely identified with by her mother. Her sensitivity to relationship and loss--particularly in her bond to her mother--grows in part from the intensities of these reciprocal identifications and from the capacities for empathic, affective relating that cultural and maternal expectations impart to daughters. Because mothers are so identified with their same-sex children, and because, as women, they themselves have learned to sacrifice aspects of their autonomy for either nurturant or dependent functions, mothers communicate ambivalent wishes and expectations to their daughters. On the one hand, a daughter receives the injunction that she carry on for her mother by fulfilling her thwarted longings and by compensating, with her own achievements, for her mother's disappointments. On the other hand, the daughter receives the simultaneous message that her accomplishments arouse her mother's envy and potential retaliation, but, most destructively, threaten to leave her empty, without a dependent appendage through whom she can live and bolster her self-worth. The second, complicated, aspect of the girl's task of separation and individuation, which relates to her adult conflicts around achievement, lies in the relationship between the cultural devaluation of whatever women have to do, and the kinds of fantasies and experiences to which the more hidden, internal and mysterious female genitals lend themselves.