[Women: psychopathology and cultural malaise]

An account of the incidence of mental health and disease criteria in feminine psychopathology is presented as well as a consideration on the increasing medicalization and psychiatrization of women's demand for sanitary help. Symptoms should not be understood separately from the discontent relevant to the place femininity is given in society--hence women's subjective suffering. Observes Freud that, as a child bearer, a woman is more involved with sexual functions--thus placing her at the pulsional pole of culture which reduces a propitiatory space for sublimation processes. Correlatively, Freud sees women as victims of the worst social repression process: women being forbidden to think. Even though discontent, and psychic pain cannot be avoided inasmuch as civilization imposes certain restrictions necessarily, there is, however, an excess of pain related to the feminine position. No cure will be possible if women fail to restore their own place as subjects of their own desire, whose alienation is shown through symptoms.