Managing the Monstrous Feminine

Jane M Ussher is Professor of Women’s Health Psychology, and director of the Gender Culture and Health Research Unit: PsyHealth, at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. She is author and editor of a number of books, including The Psychology of the Female Body and Body Talk: Material and Discursive Regulation of Sexuality, Madness and Reproduction. Her current research focuses on women’s sexual and reproductive health, with particular emphasis on premenstrual experiences, and gendered issues in caring.

• Managing the Monstrous Feminine: Regulating the Reproductive Body. Mad, Bad, Bloody Women: The Shame of Menarche and Pathologizing of Premenstrual Change. Embodying the Grotesque Feminine: The Pregnant and Postnatal Body. The Horror of this Living Decay’: Menopause and Aging Body. Regulation and Resistance: Women's Negotiation of Embodied Subject Positions. Appendix One: Details of the Interviews with Women on PMS, PND and Widlife. Appendix Two: Details of Women Centred Psychological Therapy Package

'The book is thought provoking and represents an exciting advance in Jane Ussher’s scholarship over the past twenty years, initially expressed through her original and challenging accounts of the psychology of the female body and women’s madness. Overall there is an upbeat message for women and a rallying cry and inspiration to challenge the ‘patriarchal gaze’ and its impact on our mental and physical well-being.' - Paula Nicolson, Royal Holloway University of London, UK'This is a terrifically readable account of the wrongs done women by rendering ‘the fecund female body’ a site of meaningless, monstrous abjection. Together with ways of combating this with examples from Jane Ussher’s own personal life, as well as with examples from the visual arts, and from group and individual women’s re-telling of their experiences, Managing the Monstrous Feminine does much to render speakable the unspeakable, specifically regarding ‘PMS’.' - Janet Sayers, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK