Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

MARRIAGEThe MenopauseThe menopause cannot fail to constitute a psychologicalepoch in marriage, even though its importance was formerlyexaggerated. Nowadays the pendulum has swungtowards the opposite extreme. Various medical womennow declare that the attribution of ailments to the climactericismerely an "obsession" and that they rarely finddue to this cause.any symptoms directlyYet we have here a phenomenon which cannot be withoutdirect psychological significance for the woman herselfand an indirect bearing on her family and social life.It marks the end of her reproductive phase just as pubertymarked its beginning.The menopause, climacteric,* or "change of life," as itis variously termed, is the involutional period of the reproductivesexual system, and occurs between wide limitsof age, 35 to 55, but most commonly between 45 to 50,and iscompleted within two 'or three years; it is said nowto occur on the average some five years later than wasthe average of half a century ago. It is associated withchanges in the functional activity of the endocrine glands,and also in the autonomic nervous system, with consequentemotional, vasomotor, and nervous symptoms, ofwhich palpitations and flushing are found specially unpleasantand are due not so much to heightened bloodpressure as to oscillations in that pressure. We are nothere called upon to consider the possible initial causesof these changes. Maran6n long since advocated a pluriglandulartheory of the menopause, fundamentally in theovaries, thyroid, and suprarenals, and secondarily in the*The menopause is sometimes distinguished from the climacteric,the former as the time when menstruation ceases, and the latter as thelater period of the cessation of ovulation.[317]