Menarca como trauma

Abstract

After considering female sexuality in general, the author points in the puberty crisis the menarche as a true «organizer», because of its relief as bodily experience and experience at a fantasy level. The author examine 22 cases of puberal adolescents admitted to a psychiatric hospital because of acute clinical symptoms occurring near the menarche. It is stressed as danger factors that may produce a traumatic menarche: its early appearance, a rejection of femininity (inverted Oedipus) and a dependent relationship to a mother-figure increased through a devalued or absent father figure.