Shame and Other Anxieties Associated with Breast‐Feeding: a Systems Theory and Psychodynamic Approach

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Abstract
It is easy to be over-simplistic about breast-feeding--what determines the choice of the breast; what causes rejection of breast-feeding as a feeding method; what determines success and what its failure? In fact, a bewildering range of factors, physical, psychological and sociological play a part. How can these be related to each other and ordered in general and for the individual? A general systems theory approach, in which the elements are envisaged as interacting dynamically, seems to offer a possible satisfactory explanatory model. Moving from social systems to the individual's intrapsychic system helps to understand the complexity of emotions aroused about the breast and breast-feeding. Shame and anxieties are seen to arise from the confluence of life history and current events. Intervention is necessary at many levels--societal, family and individual--if breast-feeding is to be re-established as the feeding method of first choice.