by Concepcion Fernandez Cazalis
FEM, Mujer y Salud, No. 35
Women Get Sick to Survive
The psychological suffering of women is not a personal problem. It is an historical social product and it is determined by the environment in which they live their lives. To be able to survive the "female condition" and lead a life with the expectations of inferiority, marginalization and isolation that society has of them, women have had to swallow the myth of female nature, of maternal instinct, of virginity and vaginal orgasm. They have had to swallow the myth of romantic love and of a partner "until death do us part." They have taken refuge, filled with hope, on the psychoanalyst's couch and in the Christian solace of the confesor. But to a greater or lesser extent, all this swallowing is eventually painfully vomited back, because attempting to live by the rules of this mythology of "female destiny" usually introduces so many severe contradictions in daily life that women begin to generate varying degrees of existential malaise which they express through symptoms of different kinds: feelings of incapacity, profound insecurity, depression, anxiety, frigidity, skin allergies, migraine, uncontrollable fits of rage for no apparent reason, general uneasiness, intense feelings of guilt about everything. Women are filled with guilt like a sack is with flour. Unaware that all these afflictions arise from the oppressive life they lead and from the guilt thrown upon them culturally for any upsets in the family, and thinking invariably that they are the ones who are "wrong" and not the social infrastructure, women get sick and look for technical help to find out what they are doing wrong and, above all, what their "part of the blame in the matter" is. ...
This need to drown out their psychological ailments has brought women to the treacherous world of mental health specialists, where they are led to swallow, this time literally, all kinds of psychiatric drugs that transnational corporations produce especially for them: from those apparently most harmless - the Valium(*) prescribed by the general practitioner on hearing the women suffers from "nerves" - to those that exterminate physically and psychologically, leading to death. ...
Not understanding that their psychological problems arise from a life that is crippled and oppressive, women have an intense need to rely on the mythology around which they have built their existence: the sublime nature of motherhood, of conjugal and filial love. When this is not able to soothe their intimate frustration, they put themselves in the hands of mental health specialists, who usually ignore the objective political fact of the specific oppression suffered by women, that women are ideologically imbued with the acceptance of male supremacy. These really are "specialists" in regenerating women for the system, closing the circle and convincing women that their sanity is to be found in the home. ...
The oppression of women, like any type of oppression, has profound social roots. They are deep and difficult to eradicate. The only antidote is radical revolution. Without this, living under oppression entails at a personal level a great amount of suffering, frustration, impotence and lack of meaning in life. Women around us "plod through" life, sex, motherhood and daily chores. They "endure" the relationship with their partner. They are looked on with distrust when they refuse to form a family, are morally censured when they are single mothers, and are repudiated as abnormal or perverse beings when they are lesbian. The female condition in itself entails a degree of contradiction so vast as to make women from all social classes more liable, in one way or another, to psychological disturbances. And hence to be classified as mad. ...
(*) Valium, a strongly addictive drug, is actually far from harmless.
More Women Than Men Request Psychological Help
In all industrialized Western societies in which women play a subordinate social role more women than men request psychological help. We also know that more women than men are admitted to mental hospitals and that in general hospitals the percentage of patients receiving psychiatric treatment is higher for women than for men. Psychosomatic ailments, in which an intense state of emotional stress is manifested as a physical symptom, are also more frequent in women. Suicide, which reflects an intense degree of suffering even though it cannot be classified as a mental illness, occurs more commonly among men. But the number of attempted suicides is six to ten times higher than that of actual suicides, and attempts are more frequent in women.
Furthermore, given the tendency of the medical profession, not only psychiatrists but doctors of any specialty, to prescribe tranquilizers to any woman they suspect of having "weak nerves," addiction to this kind of medicine is very frequent. ... Moreover, it is a fact that nowadays electroshock is the most widely used procedure with depressive patients, and there is also substantial evidence that women are more prone to depression, from which we can infer that the largest number of victims of this horrible "treatment" are women. Nobody really knows how electroshock works. We know only that by administering one or dozens of them, individuals temporarily "forget" what it was that disturbed them. Apart from the fact that the destruction of consciousness is in no way an alternative to the understanding of an existential problem, the side effects of this type of "therapy" are usually very serious: mental blocks, total amnesia. ...
In addition, women are most frequently the victims of lobotomies and other damaging and unnecessary brain surgery to make them change their behavior. This method is employed on "rebellious and aggressive" patients on whom all other procedures (except, of course, psychotherapy) have had no effect. Rebellion and aggression are forms of behavior intolerable in women, and that is why a large number of women "deserve" to be turned into vegetables. "Legal" and "functional" cripples, they shall have to depend on others for the satisfaction of the larger part of their basic needs: tutelage for the rest of their lives. Since 1936, the majority of lobotomies have been practiced on women. The underlying medical criterion was that this operation was more beneficial to them, because the role of housewife is easier to take up. With men - so they said - it is less convenient as it is difficult for them to readapt to their work as "breadwinners" after a lobotomy.
A Brief Dissection of Women's Role
Why is it that women are more frequently classified as "mad?" Two different realities must be taken into account; firstly, women who do not resign themselves to living as "females" are expected to, whose behavior is objectively different, are called "mad" or "maladjusted" because they do not fulfill these expectations. (We feminists, of course, would all fall into this category.) Secondly, women who really try to fit the part are in a situation of true suffering, confusion, depression or desperation because they are forced to adjust to a role that is so imposing and contradictory. That is to say, in one way or another, "madness" is very close to every woman's life: we are " mad" if we do not accept the role, and "maddened" if we do. ...
The Narrower Space of Women
The range of behavior approved and legitimized for women is much narrower and more limiting than for men. The rules that govern women's lives are based on conventions or moral prejudices that serve to keep them away from spheres of power. The rules of male behavior, on the other hand, take men into account as social beings with an active part in the creation of culture and access to power. The social space of women is much narrower and at the smallest deviation from the norm, women are labeled "abnormal" or "maladjusted."
Furthermore, men have access to two environments: the home and work. Women have access to a single one in which all contradictions are concentrated. Men possess two sources of gratification: as heads of the family and as workers, whereas women possess only one, their families.
The Male Role Has More Support
I am aware that rigid sex roles scar and destroy everyone. They mutilate personality and box it in. I am also convinced that society does not promote the psychological development of the large majority of individuals, whatever their sex. But the male role has more support and social congruence and can be carried out with less psychological conflict. The role this society imposes on men is rigid, hard, heavy; "Go out and break your back." Failure to comply with it also entails punishment. The message for men, however, is direct and unambiguous: "You are the strong one, you will have to work and earn money and you will have power." Most importantly: society provides them with the instruments and the authority necessary to accomplish this imperative. The promise society makes men is: "You will have someone to serve you and care for you and educate your children, your heirs." The contradiction for men is much smaller because this promise is almost always fulfilled. ... Everything in patriarchal society is arranged so that men may carry out their role. The male hegemony at all levels serves as an infrastructure, creating the conditions that allow men to be, in effect, stronger, to have better schooling, better paying work, more sexual privileges, better knowledge of their social environment and hence greater control and power.
The role of women in society is that of wife-mother-sexual object inside the family: "By looking after others and relegating all other interests in favor of running your family well, sacrificing yourself for your children and pleasing your husband sexually, you will find your place and your identity as a human being." The promise society makes women is: "You will have a husband to care for you, protect you, teach you and help you economically to run your family and raise your children, since you are not a whole person, and alone you cannot succeed."
Let us see what happens with this promise of care, protection, help, etc., among women of the poorer classes, which is not to say that it is restricted to them and does not happen to women of other classes as well. These women generally find themselves alone with their families, with a husband who is no more than a son "a little older than the others" but who is convinced he must always have the last word. Domestic tasks have been almost entirely left to her, along with everything related to the care and education of her children. And what of the instruments she is provided with? She was told she would not have to work outside the home to earn wages, so little importance was given to her education: in the best of cases a business diploma or a course in a beauty school that would not distract her from the objective of forming a family. She now finds her husband's salary is not enough and she is forced to take up the role of worker and earn an additional wage and, moreover, has to disguise and conceal her help and her initiatives in order not to contradict her role as wife. And finally, she cannot count on an infrastructure that will allow her to take up simultaneously the roles of worker-wife-mother: because there are no day nurseries and her husband does not move a finger to help out in the household work. On the other hand, if this woman decides not to work, then her children will go hungry and she will then become a "bad mother." In the end, she goes out to work; she then realizes how few tools and resources are available to her, and she lives in constant anxiety.
If a man is out of work, he always finds a woman to support and look after him: his mother, his sister, a friend or a neighbor. But if a woman is out of work - what of the children? By definition, a woman can never abandon her children. Social censure is a thousand times stronger. And if she opts for working outside the home: the permanent anxiety of thinking what the children might be doing, or the feelings of guilt at the thought that they may not be properly looked after in the day nursery. For a person to function in society, the responsibilities assumed must be matched by the resources provided. Women educated to be fragile, weak and unlearned are forced to guide their families, a crushing task since by definition no mother can permit herself to be weak. On the contrary, she must deploy an impressive amount of energy. If she does not succeed, she will be called "unnatural."
Men Have More Means of Escape
When men do not want to assume responsibilities in the home, they have two ways of escape: they leave or they become aggressive and physically violent. Escape is much more difficult for women, primarily because the husband is there and in control and also because the hunger and the needs of their children are real and obvious to them. We must not forget that culture indiscriminately lays the blame on women, not only for any problems the children might have, but for any problem that arises in family relationships. If something goes wrong in the family, the woman is always to blame. This is supported by the majority of the psychological and psychoanalytical theories of our society. Men have more chances to ignore or escape from the conflict that is created in the home and in sexuality by the capitalist system. A man who is fed up with his wife, for instance, leaves her and finds another one. This may eventually bring him many more problems, but for the time being he has gotten away. There are men who find themselves another home because they cannot stand a house full of children who scream and cry. This is very understandable; women too get fed up with a house full of children. For them, however, finding another man is no solution as it is much more difficult to be rid of children, and in any case they run the risk of ending up with a man as bad as the one they escaped from. Further, when a man does not fulfil his obligations, he may be called shameless, irresponsible, weak, a bastard. But if a woman leaves her home or her children, the censure is of a different nature: unnatural, whore, crazy. Men have more possibilities for sidestepping their role without falling under a psychiatric label.
Double Messages
In his "General History of the Affairs of New Spain'', Fray Bernardino de Sahagun tells us of the advice Mexican mothers gave their daughters. Although it is impossible to reproduce them all. I think it is illustrative to quote some:
"When you speak, do not raise your voice or speak too softly, but with medium sound... be honest in your walk, do not walk with haste nor excessively slowly... and if it is necessary to cross a brook, jump in a way such that you seem neither heavy and clumsy nor light... Show your face as is good, so that your features show neither anger nor gaiety."
This type of double message, so common in the education of women, creates paralyzing ambiguities and causes an enormous degree of permanent self-doubt, giving women the feeling that there is always something wrong in whatever they are doing. This is the type of message women receive about their sexuality. Our culture emphasizes the sexual aspect of women and then prevents their sexuality and their bodies from belonging to them. Women must be virgin and inexpert, but simultaneously must satisfy their husbands. "Neither too cold nor too warm," everything depending on the man. They must flirt to ensure their femininity is not put in doubt, but not too much or they become whores. Seductive enough to attract the boss and obtain some concessions from him, but able to escape going to bed with him. What happens for instance, with frigidity? For many women frigidiy is paradoxically a symptom of health, because they are expressing their anger at the treatment they receive. Most men cannot conceive why it is that after a serious disagreement or quarrel, their wives will not go to bed with them. In this respect, men of our culture seem to have developed "sexual schizophrenia": they believe all wrongs can be put right in bed, and when they get no response they adopt vengeful attitudes and look for other women, instead of analyzing what is happening with their wives' anger.
Love Relationships
I am talking about male-female relationships here, but any sexual relationship between men or between women that reproduces the hierarchy and inequality characteristic of heterosexual couples will produce the same contradictions and psychological suffering in the less powerful member of the couple. In the words of Branca Basaglia, "Love has been, by definition, an asymmetrical relationship that rarely contemplates reciprocity." In capitalist society, the actual relationship between husband and wife is far from the ideal model propounded by ideology. Marriage is corrupt from the roots. It is not a contract between equals, as the law and the church tell us, but the submission and servitude of one party to another. From the very moment of birth, culture begins to lay the foundations of the wall that years later will make agreement between the sexes near to impossible. True love can only exist between equals. All else is fiction. Society makes men and women almost incompatible and then sends us to bed together. Any woman who aspires to a respectable position within the couple relationship has to claim a space whose every inch is won after a hellish battle. We become "witches" when we make demands or stake claims and "annoying" when we force men to think. Men are conditioned to solve things "practically" and evade lengthy dialogues while women need to get to the bottom of things: "But haven't we discussed that already?"
Women are conditioned to show their feelings: they scream, cry, protest, become exasperated, explode. These extreme ways of manifesting lack of communication result from having already gone fruitlessly over the matter. Women are then labeled hysterical, unbalanced, mad. This behavior will have no positive effects because men, contrary to women, are conditioned to control their feelings, and their reaction is to become brick walls; they flee, disappear, although their bodies are still there.
Faced with conflict, a man usually attacks or escapes. Both these attitudes are looked on with more social tolerance; neither of them merit the label "mad." A woman, on the other hand, if she does not conform and if she screams, is accused of being crazy. And if she does conform, her suffering spurts out periodically in the form of explosions that receive the typical response: "Stop being hysterical." Another option for women is to do things behind their partners' backs, partly achieving their ends in this way, but at the cost of permanent tension that may appear as an infinity of physical complaints such as headaches and insomnia. This occurs very clearly among women of the shantytowns, where over fifty percent of those taking part in political activity do so behind their husbands' backs. The couple relationship is perhaps the biggest source of contradiction in a woman's life.
Forever on the Tightrope
A woman's life is often led on a "tightrope." At the least mistake, contradiction enters the bones of the structure and decalcifies them. They are told motherhood is the most important function of their lives, and yet continuously looking after their children tires and bores them, though they feel afraid to admit it. Conjugal love is supposed to be the base of the family, but contact and communication with the husband is usually conflictive and scarce. Household chores are "essential" and "creative," but for most they are an unbearable burden. Work outside the home seems appealing but almost out of reach, until they are forced to take it up; then they feel insecure or discriminated against and afraid also lest their husbands feel offended because they are working. A synthesis would be a little like Colette Dowling's in The Cinderella Complex: "If we look after our children well, can we work? If we work well, can we love? Can we perform well outside the home? Can we stay at home without feeling guilty, useless and strangely pained?"
Why Are Women More Often Depressed?
A simple answer would be: because we swallow our rage and because we are always full of feelings of guilt. From ancestral times, the Judeo-Christian tradition has defined us as the culprits in the perdition of humanity.
Depression is an emotional state that may involve different factors: a loss, for instance. Thousands upon thousands of women who have existed all their lives only for their husbands and children do not know, by the time they reach the age of forty or fifty, what it means to live for themselves, and they do not know what to do with their lives. The sacrifice formula did not work for them. They pursued no interests outside the family circle to avoid being called "selfish." Their children and husband no longer require their services. The tendency then is to react as they have done all their lives: they invalidate themselves, sinking into deep depression. It is the typical depression that stalks middle-aged women, who, free of their servitude to others, do not know what to do with lives that seem suddenly useless and hollow.
Furthermore, in order to be docile and charming, women spend their lives repressing their resentment and hostile impulses, since female anger and rage receive strong cultural censure. When they dare express them, they are usually invaded by feelings of guilt.
Each and every one of the ingredients that go into the elaboration of "female destiny" are capable of generating intense rage: lack of power, narrowing of the means of expression, dependence, passivity, sacrifice, servitude. Women tend to be depressed more often because they do not spit out their anger, and when they do they are left full of guilt. A depressed person is full of guilt and self-pity; their possibilities of feeling rage or of adopting aggressive attitudes against their environment are inhibited, and they tend to shut themselves up in their desperation and impotence. Women's role offers the perfect infrastructure, not only for ailments such as depression, but for all kinds of existential problems.
In the consulting room there is the opportunity to grasp objectively the political destruction and existential murders perpetrated by the ideological conditioning of women. In the consulting room one works with that grim "end product," that enslaved female being, indoctrinated to pledge herself to servitude, impotence and docility. And it is that moment of suffering and disquiet which takes women to the consulting room that we – feminist therapists - consider the moment of potential health, as it may open up the possibility of reflection and change, of vomiting forth the anger and turning it into liberating awareness and action. It is true that the female condition leads to sickness, but this suffering may often become revolutionary ferment if it is channeled well, so that sooner or later women may abandon the construction of the infrastructure of madness and silence.