women themselves toward this function; and almost
equally essential is a fundamental change in the habit of mind on
our part as physicians; for do we not tend to translate too much,
the whole of a woman's life into terms of menstruation? If every
young girl were taught that menstruation is not normally a "bad
time" and that pain or incapacity at that period is as
discreditable and unnecessary as bad breath due to decaying
teeth, we might almost look for a revolution in the physical life
of women.... In my experience the traditional treatment of rest
in bed, directing the attention solely to the sex-zone of the
body, and the accepted theory that it is an inevitable illness
while at the same time the mind is without occupation, produces a
morbid attitude and favors the development and exaggeration of
whatever symptoms there may be.[56]

[Footnote 56: Clelia Duel Mosher: _Health and the Woman Movement_, pp.
25, 26, 19.]

=Pre-Menstrual Discomfort.= If it be objected that women often feel
badly for a day or two before the period begins, before they know that
it is due, and that this feeling of discomfort could not be caused by
fear and expectation, it is easy to reply that the subconscious mind
knows perfectly what is happening within the body. The emotion of
fear, working within the subconscious, is able to translate all the
varying bodily sensations into feelings of distress without any
knowledge on the part of the conscious mind.

Sometimes before the period begins, a girl feels blue and upset for a
day or two, a sign that the instinct is getting discouraged. The whole
body is saying, "Get ready, get ready," but it has gotten ready many
times before, and to no purpose. Unsatisfied striving brings
discouragement. What reaches consciousness is a feeling of pessimism
and a general dissatisfaction with life as a whole. If, instead of
giving in to the blues or going to bed and predicting a pain, the girl
finds other outlets for her energy, she finds that after all, her
instinct may be satisfied in indirect ways and that she has strangely
come into a new supply of _vim_.

=The Purpose of the Pain.= Although suggestion is behind all nervous
symptoms, there is a deeper reason for the disturbance. When an
unhealthy suggestion is seized and acted upon, it is because some
unsatisfied part of the personality sees in it a chance for
accomplishing its own ends. The