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After class I was searching the New York Times achieves and found an article that interested me.  Initially, I did not think it pertained to class discussion but found it so fascinating that I decided to read it anyway.  The article was about a disorder called pseudocyesis.  According to the article, this rare phenomena causes women to display practically all but three symptoms of being pregnant.  The only symptoms not displayed are heart tones from the fetus, visual representation of the fetus on an ultrasound, and the actual delivery of the baby.  However, women have experienced cessation of their menstrual cycle, morning sickness, enlarged belly, cravings, enlarged and lactating breasts and some even test positive on pregnancy tests. 

Physicians and psychiatrists have suggested that a woman’s extreme desire to have a baby of her own, or even to play a larger role in another’s pregnancy, can cause these symptoms to arise.  Yet, others have established that there are a variety of emotions that might spark the phenomenon.  When I read this, it reminded me of the short comings of the spaghetti box model of the brain.  If “stimulus A” is the desire to have a baby and every time “A” is stimulated it results in “response A” which is developing pseudocyesis then why is this condition so rare?  If there were the case then I should have experienced pseudocyesis about 100000 times because every time I see a happy couple with their baby at Starbucks or in the park etc. I get the desire to have a baby ( but then I quickly wipe that thought out of mind!)…Anyway, you get the idea.  The stimulation of “A” CLEARLY does not always lead to “response A” or pseudocyesis.  Similarly, “stimulus B”, anxiety, has also been found to result in “response A”.   

At the end of this article, a doctor is quoted as saying, “The pituitary gland is located right at the base of the brain, and that’s where all the hormones come from” in pregnancy, he said. “This is one of the classic examples in medicine of how the mind affects the rest of the body.”  Although I may just be being picky, I think that the doctor used a poor choice of words.  Brain, would have been a much better word to convey the message that he was trying to get across because he is attempting to explain the body’s response ( or behavior ) to an influx of hormones in the BRAIN not the mind.  I suppose that if one believed in something called “mind” that it could be responsible for the desire of other emotion that triggers the brain to produce an improper amount of hormones, but that’s a very roundabout way of saying it and I doubt that anyone understands what I’m trying to say here (Ugh!).  I have more to say about this and how it related to class but I need to think about it a little more before I actually write.  I just wanted to throw this topic out there for discussion because I found it so bizarre and thought that many of you would be intrigued as well.

            And one last thought:  What is perception’s role in this phenomenon?  If people did not perceive the “pregnant” woman as being such, would she go through the 9 months of symptoms and try to deliver or would her feelings subside without positive reinforcement?