Menstruation and Personality

Abstract

This investigation is concerned with the prevalence of dysmenorrhoea and premenstrual symptoms in the general population and with their relationship to personality.Many authors have expressed the opinion that such relationships exist, but we will confine our review here to those studies which have presented supporting data. Wittkower and Wilson (1940) studied 57 patients with primary dysmenorrhoea and found there was a history of childhood maladjustment four times as often in these patients as in a control group. They considered that patients with dysmenorrhoea could be classified into two main personality types: the first, “characterized by deep resentment of their feminine role”; the second, “obviously immature physically and either shy or shut-in or chronically anxious and complaintive”. Sainsbury (1960) observed a significantly raised neuroticism score on the Maudsley Personality Inventory for patients attending hospital for dysmenorrhoea. Such views as these are not universally held, and would certainly not be shared by many gynaecologists. Nor are they supported by the little evidence forthcoming from population studies.

MMPI Correlates of Menstrual Distress

“…The obtained symptom-scale scores were consistently higher than those reported for Moos' (1) standardization sample. This was not surprising, however, since Moos' subjects were older and nearly half had had children or were pregnant; there is evidence that symptom severity decreases with age and parity (1,8). In other respects the phase-related symptom patterns reported by our subjects generally parallel Moos' data, with the exception that negative affect symptoms (scale 6) were highest menstrually in the present study and highest premenstrually in Moos' sample.…”

“…There is also evidence that women who experience specific symptoms just before or during menstruation also tend to report the same symptoms, though to a lesser extent, during the intermenstrual phase of the cycle (1,8). This latter finding, while suggesting that certain menstrual symptoms may represent heightened expressions or exacerbations of prevailing intermenstrual personality patterns, also highlights the importance of taking into account the intermenstrual baseline in evaluating relationships between phase-related menstrual manifestations and personality.…”

Social and menstrual cycles: Methodological and substantive findings

“…While the above results weaken broad assumptions about pervasiveness of PMS, the lack of correlations between neuroticism and daily "unaware" self-reports, in the phase in which the reports are at their maximum, indicate that women who complain of physical symptoms during menstruation cannot be simply dismissed as neurotic (Coppen, 1963). Thus, if a woman is complaining of cramps during menstruation it is not psychologically the same as when she complains of cramps in the follicular phase.…”

The Magnitude of Premenstrual Anxiety and Depression

“…Some investigators (11,(29)(30)(31) have argued that premenstrual mood changes are a function of personal adjustment. The data obtained in this research do not support that view.…”