title: Shame and other anxieties associated with breast-feeding: a systems theory and psychodynamic approach.
abstract: It is easy to be over-simplistic about breast-feeding--what determines the choice of the breast; what causes rejection of breast-feeding as a feeding method; what determines success and what its failure? In fact, a bewildering range of factors, physical, psychological and sociological play a part. How can these be related to each other and ordered in general and for the individual? A general systems theory approach, in which the elements are envisaged as interacting dynamically, seems to offer a possible satisfactory explanatory model. Moving from social systems to the individual's intrapsychic system helps to understand the complexity of emotions aroused about the breast and breast-feeding. Shame and anxieties are seen to arise from the confluence of life history and current events. Intervention is necessary at many levels--societal, family and individual--if breast-feeding is to be re-established as the feeding method of first choice.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001290:Attitude; D001903:Bottle Feeding; D001942:Breast Feeding; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology; D004644:Emotions; D005191:Family Characteristics; D005260:Female; D006791:Hostility; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007774:Lactation; D008425:Maternal Behavior; D008895:Milk, Human / Q000378:metabolism; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D011247:Pregnancy; D012752:Shame; D012931:Social Environment; D013597:Systems Analysis