Control the body

If, as Foucault argued, modernity was the act of disciplining bodies, then Wolff’s migraine personality was discipline in its extreme—a pathological reaction to the corporeal demands of power. His subjects’ neatness and fastidiousness, he wrote, was exceeded only by their efficiency. People with migraine loved order and repetition, feared failure, and resented interruptions. They created elaborate “schemes, plans, and arrangements,” but “had great difficulty in complying with or adapting themselves to systems imposed on them by others.” The description of type A personalities varied depending on who had them. Women migraine patients who “worked” at home also wanted everything to be “just so,” but they had difficulty delegating even simple household tasks, like dishwashing, to housemaids.

Joanna Kempner in Not Tonight

This is how a 9 year old whose head won’t stop hurting gets sent to clinical progressive relaxation training