ABSTRACT
The challenges and options of menopause—the challenge is to deal with this developmental phase in an adaptive, creative, productive, positive way. The options are to develop a new, better integrated, better functioning, whole self, invested with increased self-esteem and capacity for new pleasures and a sense of freedom; as opposed to constriction, lower self-esteem, disintegration and regression, or depression and a sense of loss and injury. Some women react with more major emotional disturbances such as irritability, anger, paranoia, depression, even psychosis. The psychoanalytic literature in between ancient times and feminism, however, sparse as it is, tends to be a good deal less enthusiastic about the menopause and post-menopausal phase. Actually, Helene Deutsch conceptualized periods as biphasic, with puberty and pre-puberty, menopause and pre-menopause, which latter phase she postulated to start at age thirty, with anticipation of loss of femininity and aging.
