Mind-Body Therapy by David B. Cheek

Author:David B. Cheek
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Figure 12: Loci and function of some of the major sexual information substance-receptor systems in women.

Since women have many more obvious changes in the hormones of this mind-gene-molecular process, it is clear that the average male will be at a disadvantage in understanding them. No wonder Freud simply did not understand what they wanted. It would be all too easy to further stigmatize feminine consciousness with these psychobiological insights by citing them as evidence for the pejorative traits of changeability and indecisiveness in women. Because of unfortunate life experiences, some women could, in fact, come to mislabel themselves with such negative traits and then act them out as a self-fulfilling prophecy. With recognition of and support for their psychobiological experiences of change, however, these insights could lead women to the facilitation of the more desirable characteristics of creative flexibility and sensitivity to the emotional nuances of communication and relationship. The greater flexibility inherent in women’s more delicately balanced state-dependent memory, learning, and behavior systems may also enable them to recognize more easily the new that evolves spontaneously within all of us on unconscious levels (see Rossi, 1986d, for a striking and detailed example of this point).

PMS: Premenstrual Syndrome

The significance of the way in which we interpret the state-dependent shifts in women’s consciousness is especially apparent in the current controversies that are taking place about the so-called PMS — premenstrual syndrome. It is only recently that the mood and mentation shifts that occur as women approach their menses have been given the pathological label of PMS (Durden-Smith & Desimone, 1983; A. Rossi, 1980, 1984). An increasing number of professionals in health-related fields have decried this iatrogenic tendency to interpret a normal and potentially creative process of psychobiological transition in a negative and illness-engendering manner (Harrison, 1982; Laws, Hey, & Eagan, 1985; Mills, 1988; Parry, 1985; Rome, 1986; Rossi, 1986d).

These issues of correctly understanding a woman’s unique psychobiological qualities are especially critical during the periods of greatest change in her life–pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing. There is thus a special requirement made of doctors who specialize in the area of gynecology and obstetrics. As a male specialist in this area, Cheek rose to the challenge that most of his medical colleagues did not even know existed.

In the chapters of this and the following few sections that deal with the special issues raised by feminine consciousness, Cheek has pioneered many new attitudes and ideodynamic approaches to understanding. As such, his work has implications far beyond their obvious application to the professional problems of gynecology and obstetrics. It lays the groundwork for a fundamental widening of human consciousness about itself. The feminist movement, thus, has a great ally in the ideodynamic approach. Taken from this broad perspective, these therapeutic methods can be seen as prototypes for a host of new ideodynamic approaches to be developed by clinicians of the future.

The clearest model of the mind-gene communication loop involves the steroid hormones that regulate a variety of psychobiological rhythms. Three levels of this process are illustrated in Figure 12.

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