title: Depression in women. Psychoanalytic concepts.
abstract: I would now like to summarize the relationship between concepts about depression and formulations of feminine development and personality. What are women's vulnerabilities? 1. The particular vicissitudes of feminine development result in differences, in attachment and anxiety about loss of love and abandonment as part of the normal constellation of feminine personality. These derive, in part, from the difference in the process of separation-individuation and differentiation in women as compared with men. 2. The normal feminine personality includes responsiveness and/or dependency in relation to others and greater anxiety about loss of love. This sensitivity is important in the regulation of and fluctuations of self-esteem. 3. The pathways for development of aggression and its fate includes the powerful effect of social customs that prescribe passivity with consequent likelihood of helplessness and the relatively fewer pathways for activity and active mastery. 4. Problems of self-esteem, including those resulting from the recognition of aggression and also the development of an ego ideal that values sacrifice and service. Devaluation of the female body contributes. 5. Problems of identification with a devalued person as a woman--the mother--who is sometimes also depressed. 6. Sex-role stereotypes and life conditions that support devaluation, subservience, and helplessness and limit opportunities.
authors.affiliation: Cambridge Hospital, Massachusetts.
authors.forename: M T
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Notman
mesh_terms: D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005783:Gender Identity; D006801:Humans; D007062:Identification, Psychological; D010553:Personality Development; D011574:Psychoanalytic Theory; D012307:Risk Factors