Premenstrual syndrome as scientific and cultural artifact

Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS) has been defined in a variety of scientific and cultural ways over the years, but there is no consistent or agreed upon definition. For some women, the public legitimization of PMS and its symptoms as a real and natural part of the female body have led to a positive sense of vindication. However, a more negative image of PMS as something that controls women once a month, that makes them “crazy” and subject to their hormones, is much more pervasive in our contemporary Western culture. In this essay, the author explores the various definitions: PMS as a medical condition, as a social scientific and feminist issue, as an explanation for women's behavior and moods in the popular culture, and, finally, as something bought or sold in a market. The author shows how PMS is real because, if for no other reason, various people in different situations choose to define it as such. Reprinted from Figert, Anne E.Women and the Ownership of PMS: The Structuring of a Psychiatric Disorder. Aldine Transaction.     

PLACING PREMENSTRUAL SYNDROME IN PERSPECTIVE

In a longitudinal prospective study, mood fluctuations were assessed for evidence of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) as well as other menstrual, day of week, and lunar cyclicity. Volunteer participants from the community (60 women and 10 men) provided daily data for 12 to 18 weeks. Significant mood fluctuation was determined by a new nonparametric method using each individual's own standard deviation as a measure of "marked" change. Cyclicity was the norm; two thirds of both the women and men had one or more menstrual or lunar phases or days of the week that were markedly positive and/or negative, relative to their own range, but few experienced stereotypical cyclicity (PMS, Monday blues, full moon). About half the women whose prospective data met conservative criteria for PMS, met liberal criteria, or met neither criteria said they had PMS, and half in each group said they did not.     

Prospective assessment of late-luteal phase dysphoric disorder

This investigation evaluated a method for the prospective assessment of the symptoms of premenstrual syndrome (PMS). The American Psychiatric Association has proposed a diagnostic category for PMS in the DSM-III-R entitled late-luteal phase dysphoric disorder (LLDD). The criteria for this disorder include prospective documentation of at least two symptomatic cycles. Two groups of women were studied, one group that met the DSM-III-R diagnostic criteria for LLDD and a comparison group that did not. Subjects recorded symptoms related to PMS for two menstrual cycles. A clinically significant worsening of symptoms was defined as a symptom increase during the premenstruum of greater than one standard deviation above normal. These effect sizes were then used to determine if the subject met the DSM-III-R criteria for prospective confirmation. Data analysis showed that although the LLDD group showed evidence for PMS in several symptom groups, only a minority (31%) met the requirement of prospective confirmation of significant PMS symptoms for the two cycles recorded. These results were discussed in terms of the need for prospective behavioral assessment of LLDD and the implications of these findings for past and future research.Portions of this paper were derived from the master's thesis of the first author.     

Give Me that Ol' Time Hormonal Religion

Rodney Stark (2002) has sought to explain the greater religiosity of women, something that he asserts to be a cultural and historical universal, by suggesting that male physiology makes males more impulsive and so less likely to submit to religious prohibitions. Although he presents evidence suggesting that greater female religiosity is true today cross-culturally, he presents no real evidence establishing that this generalization was true prior to the 19th century. In fact, Stark's article completely overlooks a highly visible and well-established body of scholarly literature suggesting that the "feminization of piety," in both the Protestant and Catholic traditions, is a relatively recent historical phenomenon.     

A GOD THAT COULD BE REAL IN THE NEW SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSE

We are living at the dawn of the first truly scientific picture of the universe‐as‐a‐whole, yet people are still dragging along prescientific ideas about God that cannot be true and are even meaningless (e.g., omniscience) in the universe we now know we live in. This makes it impossible to have a coherent big picture of the modern world that includes God. But we don't have to accept an impossible God or else no God. We can have a real God if we redefine God in light of knowledge no one ever had before. The key question is, “Could anything actually exist in the scientific universe that is worthy of the name, God?” My answer is yes: God is an “emergent phenomenon,” as real as the global economy or the government or the worldwide web, which are all emergent phenomena. But God arose from something deeper: the complex interactions of all humanity's aspirations. An emerging God has enormous implications.     

The influence of the menstrual cycle on reactivity to a CO2 challenge among women with and without premenstrual symptoms

Clinically significant premenstrual symptoms (PMS) is conceptualized as a depressive disorder in DSM-5, however, it may share pathophysiological processes with anxiety- and fear-related disorders. Specifically, women with PMS panic at higher rates during biological challenge procedures. It is unclear if this increased interoceptive sensitivity is a general vulnerability or specific to the premenstrual phase. The current study examined the role of menstrual cycle phase on reactivity to a CO₂ challenge among women with (n = 11) and without (n = 26) clinically significant PMS (N = 37). During the late follicular phase (days 6–12), women with and without PMS responded similarly to the CO₂ challenge, whereas during the premenstrual phase (within 5 days before menses), women with PMS reported significantly more intense panic symptoms in response to the challenge than women without PMS. Vulnerability to panic in women with PMS may be specific to the premenstrual phase. Potential psychological and neurobiological mechanisms underlying this phenomenon are discussed.     

Effects of the premenstrual syndrome on facial expressions of sadness

This study examined the relationship between PMS and emotion-related electromyographic facial activity at different phases of the menstrual cycle. Twenty-four women of reproductive age (12 with PMS, 12 controls) participated in two EMG sessions (T1 and T2) in which they were shown photographic images that can elicit various emotions (IAPS stimuli). T1 took place in the follicular phase, T2 in the luteal phase. The activity of the musculus depressor anguli oris ("depressor", expression of sadness) was measured. Depressor activity was compared to activity of musculus orbicularis oculi ("orbicularis"; expression of joy). ANOVA yielded a significant increase of the activity of the depressor at T2 in the PMS group. The PMS group showed more frequent depressor activity during the luteal than the follicular phase. Orbicularis activity did not change from T1 to T2. Conclusions: The PMS group experienced various visual stimuli in a more depressed way during the luteal phase.     

Menstrual-related perceptual changes in women with premenstrual syndrome: Factors to consider in treatment

The state-dependent model of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) suggests that women's perceptions of daily stressors are affected by menstrual cycle phase. Our objective was to further examine the applicability of this model to perceptions of specific kinds of daily stressors and to explore its generalizability to perceptions involving significant others. Thirty-two undergraduate women, 10 PMS and 22 asymptomatic controls, completed the Daily Stress Inventory (DSI) and the Daily Rating Form (DRF) for 35 days. Questionnaires measuring perceived social support and self-esteem were completed premenstrually and postmenstrually. Results indicated that all women perceived a greater number of stressors as being severe premenstrually as compared to postmenstrually. Furthermore, all women perceived a lesser number of signifcant others as being present in their social support network premenstrually. However, only the PMS women were less satisfied with their social support and had more negative self-esteem premenstrually as compared to postmenstrually. Results are discussed within the context of designing treatment intermentions for women with PMS.     

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way Through the Sermon

Abstract :  The purpose of this article is to give thought to the listener as co-creator of meaning with the preacher during the sermon event. The underlying conviction of the author is that preachers and listeners have always been co-creators but have not been recognized as such. The author sketches the history of the task of preaching as a movement from getting something said to getting something heard , and suggests that, building on this, preaching can now be viewed as getting something created . Finally, the qualities of humility, imagination , and a "catalytic consciousness" are seen as essential for any preacher willing to take up this task.     

The dedifferentiation problem

This article demonstrates that our more sophisticated theories of law lead us to a point where we are no longer able to distinguish law from culture, or society, or the market, or politics or anything of the sort. Not only are the various terms inextricably intertwined (something that other thinkers have observed) but we are no longer in a position to articulate any relations between these various terms at all. It is with this latter realization that the dedifferentiation problem kicks in. Because the various terms cannot be disentangled, we find ourselves in the odd position where there is nothing of any positive character to be said about their relations. Each is already the other and, thus, they can have no relation. This is rather bad news for the ways in which we have traditionally conceived theories of law—indeed any theory that gets off the ground by distinguishing law from a discrete something else (which, on first glance, would seem to include all legal theory).

Premenstrual Syndrome and Misattribution: A Self-Perception,Individual Differences Perspective

Self-perception theory suggests that premenstrual syndrome (PMS) may arise from the misattribution of hormone-induced bodily changes. If so, individual differences in the role of bodily responses in emotional feelings, measured in a separate expression-manipulation procedure, should be related to susceptibility to PMS. In Study 1, women responsive to cues from their bodies showed significant mood changes, both negative and positive, with their cycle, over a 60 day span; whereas women relatively unresponsive to personal, bodily cues showed no consistent cycle effects. PMS was also predicted by a measure of emotional complexity. In Study 2 women whose moods were based on bodily cues also rated their moods as less positive if they were in their premenstrual week, and women unresponsive to their bodies were unaffected by their cycle. A reminder of their cycle-stage prevented PMS in the body cue group, which is a kind of discounting effect. Women who were unresponsive to their bodies also did not show PMS, and were unaffected by the reminder.     

Some Comments on The Problem of Reductionism in Contemporary Physical Science

Is reductionism simply a methodology that has allowed science to progress to its current state (methodological reductionism), or does this methodology indicate something more, that the material universe is determined in full by its smallest components (ontological or causal reductionism)? Such questions lie at the heart of much of the contemporary religion–science dialogue. In this essay I suggest that the position articulated by philosopher–theologian Bernard Lonergan is particularly suitable for dealing with these questions. For Lonergan, the criterion of the real is simply its verified intelligibility and not its imaginability. Each of the various levels of reality, as studied in sciences such as physics, chemistry, biology, and sensitive and rational psychology, consists of an intelligible integration of what on the lower level would be simply random occurrences. The things studied by the various sciences (atoms, molecules, cellular organisms, animals, human persons, and so on) are intelligible unities, and no one level is somehow more real than any other. I argue that such a scheme, while seeming somewhat counterintuitive, is best able to deal with the multilayered reality of the contemporary physical and life sciences and provide an opening to the richness of the social sciences and the achievements of human culture.     

Operational Noology as a new methodology for the study of thought and language: theoretical aspects and possible practical applications

In this article, the author presents a new methodology for the study of two fundamental components of consciousness, that is thought and language. The fundamental presupposition that forms the basis of this methodology is that thought is not simply a passive "reflection" of an external "reality", but also (and especially) something active, i.e. that the fundamental components of thought are sequences of operations, amongst which the ones of attention play a key role. These sequences of elementary mental operations are called mental categories, and are the meanings of all the words that do not seem to indicate something physical (first of all, all the "grammatical" words, that is conjunctions, prepositions, articles, pronouns, fundamental verbs like "to be", "to have" etc., the main adverbs, and, in the large number of languages that have a more or less rich morphology, all morphemes (the ones which indicate cases, in languages that have cases, the number and the gender of nouns and adjectives, moods and tenses of the verb etc.). The author proposes a list of these elementary mental operations and he shows how it is possible, basing ourselves on them, to identify the meanings of these words, which are indispensable for any linguistic expression. The author also mentions a possible short-term practical application of these theories, i.e. a device in order to improve the quality of machine translation. He also formulates the hypothesis that these theories could allow us to look in a new way at the problem of the (partial) artificial reproduction of the human activity of thought and language.     

The divided female--motherhood and public culture

The author compares "individual" motherhood, common in countries like Switzerland and the Federal Republic, with the "social" motherhood characteristic of a Mayan peasant culture in Yucatan. She discusses various psychoanalytic conceptions of motherhood, for instance, Freud's and Winnicott's. She argues that the ideological concept of the missing penis actually expresses the very real cultural deficiency of women. The retention of such ideological concepts prevents the actual conditions from being acknowledged in psychoanalytic theory. This, in turn, blocks the change in paradigm necessary for an adequate metatheoretical handling of gender differences.     

Crashing Memories and the Problem of ‘Source Monitoring’

We demonstrate that it is relatively easy in a real life situation to make reasonably intelligent adults believe that they have witnessed something they actually have not seen themselves, but only heard reports about from others, and to make them report about particular details of the event. The event concerns the crashing of an El Al Boeing 747 on apartment buildings in Amsterdam. Over sixty per cent of the subjects said they had seen the crash on television, although no television film exists. Unexpectedly, women proved themselves significantly more vulnerable to this effect than men.     

Women's beliefs about the prevalence of premenstrual syndrome and biases in recall of premenstrual changes.

The present study investigated the relationship between women's beliefs about the prevalence of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and biases in recall of premenstrual changes. Forty-nine women completed the Moos Menstrual Distress Questionnaire (R. H. Moos, 1968) both retrospectively and prospectively. Afterward, they were asked about their beliefs concerning the prevalence of PMS. The women reported higher premenstrual changes when they completed the retrospective questionnaire. Seventy-five percent of the women believed that the majority of women have premenstrual changes. From this percentage, those who answered that the majority also experience PMS were more biased in their premenstrual changes in the retrospective assessment. Many women have a misperception about the meaning of PMS; consequently, they amplify their premenstrual changes in recall, reflecting women's cultural stereotypes rather than their actual experiences.     

The injustice of it all: caring for the chronically ill

...While Spiegelberg emphasizes these "cosmic" -- perhaps more accurately, ontological -- features of birth and undeserved inequalities, it seems to us not inappropriate to suggest that what Douard terms "outrage" and Annas "instinct" go in the same direction. When impairment occurs without desert, something should be done to help. This is all the more true when, as in cases of chronic affliction that concern Douard or the case of the Siamese twins that fascinates Annas, something helpful can be done. Then, in Spiegelberg's words, what is "undeserved" demands redress. In these terms, each of these authors points to a deeply rooted sense of our common human lot. Or, in Albert Schweitzer's apt phrase, to witness such undeserved misfortune is to awaken "a moral sense that is usually dormant but that on special occasions can be brought to the surface." Chronic illnesses, we suggest -- no less than the "accidents of birth" that concern Spiegelberg -- are just such "special occasions" for awakening that "moral sense" suggested by Douard in his appeal to the "outrage" of doing nothing for, or refusing to help, the chronically ill.     

PMS as a Gendered Illness Linked to the Construction and Relational Experience of Hetero-Femininity

The majority of research conducted to date on premenstrual distress has focused on heterosexual women. Drawing on research with lesbian and heterosexual self-defined PMS (premenstrual syndrome) sufferers and their partners, we argue that this negates the role played by hetero-patriarchal constructions of both femininity and premenstrual change in the lived experience of premenstrual distress. Negative constructions of PMS and over-responsibility within the home, commonly found in heterosexual relationships, exacerbate distress and result in women being pathologised premenstrually. Conversely, support and understanding offered by partners, more common in lesbian relationships, reduces guilt and self-pathologisation, allowing women to engage in coping strategies premenstrually, such as taking time out to be alone, or engage self-care. These patterns of relational negotiation of women’s premenstrual change can be contextualised within broader cultural representations of hetero-normativity, which provide the context for gendered roles and coping.     

The Role of Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder in the Subjectification of Women

This paper will examine the way in which premenstrual symptomatology has been represented and regulated by psychology and psychiatry. It questions the “truths” about women's premenstrual experiences that circulate in scientific discourse, namely the fictions framed as facts that serve to regulate femininity, reproduction, and what it is to be “woman.” Hegemonic truths that define Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD) and its nosological predecessor Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS) are examined to illustrate how regimes of objectified knowledge and practices of “assemblage” come to regulate individual women through a process of subjectification. Five interconnected “truths” are presented as objects of scrutiny: PMDD is a thing that can be objectively defined and measured; PMDD is a pathology to be eradicated; PMDD is caused and can be treated by one factor; PMDD is a bodily phenomenon; PMDD causes women's problems or symptoms. I examine the way in which these hegemonic truths function in framing the reproductive body as a cause of disorder or distress that leads women to interpret premenstrual experiences within a pathological framework deserving medical or psychological treatment. Finally, I offer an alternative framework drawing on Eastern models of selfhood that provides a more empowering model of women's premenstrual experiences.     

Mood-related self-schemata and mood-congruity effects in autobiographical memory: A study of women with premenstrual syndrome

Everyday autobiographical memory and mood interactions were explored in a small clinical sample of women with premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and a matched control group. Subjects kept daily records of memorable events for two consecutive menstrual cycles. Two recognition memory tests were given after a one-cycle delay. Mood, or affect, was self-assessed retrospectively over a week, at the end of each day during data collection and at testing, and when events occurred. Women with PMS were more depressed and more negative (angry) than positive (experiencing bursts of energy) in their daily moods than controls. Memory accuracy was poorer overall for PMS than control subjects, although no direct effects of menstrual cycle phase on memory were found. Instead, mood affected memory indirectly through moodrelated self-schemata which subsequently mediated mood-congruity effects. Memory accuracy for events experienced in negative mood states and associated with negative affective reactions was higher for PMS subjects when tested in negative mood states than for controls. No group differences were found on events associated with positive affect or positive daily moods when mood state at the time of testing was also positive. Women with PMS processed information selectively from negative events and events experienced in negative moods compared to controls. Negative events and negative moods appeared to interfere with remembering for control subjects. Women in the control group appeared to be biased towards selectively remembering positive events and events experienced on days when their mood states were relatively positive.