The Rorschach in gynecological suffering: Representations and complexes of card VI

The literature shows that women with gynecological problems suffer from psychosomatic alterations in their body image perception and from sexual distress. To our knowledge, these issues have thus far been analyzed separately and rarely through a projective method. The aim of this study is to analyze the role of body image and its relative weakness in gynecological pathology, through the Rorschach projective method. The clinical group consists of 66 women with an average age of 49 ± 17 years, patients of the Vulvology and Pap Testing clinic of the "Gaetano Martino" University Hospital of Messina. The Rorschach Inkblot Method was used to evaluate the subjects, in accordance with the clinical projective method, in order to explore the representations of the subjects’ inner world. The responses to the Rorschach cards show a prevalence of anatomical and sexual content, devitalized animals and objects, particularly present in response to card VI. In these subjects we observed a complex regarding reproduction that reveals a fragmentation of body image representation and of the sexual imaginative function of the inner world. Gynecological sexual suffering is a dimension that influences the symptomatology in so far as the psychological aspects profoundly affect bodily perceptions, weakening the self-image and altering the course of the disease.