Menstrual-Cycle Research and the Construction of Female Psychology

Abstract

The previous chapters by Louise Dye, John Richardson, and Jane Ussher have confirmed the conclusion reached by Barbara Sommer in Chapter 2 that there is essentially no evidence to support a medical or psychological model of paramenstrual cognitive debilitation. Nevertheless, psychologists seem to have very little enthusiasm to investigate either why researchers should persist in putting forward such models or, despite their potentially damaging effects on women's self-cognitions, what these models' psychological implications might be. As Blumenthal and Nadelson (1988) commented, our knowledge of the relationship between the biology and the psychology of the menstrual cycle "must be placed into the context of understanding how the beliefs, expectations, attributions, and self-perceptions of women mediate or modify the effects of whatever biological changes occur premenstrually" (p. 472). It is, however, not just these immediate effects on women and their perceptions of their own performance through the menstrual cycle that need to be explored. These self-cognitions reflect a pervasive mythology of women, located within history and culture, that permeates popular beliefs and reinforces the reproduction of traditional conceptual models. These in turn constrain the thinking of both men and women, of both scientists and nonscientists.