Le corset de Procuste

An old notion of the 1980s is now resurfacing. Since the beginning of the year (2017) all the media are talking about it. Monique Haicault's notion of “mental stress” in 1984 was recently taken up by Nicole Brais of Laval University in Quebec to define the syndrome of modern women who must “think of everything”: this charge according to Brais is management, organization and planning that is both intangible, unavoidable and constant, and whose objective is the satisfaction of everyone's needs and the smooth running of the home. Our painful chronic patients have long been familiar with this insatiable constraint that drives them to do more and more. This article is inspired by the confidences they have made of us. The suggested idea is that the chronicity of pain offers precisely these women the benefit of escaping such an overload. Nevertheless, perhaps this is, in our view, the most important, it will be to hear how our patients, by becoming the main interpreters of their pains, ask essential questions about their femininity, especially those concerning the place and role of women in our contemporary society.