Father Archetype Chatwin

EMBODIED LOVE:
HEALING THE FATHER WOUND THROUGH INDIVIDUATION
A dissertation submitted
by
JANET C. CHATWIN
to
PACIFICA GRADUATE INSTITUTE
in partial fulfillment o f
the requirements for the
degree o f
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
m
MYTHOLOGICAL STUDIES
with emphasis in
DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY
This dissertation has been

accepted for the faculty o f
Pacifica Graduate Institute by:
Walter Odajnyk, PhD

Dissertation Coordinator
C. SXrisAl M l.
Christine Downing, PhD '

Advisor
Lyn Cowan, PhD

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APRIL 11,2006
Copyright by
JANET C. CHATWIN
2006
11
ABSTRACT
Embodied Love: Healing the Father Wound Through Individuation
by
Janet C. Chatwin
C. G. Jung knew the importance o f examining one’s life. He believed that human
beings have an inborn drive towards self-knowledge and wholeness and he described this
tendency as the process o f individuation.
In this dissertation, I revisit Jung’s concept o f individuation and apply it
specifically to women who have been wounded by the father archetype. The father
archetype has two sides: it protects and guides, but it also rages and castrates. My
research looks at the various effects, such as idealization, depression, helplessness, anger,
passive-aggressiveness, victimization, and waiting for life to happen, that the negative or
out-of-balance father archetype has on the daughter. It also examines how this negative
archetype becomes part o f the daughter’s psyche as the negative father complex.
Further, I investigate the idea that the feeling function, which allows one to
experience life with meaning, is the same function that opens one to an experience o f the
divine in outer reality and in the body. I look at how difficult it is to incorporate a feeling
feminine perspective into the definition o f humanity in our patriarchal society.
The father daughter relationship is examined through the fairy tale o f The
Handless Maiden and the myth o f Electra. The handless maiden heals her father complex
by leaving her father’s house, withdrawing from worldly activity, and, after a good deal
of suffering, becoming herself. Electra, on the other hand, cannot resolve her father
iii
complex and find her authentic self. She remains trapped in her anger, idealization,
depression, and passive-aggressive behavior. We who have been wounded by a negative
father archetype have a choice either to stay victims o f patriarchy and our own
internalized tyrant, or to mature and take responsibility for our lives. Authenticity, voice,
and independence are gained as women find the courage to face their negative masculine
archetype.
In contrast to Electra, the ancient Sumerian goddess, Inanna, takes responsibility
for her journey towards wholeness. The myth of Inanna, when interpreted from a depth
psychological perspective, is relevant for women today. For, like Inanna, one must make
a descent into the depths to confront the hidden, repressed, and split-off aspects o f one’s
personality. An ego death is necessary to discover one’s authentic self and attain
wholeness; without the death o f the old, nothing new can be bom.
IV
I dedicate my dissertation to Troy James Chatwin and Kim Pederson.
Thank you to my committee members:
Christine Downing, Walter Odajnyk, and Lyn Cowan
and my Jung group:
Mary Mahler, Becky Christman, Dwight Holt, and John Shavers.
A special thanks to John Bjom Ostbo.
Table of Contents
Page Number
Title i
Copyright ii
Abstract iii
Dedications v
Chapter 1 Introduction, Review of Literatureand Organization 1
Introduction 1
Review of Literature 9
Organization of the Study 16
Chapter 2 Individuation: A Feminine Perspective 20
Chapter 3 The Father-Daughter Relationship 43
The Handless Maiden 47

The Myth of Electra 53
Chapter 4 Inanna 70
Inanna’s Stories 72
Inanna Lives 82
Chapter 5 The Maiden without Hands: An Individual Perspective 93
Chapter 6 Summary 101
Works Cited 106
Memoir: Frozen Imagination: My Journey from Literalism to Myth
vi
Chapter One
Introduction, Review o f Literature, and Organization
Introduction
I d o n ’t know that I d o n ’t know...

Then I know that I don't know...
Now I know what I didn't know.
— Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
How is it that, as human beings, we come to know? What prevents humankind
from undertaking the search for knowledge, understanding, and meaning? Is it because
the process is painful and the work difficult? What makes a life meaningful? Are we
afraid o f the answers?
Socrates believed that an unexamined life is not worth living. C. G. Jung also
knew the importance o f examining one’s life. He believed that in humans there is an
inborn drive toward consciousness, a quest for self-knowledge. “Everything in the
unconscious seeks outward manifestation, and the personality too desires to evolve out of
its unconscious condition and to experience itself as whole” {Memories 3). Jung calls this
process o f coming to consciousness and experiencing oneself as a whole individuation. In
The Creation o f Consciousness: J u n g ’s Myth fo r Modern Man, Edward Edinger describes
individuation as the process where by complexes and archetypal images make connection
with an ego. “This process has as its most characteristic feature the encounter o f
opposites, first experienced as the ego and the unconscious [ ... ].” (17-18). He states that
the “opposites are initially experienced as painful and paralyzing conflicts, but enduring
and working on such conflicts promote the creation o f consciousness” (31).
I see individuation as the lifelong journey o f becoming an authentic whole person.
On the journey toward wholeness it is necessary to explore one’s wounds. My intention
in this dissertation is to revisit Jung’s concept o f individuation and apply it specifically to
women who have been wounded by the father archetype. Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig
explains that the father archetype has two sides: “On one hand, father protects, educates,
guides, loves and cares. On the other hand, he rages, destroys, murders and castrates”
(25).
My research looks at the effects that the negative or out-of-balance father
archetype has on the daughter and how this unbalanced archetype becomes internally part
o f the daughter’s psyche, or father complex. The out-of-balance father archetype appears
to place a woman either with a more developed masculine psyche that imitates men and
is usually found functioning successfully in the workplace, or with a less developed
masculine psyche that keeps her believing that she is a victim, not in charge o f her own
life. A woman with a well developed masculine is sometimes called the “armored
Amazon” (Leonard 17). Marion Woodman, Sylvia Perera, Maureen Murdock, and others
use the term “father’s daughter” to describe the developed masculine in successful
women. Woodman writes, “Since a father’s daughter is a prime victim o f patriarchy, let
us begin there. Having been immersed in patriarchal standards, she values logic, order,
mind, spirit, goals” (Bridegroom 111).
I am not saying that masculine values are not necessary, but that they need to be
balanced with feminine values. Women can be logical, orderly, mindful, and spiritual and
achieve goals while living life deeply according to feminine values. Self-discovery or
individuation is impossible without balancing the masculine side o f the personality with
the feminine side.
In Jung’s topology, he defines the feeling function as a subjective process that
allows one to make value judgments. The feeling function helps one organize and decide
what is valuable. In “Definitions,” Jung says that “Valuation by feeling extends to every
content o f consciousness, of whatever kind it may be” (CW 6: 434; par. 725). Without
access to an interior knowing that discriminates between acceptance and rejection, one is
left in the hands o f other people to decide what is valuable.
Murdock states that a “father’s daughter is a women who identifies with her father
and imitates men in her pursuit o f success” (.Daughters xiv). She “yearns to be like her
father and to be liked by her father” (8). Nothing is wrong with pursuing success;
however, when women are unconscious they are imitating men’s values in pursuit of
success, they do not understand their motivations. Women want so much to please their
father that they lose awareness o f their own actions. Murdock continues that the father’s
daughter is usually the first born or an only daughter. (I happen to be both.) She is
captivated by her father’s perfection, idealizes him, and has difficulty seeing his flaws.
As a consequence o f being identified with her father, a woman may hand over her feeling
function to her father. She never learns to develop her own internal guidance system that
allows her to know what she wants and values. “Her feelings are neither explored nor
assuaged; she learns to hide them, feeling alone and isolated, or she pretends that nothing
hurts” (29). The father’s daughter has little identity o f her own or consciousness o f her
motivations.
Identifying with one’s father can also leave one without a developed masculine
psyche. This dissertation will focus primarily on the wound involving a less developed or
repressed masculine that keeps women feeling like victims, helpless, and dependent. Both
Gertrud Nelson and Robert Johnson have labeled these women “handless maidens.” They
explain how the wound heals when authority, self confidence, and independence are
found. My intent is to investigate the correlation between the inward resolution o f the
inner masculine wound or the repressed masculine psyche and the outward manifestation
o f stepping into one’s own authority and authenticity.
Both the “armored Amazon” and the “handless maiden” are cut off from their
feeling function, and without the feeling function there can be no experience o f any kind.
Jung believes that experience is everything. In “The Self,” he writes, “In psychology one
possesses nothing unless one has experienced it in reality. Hence a purely intellectual
insight is not enough, because one knows only the words and not the substance o f the
thing from inside” (C W 9ii: 33; par. 61).
In this dissertation I will investigate the idea that the feeling function that allows
one to make value judgments about our experiences— to know what is good for us and
what is harmful— is the same function that opens one to experiencing the divine in reality
and in the body. In Jung’s essay, “Answer to Job,” he states that, “God is reality itself
[. . . ].” (CW 11: 402: par. 631). As I struggled with believing in God, it was not until I
read Jung’s interpretation o f the Self and the God-image that the idea o f God began to
resonate with me. I now understand God to mean a higher power, creation, love, or as
»
Jung states, reality. Experiencing the divine in the body brings a sense o f awe that is
indescribable, yet we keep trying. There is a blending o f mind and body that produces an
inner sense o f security that no outside security can match. In “Spirit and Life,” Jung
writes, “Mind and body are presumably a pair o f opposites and, as such, the expression of
a single entity whose essential nature is not knowable either from its outward, material
manifestation or from inner, direct perception” (CW 8: 326; par.619). I agree with Jung
that the divine is a union o f opposites. The male and female in union is symbolic for all
uniting archetypal opposites: spirit/body, light/dark, conscious/unconscious, life/death,
good/bad, and outer/inner. It is the split between the archetypal opposites that keep
humans away from psychic balance, wholeness, the authentic self, and god, or the
process o f individuation. •
Usually on the journey towards psychological and spiritual wholeness there
occurs a turning inward, a “descent into hell” that can be called an underworld experience
or a “dark night o f the soul.” Every significant transitional period in life can be thought o f
as a descent into hell. At times, this journey is entered consciously, as in the descent o f
Inanna, the early Sumerian goddess, and in that o f the handless maiden from the Grimm
Brother’s fairy tale, but usually the journey into hell occurs after a traumatic experience,
such as a life threatening illness or the death o f a loved one, as it did for Electra in Greek
mythology, after the murder of her father. V. Walter Odajnyk also points out that this
journey “varies greatly in intensity and length: some people pass through it in a flash;
others experience it as a balm, as cool and restful when compared to their former life’s
exertions; while still others are tormented and sick at heart, on and off, for years” (59).
My journey into hell began with the death o f my brother in 1978 and seemed to last a
lifetime. Although I was not aware o f it at the time, this was the turning point in my life
that gave me the opportunity to shift my focus inward as I began the search towards
knowing myself. “Without self-knowledge, that is to say, a feeling self-recognition, a
moral consciousness, only injury to self or others can result” (Hollis, Gods 47).
6
In the search for herself, Inanna leaves her earthly world to descend into the
underworld to find her sister Ereshkigal. Innana, Queen o f heaven and earth, passes
through seven gates and at each gate leaves behind one o f her royal belongings: crown,
small lapis beads, double strand o f beads, breastplate, gold ring, lapis measuring rod and
line, and royal robe. Inanna gives “up all she had accomplished in life until she [is]
stripped naked, with nothing remaining but her will to be reborn” (Wolkstein & Kramer
xvi). Stripped naked, Inanna sees her shadow, all the characteristics that she does not
want to see or claim, for the first time when she looks into her sister Ereshkigal’s eyes.
The handless maiden also makes the decision to leave the house o f her father and
enter the forest alone, even without her hands. Her father chops off his daughter’s hands
to protect him self from the wizard or the devil from taking him away. Even though her
father promises to take care o f her forever, she chooses to leave her father’s protection
and enter the forest in search for herself. She meets a kind king who marries her, and
makes her a beautiful pair of silver hands. However, in order to give birth to herself, the
maiden with silver hands needs to leave her husband’s house as well. She eventually
heals when she learns to do for herself with her own hands.
While Inanna and the handless maiden consciously set out to discover more about
themselves by entering the unknown, Electra, on the other hand, did not choose a journey
into the underworld, but was forced there by the murder of her father, King Agamemnon.
In Sophocles’ tragedy Electra, she is engulfed in psychological devastation that keeps her
in continual mourning for her father. He had sacrificed his older daughter Iphigenia
(Electra’s sister), in order to win the Trojan War. Upon his return home his wife
Clytemnestra (Electra’s mother), and her lover, Aegisthus, murder Agamemnon. Electra
7
cannot mourn her father’s death because she is consumed with hatred and vengeance
toward her mother. She refuses to cease from formal lamentation. It is not until her
brother, Orestes, comes home and kills their mother, Clytemnestra, that Electra feels
avenged for the death o f her father.
In this study, I will allow the ancient myths of Inanna and Electra as well as the
fairy tale o f The Handless Maiden to live again in order to become contemporary for
women today, in keeping with James Hillman’s idea that “psychology shows myths in
modem dress and myths show our depth psychology in ancient dress” (Oedipus
Variations 90). I hope that by re-visioning these myths and this fairy tale from a depth
psychological perspective, my understanding o f my own father complex will increase,
and that my research and writing will be relevant to other women as well. Only after I
faced my father and quit working for him, after sixteen years, did I begin to discover my
own independence and authority. However, the internal critical father that is part o f my
psyche continues to live within me. My inner father was more critical and demanding
than my personal father. The main reason for revisiting and re-visioning this material is
to continue and deepen my understanding o f the father wound as it relates to me
personally as well as the father archetype that relates to all women. Joseph Coppin and
Elizabeth Nelson write in their book, The Art o f Inquiry, “Examination, or inquiry, is
essential to a meaningful human life” (16).
The process o f individuation, which includes a relationship with aspects o f the
unconscious, usually begins with a journey into the underworld where something must
die so something new can live, as in the stories about Inanna and the handless maiden.
Without suffering change, giving up something in order to attain something else, there
can be no individuation, as seen in Electra who is stuck in her grief. Without the death of
the old, nothing new can be bom. My dissertation explores the psychological depths o f
hell and heights of heaven, and the journey of individuation that brings them together to
heal the father wound.
By remembering and writing my memoir I hope to have validated my experiences
o f hell and the divine in my process o f individuating and to help others acknowledge and
work through similar experiences. My writing is designed to be a ritual to bring closure. I
know my complexes will not go away, but they can become manageable when I am
aware o f them. Reading, writing, and speaking have always been difficult for me and it
was not until I was teaching second grade that I discovered I am dyslexic. Instead o f
letting it be an obstacle, as I move through my feelings o f inadequacy, I am hoping to use
this learning disability as a stepping stone, by taking the responsibility to develop my
writing skills. If the cure is in the wound, what better way to heal the wound o f dyslexia
than to write a memoir?
I hope eventually to use my knowledge about myths and the father wound to hold
workshops at my cabin in the mountains o f Salt Lake City. The wounded healer comes to
mind. In my journey of individuation, it is important for me to express my understanding
o f this process so that I can explain my experiences to others.
Review o f Literature
C. G. Jung’s depth psychology, in combination with the archetypal and feminine
perspectives, is the basis o f the approach in this dissertation. Jung’s work is reviewed,
along with that o f many authors who continue to explain, and sometimes question his
perspective. I tend to agree with James Hollis’s reasons for being drawn to Jungian
thought: “First, it is an attitude toward, and methodology for, working with the soul; and
second, it helps me make sense o f my life” (Gods 131). I am also drawn to Jung’s work
because o f his focus on the importance o f the divine. What Jung calls the process o f
individuation, coming into balance psychically, is actually, I have come to believe, a
knowing o f the divine.
James Hillman, in his book Re-visioning Psychology, believes that the main
purpose o f life is to make soul, and that soul-making is about revealing the continued
presence and activity o f the Gods in this pluralistic universe. He uses the term
psychologizing to explain how “seeing-through” or seeing mythically helps one to
understand and imagine human problems more deeply. Psychologizing allows one to see
the literal historical perspective and the fictional, metaphorical perspective
simultaneously— the outer focused ego and the inner Self as parts o f the whole human
and the negative and positive aspects o f all archetypes. Both the personal and archetypal
complexes o f wounded women need to be brought into consciousness so they can be
transformed. Hillman’s concept o f “seeing-through” allows one to see both the literal
father as well as the universal archetype o f the “paternal.”
Robert Johnson, with his clear language, has been vital in allowing me access into
the field of depth psychology. He explains feminine and masculine psychology through
myths and discusses how the feminine and masculine as archetypes live in both males
and females. In The Fisher King and the Flandless Maiden: Understanding the Wounded
Feeling Function in Masculine and Feminine Psychology, Johnson tells two stories to
explain and show how the wounded feeling function, our inability to find joy, worth, and
meaning in life, is so common in our American culture that hardly anyone understands
10
that it is a problem. In writing about the fairy tale o f The Handless Maiden he explains
women’s frustrations and describes the tension and miscommunication between men and
women. I will investigate the fairy tale o f The Handless Maiden because it is my story as
well as that o f many women living today.
Edward Edinger’s books are important in helping us to understand Jungian
psychology. In Ego and Archetype he explains the individual’s journey toward
psychological wholeness as the process o f individuation. He believes that encountering
the Self is the same as discovering God. Encountering the Self is a process that changes
people’s perspective o f the world and allows them to live a more meaningful life. In the
Creation o f Consciousness: J u n g ’s Myth fo r Modern Man, he brings together the
scientific pursuit o f knowledge (Logos) and the religious search for meaning (Eros) in a
“linked knowledge” (58). My hypothesis is that such a combined embodiment o f the
divine heals the wounded masculine in women.
In From the Wrong Side: A Paradoxical Approach to Psychology, Adolf
Guggenbuhl-Craig attempts to grasp the ungraspable understanding o f the soul. In his
search for understanding he always tries to illuminate the other side. He states that the
most important realization in his life has been that nothing is what it seems. Appearances
are deceptive and at the same time, just as true as what hides behind them.
Guggenbuhl-Craig believes what Jung supposedly said, “A psychological truth is only
true when the opposite is also true” (iii).
James Hollis, in his book, Tracking the Gods, illustrates how myths reflect the
archetypal roots o f one’s personal psychology and explains how ancient drives influence
and sometimes dominate one’s behavior. He shows how myths take one into the psychic
reservoirs o f humanity that provide a vital linkage to meaning, and how they connect one
to one’s own nature. Hollis explains that the wounds o f the first generation hurt the
second, and that this pattern continues until someone suffers enough to come to
consciousness and break the chain. If I had to choose one book to explain my own growth
and the process of breaking the chain o f unconsciousness in my family, it would be this
book. In another one o f his books, The Archetypal Imagination, Hollis argues that
without the human m ind’s ability to form energy-filled images that link us to worlds
beyond our rational and emotional capacities, we would have neither culture nor
spirituality.
In The Religious Function o f the Psyche, Lionel Corbett argues that one’s spiritual
practice becomes inseparable from one’s own psychological difficulties, and that
numinous experiences are the archetypes attempting to enter the wounded personality for
the purpose of restructuring and healing. He states that “every religious system has a
different view o f divinity. There is no single, agreed-upon God, only different
experiences and concepts o f God or o f ultimate reality” (3).
Corbett also writes about people who are developmentally pre-symbolic and do
not benefit from extracting meaning out o f a symbol. They might understand the meaning
o f a symbol, but their intra-psychic structure does not allow them to use the meaning
(175). His perspective shows how in the process o f individuation the discovery o f the
divine is intertwined with the understanding o f symbol, myth, and metaphor.
Karen Homey, a psychoanalytic pioneer, questions some o f Freud’s
formulations o f psychosexual development, particularly in relation to women. She
considers the notion that penis envy might have roots in male envy o f the female.
12
In her book, Feminine Psychology, she draws on her experience as a therapist
while continuing to evaluate psychological factors within the context o f cultural
forces.
In Thinking Through the Body, Jane Gallop states that it is wrong to view
women’s sexual development through phallocentric thinking that leaves women
feeling abnormal in their sexual responses. She sees women not as “less than
man,” not inferior castrated men, but as different. Gallop describes a new way of
being for both males and females that will rearrange the repetition o f sameness in
sexual hierarchies and move into a communication and understanding that
embraces differences.
Jean Baker Miller, in Toward a New Psychology o f Women, sets out to
recognize, redefine and understand the experience o f women and how the mental
and emotional lives o f individual women reflect the social and political system.
She reflects on the enormous progress of women in some areas and the challenges
still to be met.
Embodied Love: Sensuality and Relationship as Feminist Values, edited by Paula
M. Cooey, Sharon A. Farmer, and Mary Ellen Ross, is a collection o f essays that agree on
the centrality of embodiment and relations in feminist theory. “All three authors suggest
that embodiment is a necessary component o f communication, and that the
disembodiment and decontextualization o f words and ideas can both obscure
communication and lead to dangerous dogma” (6). Without moving women’s position of
subordination into a central location they cannot take part in defining the human norm.
There is a need to incorporate women’s perspectives into the definition o f humanity.
The work o f Marion Woodman, a Jungian analyst, is enormously helpful for
women in understanding the concept o f individuation. In Leaving My F ather’s House: A
Journey to Conscious Femininity, she presents the journeys o f three women towards
inner wholeness and balance. Woodman provides insight into the process required to
bring conscious femininity into a patriarchal culture. In The Ravaged Bridegroom:
Masculinity in Women, she explores the psychological impact of patriarchy. Woodman
focuses on the ways in which a woman’s perspective o f herself can be undermined by a
crippling relationship with her inner man that leaves her unable to stand to her own truth.
She offers hope by unveiling the creative potential inherent in partnership with revitalized
masculinity.
In Fathers ’ Daughters: Transforming the Father-Daughter Relationship,
Maureen Murdock explores the complex relationship a woman has with her personal
father. In order to keep his approval, protection, and love, she often distances herself
from her mother and rejects her own feminine nature. When a daughter identifies with
her father it affects all o f her other relationships. In The H eroine’s Journey : Women’s
Quest fo r Wholeness, Murdock revisions the hero’s journey as the female journey toward
the goddess, and uses this heroine’s journey as a map o f the feminine healing process.
She explains how the unbalanced masculine in women is destructive and critical. It
demands perfection, control, and domination and can only be balanced by the nurturing
feminine.
Gertrud Mueller Nelson, in her book, Here All Dwell Free, discusses how the
wisdom o f folk mythology offers a diagnosis o f human ills and the prescription being
sought for healing the undervalued feminine in society. In the Grimm brothers’ fairy tale
14
“The Handless Maiden,” the daughter is sacrificed to preserve her father’s material,
mechanical world in an act that epitomizes passivity, dependence, and helplessness.
Nelson demonstrates how this helplessness reflects in modem women as they struggle to
free and heal the feminine within their own personalities. She shows how the inner and
outer synthesis o f masculine and feminine polarities will redeem the whole kingdom so
that all can live free.
Linda Schierse Leonard’s The Wounded Women: Healing the Father-Daughter
Relationship describes how fathers who are wounded in their own psychological
development are not able to give their daughters the love and guidance they need. She
explains that inheriting this wound can leave the daughter impaired sexually, socially,
intellectually and professionally. Leonard’s “Eternal Girl” is similar to “The Handless
Maiden.” She tells how it is possible to heal the relationship between the sexes, and
between fathers and daughters, by understanding the father-daughter wound and
transforming it psychologically.
In Daughters o f Saturn: From F ather’s Daughter to Creative Women, Patricia
Reis explores various aspects o f the father-daughter relationship while focusing on the
father’s effect on a woman’s creative life. Beginning with the archetypal father Saturn
who silences his daughters by swallowing them, and moving through myth, dreams, and
the battlezone o f culture, Reis shows how women begin to discover how to name their
experience. Women explore the wildzone to move their way out o f patriarchal
prescriptions and to return to who they are as they discover the possibilities o f who they
are becoming.
Polly Young-Eisendrath and Florence Wiedemann, in their book, Female
Authority: Empowering Women Through Psychotherapy, emphasize women’s lack of
belief in themselves. The authors break the tradition o f looking at women in terms o f
what is wrong with them and instead look at them in terms of what is strong and
satisfying in their lives. The authors re-vision the female self through the theoretical
frameworks o f C. G. Jung and Jane Loevinger.
Sylvia Perera’s book, The Descent to the Goddess: a Way o f Initiation fo r
Women, explores women’s need for freedom and inner female authority in a masculine-
oriented society. Perera interprets the journey o f Inanna-Ishtar, Goddess o f Heaven and
Earth, into the underworld to see Ereshkigal, her dark sister, as illuminations that a
modem woman needs to descend from her one-sided souly-adapted self into the depths of
her instinctive and archetypal life to find the goddess that will help in restoring her to
wholeness.
In Electra: Tracing a Feminine Myth through the Western Imagination, Nancy
Cater looks at the ancient Electra myth from the perspective o f Jungian psychology. She
shows how Electra is stuck in unresolved parental complexes. The complex o f Electra
keeps women eternal maidens, caught in idealization, anger, depression, and passive
aggressive behavior. They are victims who have difficulty in their relationships with men
as they wait for life to happen. Cater’s interpretation o f the Electra myth can help women
caught in the Electra complex to understand their lives better as they discover their
pattern o f behavior.
In Dark Wood to White Rose: Journey and Transformation in D ante’s Divine
Comedy, Helen Luke takes the reader on a spiritual and symbolic journey. Beginning
with the dark wood, which one must go through to find the path that leads one to the
white rose o f joy and regeneration. Dante’s journey is our journey as we travel towards
consciousness and wholeness after letting go o f old attitudes and superficial desires.
Through choice, responsibility, and real attention, a transformation can result that allows
for a deeper way of living.
Organization o f the Study
Chapter Two revisits Jung’s theory o f individuation, the journey to wholeness,
from a feminine perspective. Emphasis is placed on the central importance o f the
embodiment o f the feeling function. James Hollis states that “to be out o f touch with
one’s feelings is to be separated from a powerful internal guidance mechanism which
offers a continuous commentary on the course o f our lives and invites behaviors
appropriate to those evaluations” (Archetypal 104). Without experiencing embodiment
there is a separation from one’s feelings where inner truth is felt and known through the
body. Experiencing the feeling function allows one to make a judgment on what is
valuable. When separated from the body, one has difficulty in knowing what is valuable
as well as in relating with others. In Jung’s essay, “Women in Europe,” he explains,
“W oman’s psychology is founded on the principle o f Eros, the great binder and loosener,
whereas from ancient times the ruling principle ascribed to man is Logos. The concept of
Eros could be expressed in modem terms as psychic relatedness, and that o f Logos as
objective interest” (CW 10: 123; par. 255).
I understand firsthand the emptiness and loneliness of not being in my body,
separated from my feelings as well as from my connection to Eros. I was trapped in the
belief that I was unlovable. Separation from my body prevented me from accessing my
soul, my authentic self, my god-image, and left me feeling that I did not belong. I
continue to hear David W hyte’s words from his audio cassettes, Clear M ind Wild Heart:
Finding Courage and Clarity through Poetry, “I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.” I felt abandoned and did even know it because of my enmeshment with my
family. Security came from belonging to my family, instead o f from myself. I was not
only separated from the Eros principle that allows connection, but from my feeling
function that allows one to make value decisions as well. I actually had difficulty in
knowing what was good for me and what was not. My father did all the thinking and
decision making for the entire family. We adapted ourselves to his wishes and believed
them to be our true nature.
A patriarchal society of thinkers that values logic, power, and product does not
value the feminine related feeling side o f the personality. When the process of
individuation is only analyzed, written, and thought about, embodiment and experience
are missing. Robert Johnson and many o f the female authors reviewed above explain how
difficult it is to understand the meaning o f a feminine perspective because our society has
been dominated by the patriarchy for so long.
Chapter Three will revisit the father-daughter relationship to explore why and
how the negative father archetype becomes a father complex. The Electra and The
Handless Maiden stories will be revisited and re-visioned to allow for modem ways o f
understanding this problem. This chapter will explore images o f bondage that keep
women silenced and dependent, and the process that allows women to discover new
images that give them voice and independence.
18
Chapter Four will examine the descent into the underworld as a metaphor for the
process of individuation. The ancient myth o f Inanna will be deconstructed and
reconstructed to make it relevant for women living in the twenty first century.
Psychological descents will be viewed as a dying o f something so something else can
live. The relevance o f mourning will be examined as it functions in a society that prefers
to deny and repress death.
Chapter Five will comprise a personal interpretation o f the Flandless Maiden.
Chapter Six will be the summary.
My memoir, presented as a separate document, is titled: Frozen Imagination: My
Journey from Literalism to Myth. Why a memoir? I believe that there are many reasons to
write a memoir. Some of them are discovered in the process, but what I knew from the
outset is that telling my story would give me voice, identity, and will provide meaning.
The silencing o f women that began long before I was born is now demanding attention.
The more women find their voices, the easier it will be for women in the generations to
come to discover and not lose theirs. “In the silencing o f our mothers’ lives and our own,
we lose identity. It has been a gradual process for women to discover their voice”
(Murdock, Truth 33). As I continue my search for myself, I am hoping that the unlived
parts o f my life will begin to revive and come together through the writing o f my
memoir. I agree with Patricia Hampl, “Our capacity to move forward as developing
beings rests on a healthy relation with the past” (33).
I wanted to explain how my life changed as I began to let go o f literalism and to
see mythically. My continual revision o f my story affects my perspective as well as my
behavior. As I revision myself and my story, I am beginning to believe in myself and step
19
into my own authority. My negative father wound imprisoned me and kept me away from
the belief that I was a creative human being. My identification with my personal father
prevented me from connecting to myself, to others, as well as to the natural world. My
inner masculine critic kept me separated from my own feminine nature. The story o f
“The Handless Maiden” explains my own life as dependent and helpless, a description
shared with many women world-wide. In the fairy tale there also lies the prescription for
healing and for stepping into one’s own authority. My image and sense o f bondage has
transformed into a love o f life that I experience as freedom.
Patricia Hampl writes that the real job o f writing a memoir is to seek congruence
between stored image and hidden emotion, and to create a place where they can live
together (29-30). Bringing the image and emotion together heals not only the person
writing the memoir, but the ancestors who went before and the generations yet to come.
20
Chapter Two
Individuation: A Feminine Perspective
Approaching Jung’s concept o f individuation from a feminine perspective
represents a challenge from the beginning. Psychoanalysis was invented by Freud and its
theory was formulated from a male point o f view, as was Jung’s Analytical Psychology.
However, I will examine how the process o f individuation for women takes shape after
one sees and understands the problem o f a male-dominated society. “Our whole
civilization is a masculine civilization. The State, the laws, morality, religion, and the
sciences are the creation o f men” (Horney 55). Unconsciously women have adapted
themselves to male desires. Understanding patriarchy on an intimate level and integrating
the information begins the discovery o f one’s own authority. When Jungian and post-
Jungian theory is only known in the “head” and not experienced, individuation is
impossible. Individuation is an experience.
Women and men have lived in a patriarchal society for so long that it is difficult
for them to imagine society functioning or being perceived any other way. “M en’s
interpretation of the world defines and directs us all, tells us what is the nature o f human
nature” (Miller 70). Using their own perspectives, “men have constructed the prevailing
theories, written history, and set values that have become the guiding principles for men
and women alike” (Belenky 5).
In Dismantling the Animus, Lyn Cowan writes that “[bjecause our culture is a
patriarchy, a women’s experience o f ‘the masculine’ cannot be simply the reverse o f a
man’s experience o f ‘the feminine.’ ” (58). Jung took his concept o f the anima, the inner,
unconscious feminine or soul o f man, and applied a mirror-image o f it to describe the
inner, unconscious masculine or mind o f women in his animus theory. Jung discovered
21
the already-present masculine aspect o f the female psyche and called it “animus.” Cowan
explains, “When Jung describes the animus as ‘the man, who is her mind,’ he steals her
mind and right to a mind, and hands it over to ‘the m an.’ ” (40).
Cowan continues that according to animus theory, a woman’s thinking is not her
own and she has no mind of her own. The concept o f animus makes it impossible for a
woman not to be “animus-possessed” because she is either too full or too empty of
“him.” If a female is playing the role that she is encouraged to play, that o f a weak,
seductive female, she is viewed as too empty o f “him.” If she has a strong ego and a
sense o f her own abilities and desires, she is too full o f “him” and seen as arrogant and
aggressive. Either way, her animus is seen as negative. “Western civilization and culture
is the world of animus-image seen from the perspective o f the animus archetype. Man
contemplating man. This is no place for a woman” (59).
Karen Homey explains the situation:
Like all sciences and all valuations, the psychology o f women has hitherto
been considered only from the point o f view o f men [ ... ]. An additional
and very important factor in the situation is that women have adapted
themselves to the wishes o f men and felt as if their adaptation were their
true nature. That is, they see or saw themselves in the way that their m en’s
wishes demanded o f them; unconsciously they yielded to the suggestion of
masculine thought.
If we are clear about the extent to which all our being, thinking,
and doing conform to these masculine standards, we can see how difficult
it is for the individual man and also for the individual woman really to
shake off this mode o f thought. (56-7)
Marion Woodman states that “ [t]he unconscious dynamics that keep the feminine
a prisoner o f patriarchy are in the marrow o f our bones” (.Bridegroom 11). Society has
been under masculine domination for so long that it does not know the damage that has
been caused to the feminine side o f the personality, in both men and women. The male
22
point of view has split, repressed, ignored, and demonized the feminine for thousands o f
years. Robert Johnson writes that we are not “fully awake to how much the masculine
pursuit o f power, production, prestige, and ‘accomplishment’ impoverishes us and drives
the feminine values out o f our lives” (We 21). Stating the problem directly allows us to
understand the complexity o f oppression o f the feminine by our patriarchal society.
Patricia Reis describes patriarchal thought as “male-centered, hierarchical, with
male experience used as the norm and standard” (183). She explains that patriarchal
thought is premised on dualism and separation and that it is objective, scientific, and
emotionless. Patriarchy’s tendency to view people as objects prevents any movement
towards a subjective, feeling, feminine perspective. As Woodman puts it, “If as daughters
our umbilical cord is connected to male values (our father’s or mother’s or both), then in
adult life we think our very survival depends upon obeisance to patriarchal standards”
(House 12). She continues, “Unconsciously, we are driven to fulfill expectations that may
have little to do with who we are” (12). Discovering who we are is not encouraged in
patriarchy; in fact, it threatens patriarchy and like the ego, patriarchy will defend itself to
its death. It is not only women who suffer from patriarchy, but men as well, Johnson says,
for when the world is perceived from a logical masculine perspective it “so easily
silences inner feeling. Many times a day one gives up some feeling value in exchange for
an outer advantage” (Maiden 60). Both males and females lose without access to their
feelings.
Polly Young-Eisendrath and Florence Wiedemann argue that patriarchal
reasoning about women is misleading:
Much current psychological reasoning about women is founded on

androcentric thinking. Androcentrism, or seeing the world from the male
23
perspective, results in mistaken assumptions and misleading questions

about women. When we make assumptions about women based on men’s
experience o f themselves or their relationships with women, we are
reasoning androcentrically. Making inferences about women based on
essentially male standards results in evaluating women through the wrong
categories, usually in terms o f how they are deficient or lacking in a
quality or attitude that men value. (4)
A deficit model describes women “as fearing success, lacking assertiveness and
being emotionally immature and morally inferior” (3). From a male point o f view,
women appear not to be strong, nor to have developed characteristics that males view
important. Males are socialized to identify with authority, while females are socialized to
identify with their relationships to men. Patriarchy socializes a woman to believe that she
gains authority, self-esteem and worth from male reflections. “Her concept o f femininity
is a man’s notion o f what is feminine, and her self-esteem is dependent on men’s smiles
o f approval” (Woodman, Bridegroom 112). A masculine perspective misses the value of
women altogether.
Instead o f viewing women as non-masculine or by what is lacking in them,
Young-Eisendrath and Wiedemann propose a non-deficit model. They view women in
terms o f their strengths and what is satisfying in their lives. The non-rational modes of
emotional expressions and feminine intuition that are often ignored by men now become
the lens o f perception. The world and its people are not viewed from a logical thinking,
external viewpoint but rather from a relationship feeling, inner viewpoint. An inner
viewpoint looks at women in relation to the strengths o f the feminine: relationship,
emotional expressiveness, and concern for beauty.
The ability o f a woman to validate her own conviction o f truth, beauty,

and goodness in regard to her self-concept and self-interest is what we call
fem ale authority. Body image, self-confidence, personal agency, social
24
functioning, occupational functioning, sexual pleasure, and subjective self-

assessment are all related to female authority. (8)
When a woman finds her own authority she discovers her own needs, values, and
significance, she begins to see through her own feminine perception. “Personal authority
is the ability to validate one’s own thoughts and actions as good and true” (1).
Another deficit perception is found in Freud’s castration complex as it applies to
women. Briefly, as it applies to males, the Oedipus complex is the fantasy desire o f the
son to have sex with his mother and to murder his father. The son then fears castration
from the father as punishment for his love for his mother. The Oedipus complex is
repressed or destroyed by threats o f castration. Freud divided the sex life o f males into
three periods: infancy, latency, and puberty which then leads to mature sexual
intercourse. The infantile period is subdivided into the oral, anal, and phallic phases and
culminates in the Oedipus complex. In “The Dissolution o f the Oedipus Complex,” Freud
explains that the “phallic phase, which is contemporaneous with the Oedipus complex,
does not develop further to the definitive genital organization, but is submerged, and is
succeeded by the latency period” (Reader 662). The latency period begins with resolution
o f the Oedipus complex, between the ages o f seven and twelve. The latency period
interrupts the boy’s sexual development. When adults do not approve o f little boys
manipulating their genitals there is implied threat that they will be taken away. Boys
imagine that there is a real possibility o f castration when they notice that girls do not have
penises.
In girls there is no motive for destruction o f the Oedipus complex because
castration has already been carried out. “Her castration complex— envy for the penis—
leads up to her Oedipus complex; the Oedipus complex is never given up in as absolute a
way as is the boys” (Chodorow 7). Freud states when little girls notice that little boys
have a penis, they see “it as the superior counterpart o f their own small and
inconspicuous organ, and from that time forward fall a victim to envy for the penis”
(673), and after “a woman has become aware o f the wound to her narcissism, she
develops, like a scar, a sense of inferiority” (674). Freud assumes that girls want a penis
and see their own genitals as unsatisfactory. The castration complex, as it applies to
women, is centered in Freud’s idea of penis envy. Fie explains female sexual
development in relation to male norms and from a masculine point o f view. “Hence,
woman as manifest subject becomes, possibly, a latent projection o f man” (Chodorow
28).
Freud’s male-oriented theory o f the penis envy led Karen Homey, a
psychoanalytic pioneer, to consider the notion that the penis envy concept has its roots in
male envy o f the female. After Horney began to analyze men she was surprised to find
that males have an intense “envy o f pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood” (60). She
proposes that male womb envy, or envy o f the ability to bear new life within one’s own
body, is more basic than female penis envy. Homey considers the possibility that the
concept o f penis envy is an attempt to deny and detract from male fear and envy of
women and that from the biological point of view there is no question that the female is
physiologically superior. Men have feared the mysteries o f women throughout history
and may deny their fear “by love and adoration and defend themselves from it by
conquering, debasing, and diminishing the self-respect o f women” (20).
Homey explains how the biological envy o f pregnancy, childbirth, and
motherhood might have turned to a social struggle where motherhood became a
26
handicap. “ [W]e are accustomed without more ado to construe the woman’s sense of
being at a disadvantage socially as the rationalization o f her penis envy” (60). Male
evaluation o f the penis might be more about an inferiority complex-based reaction
formation, which led men to create patriarchy. Homey asks, “Is not the tremendous
strength in men o f the impulse to creative work in every field precisely due to their
feeling o f playing a relatively small part in the creation o f living being, which constantly
impels them to an overcompensation in achievements?” (61). Is what a woman wants the
social power that having a penis would give her, not a penis?
Jane Gallop finds that what is wrong with the old theories that come from
a masculine perspective is that women are made to feel that something is
abnormal about their own individual sexual responses. Women are told how they
should feel rather than having asked how they feel. In Freud’s phallic phase the
female genital is never discovered; it is viewed as not there (castrated). When the
clitoris is compared to the penis, it is through a masculine perspective that ignores
a feminine perspective. In blunt language, Gallop states, “In phallo-logic, the
female genital is either a clitoris, phallic-same, or a vagina, phallic-opposite,
receptacle, castrated hole” (96). The masculine perspective splits the feminine
with an “either/or” mindset, rather than an inclusive “and or/and both” perspective
that accepts differences. Women do not have penises and the only problem is not
accepting that they do not.
If one uses Polly Young-Eisendrath’s and Florence W iedemann’s non-masculine,
non-deficit model to look at the castration complex in women, women would be
evaluated by what is inherently good about them rather than by what is lacking in them,
27
or as castrated men. From this viewpoint, the nurturing aspect o f women and her ability
to conceive and give birth are valued; motherhood is not considered a handicap.
In a male-led society, a group, such as women, that is considered different is
defined as inferior and the superiors tend to label that group as defective. Those labeled
inferior have a lack o f belief in their own ability; it takes a drastic event to change this
belief. Jean Baker Miller states that when a society values what men do as more
important than what women do, women feel that men have something they do not; this
attitude can be interpreted as penis envy (76). When women are held in a position
subordinate to men their development ceases and their process o f individuation is stalled.
“Authenticity and subordination are totally incompatible” (98). If a woman is to
individuate into her authentic being, she can not feel like a subordinate. When women
develop and step into their own authority they begin to validate who they are and accept
their own thoughts, feelings, and actions.
A different view o f weakness and vulnerability finds them necessary parts o f all
experience. “The most valuable o f human qualities— the ability to grow
psychologically— is necessarily an ongoing process, involving repeated feelings of
vulnerability all through life” (Miller 31). Women are truly more able to tolerate feelings
o f vulnerability, which is a positive strength. Women, also, are more willing to admit to
fears and insecurity and therefore more able to seek help.
Johnson writes, “Each person’s psyche has an inborn evolution urge to grow, to
integrate the contents o f the unconscious, to bring together all the missing parts o f the
total individual into a complete, whole, and conscious se lf’ (We 3). The quest for self-
knowledge is sometimes called the search for love (Eros), god-consciousness, or reality.
28
Elaine Pagels writes that “to know oneself, at the deepest level, is simultaneously to
know God” (xix). C. G. Jung’s term for growth is “individuation.” In “Definitions,” he
defines Individuation as “the process by which individual beings are formed and
differentiated; [...] Individuation, therefore, is a process o f differentiation, having for its
goal the development o f the individual personality” (CW 6: 448; par. 757). He continues,
“Differentiation means the development o f differences, the separation o f parts from a
whole” (424, par. 705). Individuation brings opposites together in a unifying whole by
first discriminating the separation and division clearly. Therefore, individuation consists
o f two phases: separation and differentiation and integration and wholeness. Only after
the separation is seen and understood, can the separated parts be brought back together in
a new healed wholeness that is a visceral experience. “When two things are muddled
together they need to be separated, distinguished, and untangled so that they may later be
rejoined in a workable synthesis” (Johnson, We 49). When the separation or the split is
not seen then there is no concern to bridge the split.
Without a workable synthesis the masculine/feminine (Logos/Eros) split
continues, even when there is a move from a thinking masculine perspective to a feeling
feminine perspective. A total commitment to a feminine perspective is just as lopsided
and dangerous as a total allegiance to a masculine perspective. A society only concerned
with feelings would leave humans cut off from their thinking function, unable to make a
decision or see clearly. The idea o f a clear mind would not be understood, just as the idea
of connection and feelings are so often not understood today. Most o f our society is not
aware that it is cut off from the body and estranged from the feeling function. The body
becomes an object and one feels a sense o f not belonging because one is not connected to
29
the self or others. Even when the mind knows that something might be wrong, the mind
does not know how to access the body to find out what is wrong. One feels a sense of
loneliness and emptiness when not connected to the body; understanding and meaning are
impossible without experiencing one’s feelings. The ego quickly devalues and discounts
feelings. Ideas, like I will fe el better when I get busy or I f I work harder everything will
be okay, rule over feelings.
Gallop states that “thinking that truly passes through the body only occurs in brief
intervals, soon to be reabsorbed by the powerful narratives o f mind over matter” (9). The
solution for changing this dynamic is not to move matter over mind, but to bring the two
together in dialogue. Without integration o f both the feminine feeling/connection and the
masculine thinking/mind, a feminine perspective cannot be experienced, or wholeness
understood. It takes a clear mind as well as an opened body to feel the experience o f
integration, a workable synthesis. In Woodman’s book, Leaving my F ather’s House,
Mary Hamilton explains that she uses her body as an instrument “to know my complexes
as both physical sensations resonating in my body and mental thoughts influencing my
thinking and outer behavior” (154). Without the body accessing the feeling function is
impossible.
Carl Jung’s psychological typology o f two basic attitudes and four functional
types provides a basis for a better understanding of the feeling function. The two basic
attitudes in this system are introversion and extraversion. In his “General Description O f
The Types,” he distinguishes them by a person’s attitude to the object.
The introvert’s attitude is an abstracting one; at bottom, he is always intent

on withdrawing libido from the object, as though he had to prevent the
object from gaining power over him. The extravert, on the contrary, has a
positive relation to the object. He affirms its importance to such an extent
30
that his subjective attitude is constantly related to and oriented by the

object. (CW 6: 330; par. 557)
The four functional types are thinking, feeling, sensing, and intuiting. Thinking
and feeling are termed rational while sensing and intuiting are termed irrational. Sensing
and intuiting are considered irrational because they do not help one in making conscious
choices. Experiences are intuited or sensed immediately; there is a direct knowing
without judgment. Thinking and feeling are considered rational because they help one to
make choices. Thinking allows one to make choices by logic while feeling allows one to
make choices by value and worth. “Only feeling brings a sense o f value and worth”
(Johnson, Maiden 3). The feeling function is not emotion; it involves making value
judgments, helping one to know what is important and what is not. James Hollis explains,
“Confusing emotion with thought and calling it feeling is to be trapped in an unwitting
literalism once again” (Archetypal 105).
Jung states that “[fjeeling is primarily a process that takes place between the ego
(q.v.) and a given content, a process, moreover, that imparts to the content a definite
value in the sense of acceptance or rejection (“like” or “dislike”)” (CW 6: 434; par. 724).
He explains that feeling is a subjective process. “Hence feeling is a kind o f judgment,
differing from intellectual judgment in that its aim is not to establish conceptual relations
but to set up a subjective criterion o f acceptance or rejection” (725). Without the feeling
function, acceptance or rejection comes from outer authority rather than from an inner
authority. If judgment does not come from one’s own being one is ruled by the outer
world and individuation is impossible. James Hollis writes, “The ultimate end o f depth
psychology is to stand respectfully before inner truth and dare to live it in the world.
What blocks each o f us is fear— fear o f loneliness, fear o f rejection, and most o f all, fear
o f largeness” {Archetypal 103-4).
The two attitudes and the four functions dwell inside all humans; however, they
differ in proportions and development. Any particular individual usually has a dominant
function and an inferior function. Most often when the dominant function is thinking, the
inferior function is feeling and visa versa. (Sensation and intuition are related to one
another in the same manner.) In our culture it appears more common for males to be
thinking types and for females to be feeling types; however, it is not always the case.
Thinking is considered to be a masculine characteristic and feeling a female
characteristic. “Thinking for themselves violates their conceptions o f what is proper for a
woman” (Belenky 30). Our masculine-dominated society values thinking more than
feelings. Persons with a strong developed thinking function usually do not want to know
if they are separated from their feelings.
Robert Johnson explains that “we have a long history o f the subjection o f women
under the domination o f men. But the problem is equally difficult in the tyranny that the
masculine side o f a woman exerts over her often helpless femininity” {Maiden 57).
Patriarchy not only encourages women to give their power to men in the outer world, but
makes it easy for women to be victimized by their own inner tyrant. When women give
their power to men and their own inner tyrant, they become dependent on the masculine
and tend not to mature and develop their feminine attributes as well as their own
authority.
Patricia Reis explains that the personal father-daughter relationship establishes a
pattern for daughters to relate to men as well as to their own inner masculine side;
32
however, a “woman whose father is too busy, or always absent, may develop a tendency
to idealize him, glorify him, mythologize his life [ ... ]. Usually such a father is a
powermonger, a controller and hoarder o f power who enjoys having ‘his women’ under
him” (106). Woodman explains that “ [t]he idealized father promises light, perfection,
spirit separated from the humdrum reality o f matter” {House, 207). Young daughters tend
to idolize their fathers and desire an escape from the humdrum world; however, as they
mature it is necessary for them to move beyond idealization of their fathers. Jung defines
identification as “a psychological process in which the personality is partially or totally
dissimilated. Identification is an alienation o f the subject from him self for the sake o f the
object, in which he is, so to speak, disguised” (CW 6: 440; par. 738). Jung gives an
example o f a son adopting his father’s ways o f behaving as though he were not a separate
person. He explains that identification is unconscious whereas imitation is a conscious
copying.
As projections are pulled back, the daughter begins to see her father in his
authentic human form, which includes both his positive and negative aspects. “The test of
true individuation is that it include the capacity to relate to another person and to respect
him or her as an individual” (Johnson, We 111-112). Father is no longer only a god;
father becomes human as well. When the daughter sees authenticity in her father, she
begins to see her own authenticity. “When you embrace your dark side as intimately as
you embrace your light side, you know that you are neither. Then you see the reality
beyond the condition” (Woodman, House 179). Walter Odajnyk writes that one feels a
sense o f liberation and freedom and “what accounts for it is the end o f projection” (28).
33
If the daughter does not pull back her projections, she “may project her inner
King onto a simple man, crown him with light, invest him with [her] own intellectual and
spiritual potential, and then wonder why he isn’t god enough to fill his royal vestments”
(Woodman, House 11). Her father stays idealized and the daughter never has a chance to
grow up or develop into her own person. “ [S]o long as the inner divinity is projected onto
the outer human creature, there can be nothing but illusion, confusion, disappointment
and despair” (Bridegroom 211). If the father has not grown up himself and loves being
idolized, it is even more difficult for the daughter to mature. The father receives his
daughter’s projections and lives his own unlived life through her. Woodman explains this
problem:
If the parents are narcissistic or full o f their own unlived life, they use
their child to mirror themselves. The soul o f the child is then violated
because it is not free to develop its own potential. It is exploited, forced to
carry the parents’ archetypal projections, passions, and broken dreams
[ . . . ] . If, for example, the father accepts the child’s archetypal projections
and believes he is the King, then he is free to exert power over his child in
whatever way he pleases. If he is without ego boundaries, then his young
child cannot tell the difference between the King, the father, and Tom
Thumb who lives in a castle under the staircase [ ... ]. When the parents
lack an ego structure that protects them from identification with the child’s
unconscious archetypal projection, and/or where the egoless child accepts
the parents’ unconscious archetypal projection, the archetype may
penetrate the human actuality in a completely destructive way [ . . . ] . So
involved are they with their father’s world and his values and his split
femininity that they fail to see the impact o f their missing mother. They
may realize that their inner King is pinned to the wall and because he is
pinned in a particular attitude, they are cut off from their creative
imagination. They may realize they are frozen in one man and one man
only. They may even realize that they are trapped in archetypal projection
and, therefore, projecting their whole inner world onto a frail human
creature to whom they have given power to walk away with their soul.”
(House 357-358)
If women do not take responsibility for the nourishment and growth o f their own souls,
they will continue to project their souls onto the males in their lives.
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In The Wounded Woman, Linda Leonard explains that when women have not
grown up and do not have a sense o f inner authority, it is easy for what she calls the
“perverted old man” to enter. The adolescent female “tends to deny her own strength and
power and instead falls under the powerful and authoritarian masculine, a perversion of
this power takes place and she seems to become victim to a critical judge within” (85).
The critical judge keeps the dependent women imprisoned with low self-confidence and
an inflated unconscious. Her inner man tells her she will fail in the outer world while
feeding her inner inflation as well. She is too good for anything inferior. Looking
realistically at herself is something she never learned. Her perverted old man hacks away
at her potential to create and actualize her achievements in the world. She lives in fear.
Afraid of failure and criticism, she never gains the courage to try and reach her potential.
She needs to deal with her inner as well as her outer problems and understand the
development o f her life pattern before she can heal and change:
Facing the perverted old man means facing this complex o f rejection-
inflation. It means facing one’s identification with the devil, that powerful,
powerless pride that says “I cannot do it.” Assuming that one has all the
power in oneself to decide what one can or cannot do. This attitude leaves
nothing to the higher powers beyond the ego, the inner resources of
healing, although one veils all that in the appearance o f girlish impotence.
(95)
Johnson states that if a woman is to evolve past feminine adolescence she must
break the unconscious domination o f her subordinate, largely unconscious, masculine
component, which often dictates her relationship to the outer world (She 44). After the
woman faces her inner masculine critic or what Leonard labeled the “perverted old man,”
she releases his power over her and learns how to deal with him. She begins to relate and
have a conversation with the inner critic, instead o f being possessed and controlled by
35
him. Feminine healing is found by facing and dealing with the wounding by this
masculine inner critic. Only then can the wounded woman be healed by her nurturing
nature.
If a wounded woman can keep faith in the feminine curative power to be

found in solitude, she will, as if by a miracle, find her way to feminine
healing. This seems foreign to our modem patriarchal way o f thinking, but
it is the one cure that can redeem the masculine wound in a woman. No
masculine devices have the slightest effect on this specific kind o f wound.
(Johnson, Maiden 83-84)
Healing the masculine wound by feminine nurturing involves a need to face one’s
personal parents. The wounded woman must face her father and mother complexes to get
in touch with her archetypal parents. Everyone has complexes; they only become a
problem when they are denied. When complexes are denied they hide and come out in
negative ways. In order to move beyond the strangling hold that complexes have, one
must first become aware o f them.
Marion Woodman explains that our two largest complexes are mother and father:
In Jung’s model o f the psyche, associations with our personal parents or

loss o f them becomes complexes. They cluster around an archetype. The
father complex has at its core the God archetype, the mother, the Goddess,
in both their positive and negative aspects [ ... ]. They can fill us with
radiant light, or overwhelm us with destruction and despair. They are our
gods within, spiritually and instinctually. Without access to them, life
becomes a boring two-dimensional existence. Relating to them allow us to
work at incarnating our angels and our animals.
Archetypes are energy fields innate in our psyches. They are like
hidden magnets. We cannot see them, but we can see their images and we
are propelled by heir energy [ ... ].
One tragic loophole in our culture is our failure to tell the
difference between identifying with an archetype and relating to it. When
addicts talk about a high or a fix, what they mean psychologically is that
they want to identify with an archetype. (House 13)
Woodman explains that to forget the realities o f being human, one becomes addicted
psychologically to escaping into a godlike power. When one identifies with a godlike
36
power, the identification does not allow that God or Goddess to manifest through the
body by way o f relationship.
When one identifies with the personal father, the archetypal image o f the father is
unconsciously introjected into the psyche and creates the father complex. There is no
separation of the archetypal father from the human father; the father is viewed
archetypically as good or bad. The split between archetypal image and human father
prevents any movement towards consciousness or the process o f individuation. “The
ability to turn an unconscious complex which has one by the throat into an object of
knowledge is an extremely important aspect for increasing consciousness” (Edinger,
Consciousness 38). As the developing ego begins to discern one’s inner complexes and
archetypal images, the father complex separates from the father archetype. “The process
whereby a series o f psychic contents— complexes and archetypal images— make with an
ego and thereby generate the psychic substance o f consciousness is called the process o f
individuation” (17). Woodman states that “if we could each take responsibility for our
own inner victim and tyrant, we could truly depotentiate the old parental complexes.
Released from their power, we would be free to love” (Bridegroom 11).
A deeper look at complexes, archetypal images, and the feeling function helps
provide an understanding o f how they work together. Erel Shalit explains that a complex
has three major elements: Core, Cluster and Tone. At the core o f every complex is the
archetype. The cluster is personal and comes from actual life experiences and the tone is
a feeling-tone or emotional tone that holds the complex together. “Thus, the complex
embodies three major elements— an archetypal core around which personal experiences
cluster, and an emotional tone that serves as the gravitational force that hold this
37
microcosm together” (32). The feeling function is no longer rational when the feeling-
tone is overly charged in effect, either positive or negative. “When in the grip o f the
complex, ego-consciousness and identity are impaired. Feeling is then no longer a value-
judgment, and affect and sensitivity overtake us. We are overcome by fear, rage or the
like, and tend to project” (95).
Working with one’s parental complexes is necessary for individuation. Parents or
parental figures teach us how to love in a variety o f ways. If love is not felt and seen
while growing up, one does not learn how to feel comfortable giving or receiving love.
When love is only given for accomplishment and good behavior, children begin to
believe that they are not lovable when they misbehave or are not accomplishing
something. Children learn to play roles to become who they believe their parents want
them to be. Very quickly they learn how to hide part o f themselves and they never get the
chance to discover who they are. Woodman writes, “A child who has not been mirrored
by its parents, not been permitted to think its own thoughts or feel its own feelings, has
been forced to obey an outer king” (House 28). Obeying the outer father does not allow
children to grow into their own personhood. Children who are not mirrored, who are not
given absolute love by their parents, develop an emptiness in which they spend a lifetime
trying to fill. As they grow older they spend a lot o f energy trying to prevent their own
thoughts and feeling from being known. The body as well as the mind freeze.
A frozen mind and body cannot feel. The body and the mind want to thaw so that
they can experience love. Woodman writes that there is a natural pull to unite instincts
with living spirit in an embodied wholeness. She explains that this pull is guided by the
Self, which she calls the “god-image within and regulating center o f the personality”
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(.Bridegroom 8). The god-image is the totality o f the psyche and is accessed only when
mind and body connect. When the mind is separated from the body, there is no god-
image or Self. Without feeling in the body, one is not in communication or connection
with the Self. The Self or god-image manifests as embodied love that provides a dialogue
between the mind and body. Woodman writes that “Love cannot be a concept in your
head: CONSCIOUS LIFE depends that you live it in your body” (House 193). Embodied
love is about accepting, feeling, and experiencing the body. “When I experience my body
with myself, I fall into it with a love for matter that I have not known before. This love
enables my body to receive, as vessel, the Light that originates from a source other than
m yself’ (184).
A strong body is needed to embody the experience o f love. It takes a lot o f growth
and personal work to build a psychic container that is strong enough for the mind and
body to unite in a divine union.
That container, which begins as the ego, has to be flexible enough to

expand with divine energy. It is the instrument through which divinity
manifests. It is the instrument o f the divine; it is not the God or Goddess.
It has to be humble enough to return to its human dimensions [ ... ].
Conscious femininity is grounded enough to relate to the divine
without identifying with it; masculinity is discriminating enough to cut
identification with a sharp sword. Identification is unconscious;
relationship is conscious. Identification with archetypal energy breeds
inflation that swings into deflation. False hope, false power, fake gods
collapse in agony [ ... ].
Without firm human middle ground, there is no body container in
which the inner animals can be tamed, or the spirit can be embodied.
(Woodman, House 14)
Without a psychic container to hold experience, one is left with
ungrounded spirits or concretized matter. Our lives are lived as ghosts and statues
rather than living human beings. “If your feminine receptor, your soul in matter, is
39
shut down, you will receive nothing, no flash o f insight” (Woodman, Bridegroom
29). However, when “soul opens to spirit, feminine and masculine are creating in
the moment” (34). The body opens to experience the self as “the heart bursts
open, every cell of the body is suffused with divine love. The entire personality
transcends its former boundaries. New life is born” (210).
New life is bom when there is a change in the relationship one has with one’s
body. There is a need to leam how to live in connection with the body. Maureen Murdock
explains that “ [Rejection of the female body, which in our culture has its origins in the
Old Testament portrayal o f Eve as the seductress, has been reinforced in male-dominated
religions by taboos about female sexuality for over five thousand years” (Journey 25).
She continues that feminine intuition is lost and ignored for the safer activities o f the
masculine mind. The ability to recognize wisdom from the body is lost and discounted.
The female body has been demonized and ignored for so long that women do not know
how to reconnect to their bodies:
We have to reconnect with the primal wisdom that assures us that we are
loved, that life is our birthright, that we need not prove ourselves nor
justify our existence. Knowing in our bones that life is the supreme gift,
we can accept paradox. Life is no longer broken into right and wrong,
light and dark, birth or death. Everything is part o f the awesome mystery.
(Woodman, Bridegroom 31)
Woodman states further:
[I]f the feminine can open herself to the fires o f her own creativity, she
can forge a flexible container strong enough to stand to her own feeling
because she can hold the opposites together. Virgin is no longer separated
from whore; sexuality is no longer split from spirituality; consciousness is
no longer cut off from the unconscious, good mother is no longer
opposing bad mother or good father, bad father. Body is no longer frozen
vessel empty o f both instincts and living spirit. (House 206-07)
40
When the body opens to consciousness, the opposites are seen as two dimensions
o f the same essences. Before the body and mind are able to hold opposite energies, some
kind of break-down or break-through has to occur. All one thought that one was has to
die, in order to be reborn again. It is like a reconstruction o f the self that become easier
and more familiar with time and hard work. I see this process as a circular spiral
movement. Each tiny insight changes the person and allows for more insights. As one
moves to a deeper understanding it becomes easier to understand more. Each new insight
changes one’s awareness as the body experiences a change. A new sensation then allows
for more understanding. The movement continues, not in the same groove, but in a
continual deepening spiral. The more one gets in touch with the body the easier it is to
experience what the mind is thinking and visa versa. The body opens and the authentic
self breaks through. Gallop describes this concept in the following way: “It is the poiesis
of a new body, one is freed from hysterical paralysis or phallomorphic rigidity. To speak
in vulvo-logic, it flows” (96). Life pulsates through the veins as the body unthaws by the
warmth o f love.
In a different language, Linell E. Cady explains how love unites in “Relational
Love: A Feminist Christian Vision:”
To love is to feel and to act in a way that takes account o f the feelings,
interests, and needs o f the other. Such an orientation establishes a
relationship between the self and the other that alters the basis from which
the self acts. No longer operating from a narrow self-concern, the
individual identifies the self with the relationship and seeks its continued
existence and well-being. Through love, the other, in effect, becomes part
o f one’s expanded self. Because o f this self-expansion, acts o f love are not
due to heroic efforts o f will, seemingly lacking in motivation, but are the
outgrowth o f the identification o f self and other that occurs in and through
love.
Love is a mode o f relating that seeks to establish bonds between
the self and the other, creating a unity out o f formerly detached
41
individuals. It is a process o f integration whereby the isolation o f

individuals is overcome through the forging o f connections between
persons. These connections constitute the emergence o f a wider life
including, yet transcending, the separate individuals. The wider life that
emerges through the loving relationship between selves does not swallow
up individuals, blurring their identities and concerns. It is not, in short, an
undifferentiated whole that obliterates individuality. On the contrary, the
wider life created by love constitutes a community of persons. In a
community, persons retain their identity, and they also share a
commitment to the continued wellbeing o f the relational life uniting them.
(140-41)
Embodied love changes the way one relates to the self, to others and the world.
Learning to give and receive love is an experience that allows one to feel life in a
meaningful way. Every cell in the body becomes alive with a feeling that is an experience
o f the divine in the body. As Hollis explains, “the word god is not a concept, nor a
presumed metaphysical construct; it is an encounter, an experience with the vitalistic
cosmos” (.Archetypal 20). Encountering and experiencing that tiny spark o f god allows
one to feel connected to all of life, especially to one’s own life. A healing takes place.
The broken, split, frozen, or wounded body is fixed, united, unthawed, or healed by god-
consciousness. The body is healed when the masculine mind o f logic, order, and spirit
unites with the feminine body o f feeling, ambiguity, and soul. “Men as much as women
need to know that their soul is grounded in their own loving matter” (Woodman,
Bridegroom 181). It takes a committee o f males and females to move out o f patriarchy
into a loving compassionate world. Christine Downing believes “that we women cannot
really move toward living as postpatriarchal women unless men become postpatriarchal
men. If they don’t, we will at best find ourselves in a coo/rapatriarchal world, not truly a
postpatriarchal one” (144). Embodied love allows both men and women to view
42
themselves, others, and the world from a human perspective that allows one to think from
the heart.
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Chapter Three
The Father-Daughter Relationship
Images o f bondage paralyze and silence women; however, these images can
transform into images o f freedom. In revisiting the fairy tale, The Handless Maiden, and
the Electra myth from a depth psychological perspective, this transformation o f images of
the father-daughter relationship is explored. When myths and fairy tales are understood
as archetypal and universal, they become contemporary. The fairy tale and myth explored
in this chapter help explain feelings o f entrapment that come from not living an authentic
life. Whether one is bound in bondage by grief or helplessness, the road toward freedom
is by way o f individuation, the process o f discovering the self that allows one to live an
authentic life. Marion Woodman states that when “the personal life is not being lived, the
individual tends to feel caged, victimized, [and] not connected to any ongoing purpose”
(House 204). In Embodied Love, Sharon A. Farmer states, “Breaking silence is an
essential task for us if we are to forge new identities” (4). As women continue to speak
clearly about what they want, they begin to discover and articulate who they are. Not
only does this new articulation make it easier for women to live authentic lives, it makes
it easier for the next generation as well.
Linda Leonard writes “The father is the first experience a woman has with the
masculine. In this way he provides an important model for the way she relates to man and
to her own inner masculine side” (85). The relationship between the father and the
daughter is instrumental to a girl’s development. Patricia Reis states that, “A daughter’s
deepest longing is to know and be known by her father, not in a physical way but in an
emotionally honest way” (142). If this longing is not met, a daughter tends to idolize her
father. She invests him with the power to validate her identity. When the father becomes
a god, she cannot see his imperfect human side. His values become hers as she identifies
with him and becomes what many call a father’s daughter. “The fa th e r ’s daughter
identifies so closely with her father that she has little separate identity o f her own”
(Murdock, Daughter 6). Idolization and identification prevent the daughter from seeing
the reality o f her father as well as her own. “As a father’s daughter, she has served the
Great Father collective and functioned without owning her own creativity or instincts”
(Woodman, House 26).
Maureen Murdock explains that the father archetype carries the principle o f law,
order, and protection. A positive manifestation o f the father archetype is the “wise king,”
who uses power fairly and compassionately. “In contract, a negative manifestation o f the
Father archetype is the “patriarchal king,” who wields his power in a rigid and unjust
way” (Daughter 115). Without a conscious, realistic relation to the human father, the
archetypal father unconsciously is introjected into the psyche of the daughter and “she
internalizes his values and dictates as the inner voice that drives her, demanding that she
be productive” (7). The fusing o f the archetypal image with the human father prevents
individuation. Instead of guiding her, the introjection o f the archetypal father drives the
daughter’s inner masculine.
The masculine is an archetypal force, it is not a gender. Like the feminine,

it is a creative force that lives within all women and men. When it
becomes unbalanced and unrelated to life it becomes combative, critical,
and destructive. This unrelated archetypal masculine can be cold and
inhuman; it does not take into account our human limitations. Its
machismo tells us to forge ahead no matter what the cost. It demands
perfection, control, and domination; nothing is ever enough. (.Journey 156)
45
If the father does not appreciate the daughter and her feminine ways, she learns
very quickly to hide them and to value masculine ways. The mother and the feminine are
rejected by both the father and the daughter.
The subtle collusion between daughter and father, with its implicit
rejection o f mother, constitutes the initial wounding of daughter’s
feminine nature. The wounding impedes or entirely blocks off her
receptivity to her intuition, her tolerance o f feelings, and her acceptance of
the wisdom o f her natural body rhythms. In rejecting her mother, the
father’s daughter rejects herself as a woman. (Murdock, Daughter 13-4)
Rejection and separation from the feminine leave daughters, as well as sons, wounded. In
The Fisher King and The Handless Maiden, Robert Johnson writes that the most painful
arid common wound in our Western world is the wounded feeling function. An unrelated
masculine orientation, whether in a male or female, leaves one disconnected from
feelings and out of balance.
Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig discusses the danger o f the out-of-balance father
archetype. He believes that society’s notion that the good father is necessary for the
healthy development o f a child is what forces the negative father archetype to become
repressed or projected elsewhere. The “good father” image tyrannizes the actual father
into deceiving him self and the world. He feels guilty when he encounters his destructive
side and the negative father energy is pushed deeper into the unconscious.
I suspect the more the mythological image o f the primarily good father
predominates in society, the more the image o f the destructive father will
appear as an expression o f the repressed polarity o f father as archetype.
We might view the fascination with child abuse as the opposite extreme of
the dominant mythology o f the loving father. When the image o f the good
father rules collectively, that of the destructive father makes its
appearance. (28)
If the father lives in the illusion that only a good father is acceptable, he is unable to
understand the destructive side o f the environment or himself. Guggenbuhl-Craig
46
explains that when one is “never forced to grapple with the murderous side o f the
archetype in their environment or in themselves” (27), one becomes insecure when
confronting a mildly authoritarian or domineering male figure. One example that
Guggenbuhl-Craig gives is when all policemen become “pigs” and they are no longer
human. Policemen become the living representations o f the destructive side o f the father
archetype.
Although parents influence their children, children are also influenced by their
culture, school, friends, and their own psyche. Sometimes terrible parents bring up
wonderful loving children and the opposite is also true. Guggenbuhl-Craig states that the
law of cause and effect does not apply to matters o f the psyche or soul:
None o f us is “caused” or determined primarily by our parents. The

psyche is independent and outside o f the law o f cause and effect. Although
we certainly take on many virtues and vices from our parents and from our
environment, we only take on those qualities which most closely
correspond to our inherent psychic nature. (36)
He continues that those who believe that good leads to good and that bad leads to bad,
stay children forever and never become responsible for their neuroses and destructive
sides. They blame everything on mother and father.
Guggenbuhl-Craig ranks the different possibilities that children have growing up
concerning the father. He believes that the best situation is where the father is able to
show both his negative and positive sides. In limiting expression to only one side, the
other side is repressed and projected. It is healthier for children to experience the
authentic father who shows anger as well as love. Otherwise, the father is not who he is;
the father is only part o f who he is and that leaves him out of balance. “For the
development o f the human soul, particularly for individuation, confronting the archetypes
47
completely is o f crucial significance” (26). There is a powerful representation o f this in
Greek mythology: the god of war, Ares, who knows how to show his anger and fight for
what he wants, mates with Aphrodite, the goddess o f love, to produce a child named
Harmony. The second best, or second worst possibility, is to experience only one side o f
the father; it does not matter if it is positive or negative. “If we fail to relate to parts or
even entire archetypes in our surroundings, they assume archaic, demonic form” (27).
Finally, the “worst case is not to experience the father at all” (28).
In the following discussions o f The Handless Maiden fairy tale and the Electra
myth, the archetypal situations depicting father-daughter relationships are explored as
they relate to modem women’s individuation.
The Handless Maiden
In the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale, The Handless Maiden, the father’s repressed
negative side comes out in destructive ways; however, his daughter is able to move past
the child abuse and become responsible for her own life. “The Handless Maiden, by
comprehending herself, creates, rebuilds, transforms the hidden aspects o f her
unconscious world and establishes a domain o f true freedom” (Johnson, Maiden 170).
She moves from dependence to independence when she discovers her own values and
how to experience her feelings. The following is an adapted version o f the tale:
There was a miller who had become poor. He had nothing left but a large apple
tree behind his mill. One day he went to the forest to gather wood and an old man told
him that he would give him great riches i f he could have what was behind his mill. When
the miller agreed, the old man told him that he would come in three years to claim what
now belonged to him. When the miller returned home, his wife was happy with all their
48
new riches, but was afraid about the manner in which they had become rich. When he
told his wife about the old man and the apple tree, she said that the old man was a wizard
and that he didn't want the apple tree. What the wizard wanted was their daughter who
was sweeping the court by the apple tree.
In three years time, the wizard made his appearance; however, he could not
approach the daughter because she washed herself clean. Angrily the wizard told the
father to take the water away from her so she cannot wash herself because that left him
without power over her. The next day when the wizard came fo r the daughter, it was her
crying that kept her clean. The wizard told the father that i f he could not approach his
daughter, the father would have to chop o ff her hands. When the father didn 7 know i f he
could, the wizard threatened that he would take the father instead. The daughter did not
fig h t and said that she would do as her father wanted. She placed her hands on the table
so her father could chop them o ff The father told his daughter that he had obtained so
much good through her that he would take care o f her forever.
Soon after losing her hands, the daughter didn 7 fe el safe and wanted to go away
where people would be able to give her sympathy. She tied up her maimed arms and went
into the forest alone. As night drew closer she saw a tree fu ll ofpears. Not able to pick
them, she went close to one o f the trees and, with her mouth, she ate a pear as it hung.
The follow ing morning, the king who owned the trees and counted his pears noticed that
one was missing. The next night the king went to the orchard to see fo r him self what was
happening. When he saw the maiden creep out o f the bushes to eat a pear without picking
it, he fe ll in love with her. He took her to his castle where he could marry her and make
her a pair o f silver hands.
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After a year, the king had to go into battle, so he placed his wife under the care o f
his mother. While her husband was away the queen gave birth to a son. A messenger was
sent to deliver the good news to the king, but the wizard exchanged it with a message that
said that the child was a bad seed. The king wrote and told his mother to take care o f his
wife and child and the wizard again exchanged the letter to read that the mother was to
kill the Queen and the child. Not able to do this she strapped the baby on the Q ueen’s
back and told her that she must leave and never come back.
After some time, the queen came to a cottage with a sign that said, “Every one
who dwells here is safe. ” The queen and her son remained in the cottage fo r many years.
Eventually, because she was so good, her flesh hands grew back. Meanwhile, when the
king returned home he wanted to see his wife and child. The mother thinking that her son
had told her to kill them told him o f the letter. When he heard the news, the king took o ff
to fin d his wife and child. It took him seven years to fin d the little cottage in the forest.
When the King and Queen saw each other they re-vowed their love and lived happily ever
after.
There are many variations of the tale o f the handless maiden and in none o f them
does the daughter object to her hands being cut off (Johnson 59). Saying no never occurs
to her, because “her thoughts, feelings, wishes, values, and behavior are motivated by an
underlying desire to please [her father], to reflect him” (Daughter (18). The daughter
complies because she is tied to her father and his values. “[S]he goes numb at the
prospect o f confronting him, fearing that if they disagree or she refuses to remain allied
with him, he’ll withdraw his love, or worse, express his wrath” (20). She “is so dedicated
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to her father that she loses her hands— in fact, she loses her grip on her own
development” (Nelson, 28).
The handless maiden does not value herself because her father does not value the
feminine and is not in touch with his own feelings. The daughter learns to express and
feel only what the father approves and to deny or repress all other feelings. The daughter
is sacrificed to preserve the father’s material, mechanical world; this exemplifies the
family that numbs feeling with materialism, and functions without heart.
The daughter heals when she leaves her father’s house and discovers her own
values. It is possible to leave the father’s house literally and not psychologically, and vice
versa, but the handless maiden does both. “Liberation will come about only if she can
release her identification with her father and his disapproval to choose her own life”
(Daughter 41). As she finds her own voice and dispenses with living as a victim, she
steps into her own authority and independence. One cannot live in freedom if one is
afraid to discover who one is and to discover one’s own potential. “So long as we are not
in contact with our own potential, we are vulnerable to be controlled by others. If we do
not know ourselves, we cannot stand to our own truth and are, therefore, in constant
danger of invasion o f others, male and female” (Woodman Bridegroom, 132).
The tale about the handless maiden is a tale about choice: the choice to be active
or passive, independent or dependent, and to live in freedom or in bondage. Freedom
dwells in conscious choice. “Freedom, however, is not being rid o f responsibilities; it is
being free o f random shoulds and oughts” (Nelson 145). Freedom brings together a
synthesis o f inner and outer and masculine and feminine qualities in a balanced
consciousness.
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Unless such a person becomes conscious, the abused child within becomes
the abuser. Like grandmother, like mother, like daughter. Only years o f
intense inner work can break that cycle. To walk out o f that prison a free
soul demands years of fingernail-filing on the prison chain until there
comes a moment when the prisoner breaks the chain and leaps toward the
light at the end o f the tunnel, never turning back. That leap into freedom is
the leap out o f power-driven existence into a life lived in love. That is the
leap from powerlessness into empowerment. (Woodman, Bridegroom 81)
Moving from a power-driven existence into a life lived in love is impossible without
giving birth to one’s true self. The authentic self discovers a human wholeness that leaves
one in a position to make choices and live in freedom. “Freedom is an activity o f mind
and soul and body all at once which flows with the nature o f circumstances as naturally
as a bird flies” (Nelson, 146).
The Handless Maiden tale is a story about a daughter who grows her own flesh
and bone hands as she transitions into adulthood. She learns to take responsibility for her
own life by leaving her father’s house; however, it is necessary for her to leave her
husband’s house as well. A helpless maiden easily moves from a father’s house to the
husband’s house without ever developing or growing up. “It is common in women,
especially early in their development, to live by quotations or principles o f others,
especially the quotations of men or social systems they know and admire” (Nelson 79).
The silver hands that the King makes for the handless maiden are still not her own
hands. Silver hands are borrowed, just like her opinions and feelings. The handless
maiden takes her life into her own hands by discovering her own feelings and opinions
and learning to express them. She learns to trust and value herself as she finds her own
authority, self confidence and independence, and relates this information to her feminine
feeling side. “In freedom one gains true feeling” (Nelson 146).
The cage opens, chains fall off, and the voice speaks when the hands begin to
create. As women become aware that they are not living authentic lives, they move
toward discovering themselves. The Handless Maiden tale is relevant today because it
prescribes what one must do in order to discover authenticity. Nelson explains how the
maiden must first go into the woods alone where she can reflect on her life. “To enter the
forest is, perhaps, the most important choice that she ever makes. ‘Entering the woods’
turns out to be the story’s clear prescription for healing the wounded feminine” (122-3).
Going into the woods means taking the time to be alone as well as finding a place where
one can enter an inner journey o f reflection. “When you can only do— nothing— you have
arrived where healing begins. For us to grow it takes waiting” (132).
Many people go on a vision quest to discover how to be alone and do nothing.
Others go to retreats or get-a-ways or just plan time to be alone. “To withdraw into
solitude is a conscious entry into our wounded reality and also into introspection and
inner work where dreams, stories, Scripture, prayer, poetry and the messages of the inner
world are taken in slowly and lovingly” (Nelson 125). Nature is a wonderful place for
healing as well as for solitude. When one takes the time to camp, hike, snow shoe, or
garden, one cannot help but connect to nature, where the nurturing qualities of the earth
are available for healing. “In nature, we learn to love the world in gratitude, receiving it
as a gift” (128).
The woods have a way o f allowing one to let go o f control and perfection, which
is mandatory for healing. Letting go can be thought o f as a series o f little ego deaths. We
die everyday as we let go o f mistakes and accept change in our lives. Sometimes the ego
death is not little, but a powerful, painful experience that takes place during a crises or a
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huge transformation that feels like hell. One has to feel the experience to move through
the pain o f the experience. “Feeling perfectly dreadful is the only way out. It is the
feminine route and the only route that heals what is feminine. The only way out is into
and through” (Nelson 136).
A woman on the path towards discovering who she is must get in touch with her
feelings so she knows her values and can ask for what she needs. She needs to learn to
give so that she can learn to ask for what she wants. “She cannot give until she has
learned to ask” (Nelson 94). If she does not know how to ask, she has not gotten in touch
with her feelings or discovered empathy. “To be empathic, you just have to be able to
reach out with feeling hands and include another’s experience in your own” (96). By
becoming an authentic human being with weaknesses and strengths, she learns to let go
o f control and perfection which help her adapt to changes in life. She learns to risk and
not be afraid to make mistakes. As she begins to value the feminine and trust her own
values, opinions, and actions, she begins to believe in herself.
The Myth o f Electra
The Electra myth is another father-daughter story about a daughter whose life is
out o f her hands. The tragedy o f Electra is that her extreme emotions leave her
imprisoned and unable to live her own life. Unlike the handless maiden, who eventually
discovers freedom, Electra is trapped in bondage by her continual grief for her dead
father and hatred for her mother. The essentials o f the ancient Greek myth about Electra
are as follows:
Electra’s devastation follow ing the death o f her father, King Agamemnon, leaves
her obsessing in continual mourning. Her father had sacrificed her older sister,
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Iphigenia, in accordance with A rtem is’s orders, to ensure the returning winds so that the
soldiers could continue their journey into Troy to win the Trojan War. Upon
Agamemnon's return home, his wife Clytemnestra (Electra’s mother), and her lover,
Aegisthus, murder Agamemnon. Electra cannot move through her mourning fo r her
father because she is consumed with hatred and vengeance toward her mother.
Three Greek tragedies (one by each o f the major tragedians from the 5th century
BCE) focus on Electra. All three tragedies begin years after the murder o f Electra’s
father, Agamemnon. Their accounts are similar, yet different. A summary o f each
follows:
In Aeschylus’s Libation Bearers, Electra lives with her mother, Clytemnestra, and
her mother’s lover, Aegisthus. She is in continuous mourning for the death o f her father,
Agamemnon and awaits the return o f her brother, Orestes, to avenge their father’s death.
Electra kneels at her father’s tomb in prayer. “Rekindle the light that saves our house!
W e’re auctioned off, drift like vagrants now, Mother has pawned us for a husband,
Aegisthus, her partner in her murdering” (183: lines 137-40). She prays for her brother’s
return. “O bring Orestes home, with a happy twist o f fate [ ... ].” (143-4). Electra
continues, “Raise up your avenger, into the light, my father—kill the killers in return,
with justice!” (148-9).
In this version, Electra is passive, mired in her mourning, waiting for her brother
and ready to turn over all action to him. “You were my faith, my brother— you alone
restore my self-respect” (189; 246-7). When she finds a lock o f hair by her father’s tomb,
she believes that it could be Orestes’. Accompanied by his friend, Pylades, Orestes
returns from Phocis, where he has lived in hiding, but, at first, Electra does not recognize
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him. She soon realizes, however, that her prayers have been answered. Orestes tells
Electra that the god, Apollo, has instructed him to avenge their father’s murder by killing
the killers, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. The siblings agree on what must be done, but
when Orestes asks his sister to go into the palace and wait for him, she is never seen on
stage again. There is no interaction with Electra and Clytemnestra. Orestes tells his friend
to find Clytemnestra and tell her that her son is dead. When Aegisthus hears that Orestes
is dead, he wants to talk to the messenger about the good news. He comes to meet the
messenger, but instead, is killed by Orestes. Clytemnestra comes to find out what all the
commotion is about. At first she does not recognize her own son, but when she does, she
pleads with him for her life. Orestes hesitates for a short moment before killing his
mother.
Electra is the main character in Sophocles’ Electra. She lives with her sister,
Chrysothemis, in their dead father Agamemnon’s palace with their mother, Clytemnestra,
and her partner in crime, Aegisthus. The sisters are treated like slaves, especially Electra
because she is verbal about her pain. She complains, “I am alone, without the comfort of
children; no husband to stand beside me, and share the burden; spurned like a slave,
dressed like a slave, fed on the scraps, I serve, disdained by all— in the house o f my
fathers!” (108; 189-93)
Electra carries out daily rituals for her dead father and is obsessed with describing
her horrible depression. “Never shall I depart from sorrow and tears and lamentation.”
(110; 231-2) Clytemnestra and Aegisthus plan to seal Electra in an underground dungeon
if she does not stop grieving for her father’s death. She cannot let go of her obsession of
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grief for her father and hate for her mother. Electra’s only hope is that her brother,
Orestes, will return home to avenge the death o f their father, Agamemnon.
Chrysothemis comes with offerings from Clytemnestra because o f a dream
Clytemnestra had o f her dead husband returning to life and standing by her side. In the
dream he takes his scepter and plants it by the hearth where a tree grows and spreads out
to shelter all o f Argos. Electra talks her sister into throwing Clytemnestra’s offerings
away, so that instead they can place in the altar’s grave a lock o f their hair as a token o f
their devotion and can pray, together for Orestes’ return home.
Frightened by her dream, Clytemnstra sets out for Apollo to pray for deliverance
from the fears brought on by her dream. She sees Electra and confronts her, accusing
Electra of telling the townspeople horrible things about her. They disagree on who is
responsible for Electra’s sister Iphigenia’s death. Clytemnstra does not deny killing
Agamemnon, but states the she “was helping Justice” (119; 529) to avenge his sacrifice
of Iphigenia. Electra retorts back, “I can prove to you it was no love o f Justice that
inspired the deed, but the suggestions o f that criminal with whom you now are living”
(120; 560-3). She continues to tell her mother that her murder was not done out o f respect
for the law o f Blood in return for blood, but so that she can continue sleeping with her
lover.
A tutor comes to tell the two women that Orestes has been killed in a chariot race
at Delphi and that soon two men will bring his ashes. Clytemnestra wants details and
Electra is devastated. After the tutor explains the details o f Oreste’s death, Clytemnestra
asks him into the palace. Outside o f the palace Electra asks what has she to live for now
that Orestes is dead:
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My dear Orestes! You are dead; your death has killed me too, or it has
been tom from me the only hope I had, that you would come at last in
might, to be the avenger o f your father, and my champion. But now where
can I turn? For I am left alone, robbed o f my father, and of you.
Henceforth I must go back again, for ever, into bondage to those whom
most I hate, the murderers who killed my father. (128; 808-16)
The next time the sisters meet, Chrysothemis tells Electra that their brother is not
really dead, but Electra does not believe her. Electra has decided that she must kill and
punish those who killed her father. She tries to talk her sister into taking revenge with her
to set them free, explaining how the townspeople might see them. “When they behold us:
See! There are the sisters who saved their father’s house from desolation; who, when
their enemies were firmly set in power, avenged a murder, risking all” (133; 977-80).
Chrysothemis refuses and Electra declares that she will avenge the murder o f their father
alone!
Electra does not recognize her brother when he returns home in disguise with his
loyal friend, Pylades. After Orestes observes the devastation o f Electra over his death, he
reveals the truth o f his identity and Electra is ecstatic. Spurred on by Electra’s vengeful
fury, Orestes and his friend go into the palace where Orestes kills Clytemnestra.
Aegisthus arrives at the palace, and Electra tells him to go inside where he is also killed
by Orestes. The chorus chants, “Children of Atreus, now at last your sufferings are ended.
You have won your own deliverance; now once more is the line o f your fathers restored”
(153; 1507-10).
In the third version, Euripides’ Electra, Aegisthus has commanded Electra to
marry a poor farmer, making it impossible for her to provide a royal child who might
avenge Agamemnon’s death. Aegisthus has also offered an award to anyone who would
kill her brother, Orestes. Electra is in her usual mourning when her brother and his friend,
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Pylades, come to avenge the murder o f Agamemnon. When she does not recognize her
brother, he tells her that they are friends o f Orestes who have come to inquire about
Electra. She tells them of her terrible life and her desire to avenge her father’s death.
Orestes, still not recognized, asks Electra if he can tell Orestes that he can count on her
cooperation. She answers, “I would die happy if I had shed my mother’s blood in
revenge” (89; 281-2).
Electra sends for an old servant o f Agamemnon, and it is he who recognizes
Orestes. Orestes then tells his sister o f his plan to kill Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. The
servant suggests that he kill them outside o f the city and that an opportune moment might
be at a banquet for the Nymphs. Suddenly Electra tells Orestes that she herself wants to
kill her mother. “I shall arrange the killing o f my mother” (99; 647) Orestes kills
Aegusthus at the banquet and returns to help Electra with the killing o f their mother.
Electra tells a servant to go and find Clytemnestra and tell her that she is a grandmother
because Electra has given birth to a child. When Clytemnestra arrives, Electra invites her
into her house where Clytemnestra is murdered by Orestes.
The ancient Electra in these tragedies has been used as an archetypal figure
representing daughters who love their father and hate their mother. Freud’s uses the
Oedipus myth and the term “Oedipus complex” to describe the psychological
development o f boys, and Jung then adds the use o f the term “Electra complex” to
describe the psychological development o f girls. In his essay, “The Oedipus Complex,”
Jung writes when
a daughter develops a specific liking for the father, with a correspondingly

jealous attitude towards the mother. We could call this the Electra
complex [ ... ]. Both these fantasy complexes, [Oedipus and Electra]
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become more pronounced with increasing maturity, and reach a new stage
only in the post-pubertal periods, when the problem arises o f detachment
from the parents. (C W 4: 154: par. 347-8)
Although Jung paid homage to Freud in modeling his concept on Freud’s “Oedipus
complex,” Freud rejected the term “Electra complex.” In “A Case o f Flomosexuality In
Women,” he wrote, “I do not see any advance or gain in the introduction o f the term
‘Electra complex’, and do not advocate its use” (Beyond 155). Freud calls this
development stage in women the feminine Oedipus complex.
However, the term, “Electra Complex,” as well as the complex is alive and well in
the twenty-first century. Nancy Cater brilliantly traces the feminine myth o f Electra in her
book, Electra: Tracing a Feminine Myth Through the Western Imagination. She explores
the ancient myth because it “accurately depicts archetypal situations often found in
contemporary women and their families” (xviii). She states “that from a Jungian
perspective, Electra represents a father’s daughter with a negative mother complex, who
is stuck in adolescence, a puella aeterna, or eternal girl, because o f her unresolved
parental issues” (xxii). In the foreword to Cater’s book, Christine Downing writes,
Electra is forever the young girl stuck in unresolved parental complexes, in

her idealization o f her lost, father, in her emotional depression, in grief and
rage [ . . . ] .
The Electra complex is, she helps us see, a complex: its various
aspects— the idealization, the rage, the isolation, the depression, the passive
aggressiveness, the waiting for life to happen, the confused relationship
with men— belong together, (xii-xiii)
Jolande Jacobi explains that complexes reveal themselves in different forms and
that the ego may have one o f any of four attitudes toward them: unconscious,
identification, projection, or confrontation. The unconscious complex, if not swollen by
too much personal material or split off from the ego, can be fruitful, “for it is the energy-
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giving cell from which all further psychic life flows” (Complex 27). If the unconscious
complex becomes overcharged and invades consciousness, however, it can leave one
disorganized and unable to cope. It is necessary for the ego to recognize when complexes
are breaking through consciousness, so that one has a choice in dealing with them.
Thus it is solely the state o f the conscious mind, the greater or lesser
stability o f the ego personality, that determines the role o f the complex.
Everything depends on whether the conscious mind is capable of
understanding, assimilating, and integrating the complex, in order to ward
off its harmful effects. If it does not succeed in this, the conscious mind
falls a victim to the complex, and is in greater or lesser degree engulfed by
it. (27)
If complexes are not confronted, they manifest in identification and projection and this
“prevents the individual from properly adapting himself [or herself] to his [or her] inward
and outward reality; it impairs his [or her] ability to form clear judgments, and above all
thwarts any satisfactory human contact” (17).
Electra is unconscious o f her complexes; they invade her consciousness and leave
her unable to cope. Her complexes blind and bind her in bondage and she does not know
how to confront them. Jung states that complexes are not corrected in the unconscious,
but only in the conscious mind where “they lose their automatic character and can be
substantially transformed” (CW 8: 186-7; par. 384). Electra’s overcharged emotional pain
and rage paralyze her in obsessive mourning for her father and hatred for her mother.
Sophocles describes Electra’s grief when the Chorus sings, “Yours is a grief
beyond the common measure, a grief that knows no ending, consuming your own life,
and all in vain.” (107; 140-2). In Euripides’s Electra, hatred is expressed by Electra. “In
my hardness o f heart I was on fire with hate against my mother” (114; 1183). Electra tells
her brother of her grief in Aeschylus’s version, “I wept— laughter died that day [ . . . ] . !
wept, pouring out the tears behind my veils. Hear that, my brother, carve it on your
heart!” (197; 435-7).
Extreme emotions entrap Electra in a life o f suffering. Her parental complexes
prevent her from living her own life. Her identification with her father leaves her
projecting everything good onto him and projecting everything bad onto her mother. She
is blind to the reality that her father killed her sister, Iphigenia, and chooses to believe
that the only reason he killed her was for the good o f Greece. Electra is also blind to the
reality that her mother is in pain from Iphigenia’s death. She believes the only reason that
her mother killed her father was so that she could stay with her lover, Aegisthus.
Although there is partial truth in what Electra sees, she is blind to the total truth. She has
lost all sense o f balance and “it is known that the danger o f a loss o f balance increases in
proportion to the rigidity and one-sidedness o f the consciousness mind” (Jacobi 28).
Electra’s identification with her father allows her to internalize her father and that
introjected wounded masculine energy takes possession o f her ego and becomes her
mouthpiece. Her wounded masculine becomes unconscious destructive behavior. When
ego identifies with a complex, it becomes ruler of that person. If Electra blames
everything negative onto her mother, there is no need for her to look at the negativity of
her father or herself. Electra has no human contact with either o f her parents because
neither is seen in reality. Identification and projection prevent human contact and keep
Electra bound to her parental complexes. Her overcharged emotions actually prevent her
from feeling her feelings. It is impossible for her to think clearly or make any kind of
value judgments. “True feeling knows the difference between needing and demanding,
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between what one likes and what one wants” (Nelson 161). Electra’s emotions are in
control of her and have their way with her.
In A dolf Guggenbuhl-Craig’s ranking o f possible versions o f the father-daughter
relationship that influence the development o f a child, the one in which there is no
relationship, no father, is considered most negative. Agamemnon left the house to fight in
the Trojan War when Electra was a very young child. He was gone for ten years, and
upon his arrival home, he was murdered. When the father is absent, it is natural for the
daughter to idolize the father in her imagination and remember only his good qualities.
Children naturally project the archetypal mother and father onto their human
parents when they are young. It allows them to feel safe, protected, and loved. As
children grow and develop, however, they need to pull back their projections in order to
integrate the archetypal mother and father into their own personality. This is how one
matures. The cord needs to be cut before one can grow into one’s own selfhood. If
projections are not pulled back and the cord is not cut, the child is bound to its parents
forever. Even when the body grows into an adult, a person can stay a child
psychologically. If one stays connected to one’s parents one is never free to mature and
learn from other forces in the world. James Hillman states:
Involvements with parents make us or break us. Moreover, you believe

you belong only to this personal story and your parents’ personal influence
on it, rather than to the invisible myths parents have displaced. Being
shaped so fatally by the parental world means having lost the larger world-
parents, and also the world at large as parent. For the world too shapes us,
nurtures us, teaches us. (Code 86)
Electra could not see the archetypal father in her personal father, which left her
unable to pull back her projection o f idealization. She fantasized that her father was
perfect and fantasy prevents the reality from living in the present. Electra’s negative
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mother complex prevented her from being nurtured and developing an internal sense o f
trust. She is a father’s daughter with no identity o f her own. She insists on valuing the
masculine and devaluing the feminine. In Euripides’ Electra, Clytemnestra knows that
her daughter is a father’s daughter as she tells Electra, “My child, your instinct has
always been to love your father. This is the way o f things. Some are their father’s
children while others love their mothers more than their fathers” (111; 1103).
More than two thousand years after the tragedies were written, playwright Eugene
O ’Neill addressed the issue o f bondage and parental complexes. Modeling his work on
Aeschylus’s trilogy, The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides,
O ’Neill wrote a trilogy o f his own, Mourning Becomes Electra: Homecoming, The
Hunted, The Haunted. Wondering why Electra’s involvement in the murders o f
Clytemnestra and Aegisthus was never addressed, he wrote his trilogy from Electra’s
perspective.
The play portrays a modern tragedy o f love, revenge, murder, and suicide in a
small New England town during the post-Civil War era. The Mannons are described as
stiff, wooden, square-shouldered, frozen, mask-like, cold, and emotionless, and their
mansion is described as a tomb that fits their disposition. On his return home from the
war, Orin (Orestes) asks, “Did the house always look so ghostly and dead?” (327).
The Mannons have secrets that no one dares to discuss. The grandfather of
Lavinia (Electra) swindled his brother out o f his inheritance after his brother fell in love
with their maid and she became pregnant. They had a son, and eventually married. Their
grown son, Captain Adam Brant (Aegisthus), comes back to the Mannon house for
revenge against his cousin Ezra Mannon (Agamemnon) when he refuses to help Brant’s
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mother on her death bed. Instead he falls in love with Ezra’s wife, Christine
(Clytemnestra), and together they plot Ezra’s death.
When Lavinia finds out that her mother is the cause o f her father’s death and is
having a love affair with Brant, she shares her discovery with her brother, Orin. At first
he does not believe her, but when he does, they plot the murder o f Brant. Although it is
Orin who pulls the trigger, Lavinia is the instigator who (in the 1978 film version) stands
behind her brother with piercing eyes, watching the murder. When Christine finds out
that the man she loves is dead, she cannot bear the pain and kills herself. Orin feels guilty
for his mother’s suicide. Soon he sees his sister in a different light and blames her for
their mother’s death.
After her mother is dead, Lavinia believes that she can finally have love and
happiness by marrying her suitor Peter. But Orin tells her that she cannot leave him for
Peter. She retorts, “I’m not your property! I have a right to love!” (401). Lavinia desires
to feel that everything about love can be natural and sweet. She believes that justice was
served when Christine killed herself, but Orin believes otherwise. He believes that
Lavinia cannot have happiness or escape retribution. “She’s got to be punished!” (407). It
is not long before Orin commits suicide himself.
Each member o f the Mannon family yearns for love, but they never seem to grasp
it for long. Orin and Lavinia are held hostage by their parental complexes. Orin’s
Oedipus complex and Lavinia’s Electra complex prevent them from detaching from their
parents so that they can live their own lives. Psychologically they stay children.
Consumed by their intense emotions, they never discover their own feelings or come in
contact with their own authority that helps in decision making. Unable to adapt to inward
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or outward reality, human contact is unsatisfactory. Orin and Lavinia project love and do
not understand how to love themselves, let alone others. By accepting their children’s
projections as their own reality, their parents are unable to set their children free, whether
alive or dead.
Early in the play, Ezra comes home from the war with the hope o f starting over.
He shares with Christine how he wants to change and remove the wall that has been
between them since their marriage. Ezra explains that death was so common during the
war that it freed him to think o f life. He said when he thought o f dying in battle “it didn’t
appear worth a thought one way or another. But listen— me as your husband being killed
like that seemed queer and wrong— like something dying that had never lived” (308). He
tells Christine that they should take a voyage to the other side o f the world. “I’m sick o f
death! I want life! Maybe you could love me now! (in a note o f fin a l desperate pleading)
I’ve got to make you love me!” (310). However, it is too late, because Christine has
already planned how to murder her husband.
In the morning Christine is agitated and w on’t talk to Ezra. He tells her that he
doesn’t feel at home and that Christine doesn’t feel like his wife. She retorts back that he
had acted like she was his wife last night! He tells Christine, “You were only pretending
love! You let me take you as if you were a nigger slave I’d bought at auction!” (314). He
was hoping that his homecoming would make a new beginning, but Christine tells him
that it is too late. She proceeds to tell him about Captain Brant and how she is in love
with him. “He’s gentle and tender, he’s everything you’ve never been. H e’s what I’ve
longed for all these years with you— a lover!” (315). While getting out o f bed, Ezra falls
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back and grabs his left side; he calls for his medicine, but Christine substitutes it with
poison.
Lavinia is a father’s daughter paralyzed by her Electra complex. “I love Father
better than anyone in the world. There is nothing I wouldn’t do— to protect him from
hurt!” (278). She will not marry and live her own life because o f her devotion to her
father. When Peter asks her to marry him, she declines. “I can’t marry anyone, Peter. I’ve
got to stay home. Father needs me” (271). When her father is dying, she runs to his bed
and pleads “Father, come back— don’t leave me alone. Tell me what to do” (317). She is
afraid to live her life without her father telling her how to live.
Lavinia does not try to hide her hate for her mother. When she finds out that her
mother is having an affair with her father’s cousin, she confronts her about never having
loved her father. Christine answers that she loved him before they were married, but that
“marriage soon turned his romance into— disgust” (287). Lavinia retorts back, “So I was
bom of your disgust! I’ve always guessed that, Mother— ever since I was little— when I
used to come to you— with love— but you would always push me away!” (287). Christine
cries that she tried to love her, but had never felt that Lavinia was bom o f her body: “I
never could make myself feel you were born o f any body but his! You were always my
wedding night to me— and my honeymoon!” (287). Lavinia wants to know why Christine
was able to love Lavinia’s brother. Christine explains that it was because she had become
resigned to the fact that she would live a life without love. Her husband was absent
during her pregnancy, she continues to explain to Lavinia, and “when Orin was born he
seemed my child, only mine, and I loved him for that!” (287).
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One can imagine the burden o f that kind o f love. After his return from the war,
Orin tells his mother, “I love you better than anything in the world,” and Christine cuts
in, “Oh, Orin, you are my boy, my baby! I love you!” (341). Orin’s hate for his father is
as obvious as his love for his mother. He tells his mother that he does not care that his
father is dead and when he sees him in his casket he says, “Death sits so naturally on you!
Death becomes the Mannons! You were always like the statue o f an eminent dead man”
(345).
After all the other Mannons have died, Lavinia believes that she will find love
with Peter. Trying to fill the house with beauty, she has the maid set out flowers. When
Peter arrives, though, she explains that the Mannons cannot be trusted with love and that
love cannot live in the house. Lavinia wants Peter to take her away from the house that
was “built as a temple of Hate and Death!” (416). She wants to go away to forget the
dead. Soon Lavinia realizes that the dead will become between her and Peter and that she
will eventually prevent Peter from being happy. She cannot live with the responsibility of
causing Peter to suffer. Lavinia breaks off her engagement to Peter and admits that she
must be punished. She asks herself, “Why can’t the dead die?” (419). Lavinia tells the
maid to get rid o f all of the flowers and decides to lock herself in the Mannon tomb for
punishment. Her belief is that she is destined to live in darkness alone with her dead
ancestors:
I’m not going the way Mother and Orin went. That’s escaping
punishment. And there’s no one left to punish me. I’m the last Mannon.
I’ve got to punish myself! Living alone here with the dead is a worse act
of justice than death or prison! I’ll never go out or see anyone! I’ll have
the shutters nailed closed so no sunlight can ever get in. I’ll live alone with
the dead, and keep their secrets, and let them hound me, until the curse is
paid out and the last Mannon is let die! {with a strange cruel smile o f
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gloating over the years o f self-torture) I know they will see to it I live for a
long time! It takes the Mannons to punish themselves for being bom!
(423)
In Aeschylus’s Oresteia the blood feud ends in a trial when Athena casts the tie
breaker vote that sets Orestes free. In Mourning Becomes Electra, the blood feud ends
when Electra sacrifices herself through literal bondage in the Mannon house. The tragedy
of Lavinia is that she is never able to leave her father’s house to discover who she is and
live her own life. She.becomes a victim destined to her own imprisonment. The Mannon
name, as well as the curse ends with her.
The search for love, connection, and freedom continue today and is as vital as it
was in the 5th century BCE. The search continues in the more modem writings o f the
Grimm brother’s in the nineteenth century and O ’N eill’s writing in the twentieth
century. Now in the twenty-first century, the search for love, connection and freedom
continues. Bondage that prevents one from living one’s own life is still relevant. David
Appelbaum writes about bondage and confinement in his article titled P lato’s Fetters:
We live our lives in a most subtle sort o f confinement— that o f our own
destiny. It fits us perfectly, imprisoning us with no chance o f escape since
we don’t know we are prisoners. [ ... ] Confinement provides a safe haven
where we can add balm to the wounds o f reality and keep our convictions
shatter-proof. In the prison o f destiny, we eat o f the lotus flower and, like
Odysseus, are nearly overcome by its potion. We lose track of the journey,
to home or another place, and forget the possibility that transformation
offers. (19-20)
We live in the prison of our own mind without knowing that we self-torture
ourselves. The process of individuation offers transformation to those who are willing to
take a look at themselves. Everyone has the right to break out o f bondage and live in
» freedom. “We give up wishing and, in freedom, begin to choose and to ask” (Nelson
167). If one stays in denial, blinded to the awareness that choice exists, one stays living
as a victim in bondage. The road to freedom is found by finding one’s individual path and
not following the path o f another. As people grow up and become responsible, they are
breaking family cycles (blood feuds) that have kept children silenced and in bondage for
generations. Growing up and becoming responsible allows one to be aware o f the way
one is living life. In other words, one becomes conscious. “The price o f consciousness is
the loss o f innocence. [ ... ] Lost innocence means the end of the old, simple ways and
the beginning o f new, complicated ones with responsibilities and serious moral
overtones” (72). Individuation is the lifelong process o f discovering how to live one’s
own life as authentically as possible.
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Chapter Four
Inanna
The Sumerian goddess “Inanna, or Ishtar as she was called in northern Sumeria,
was one o f three great goddesses o f the Bronze Age (3500-1250 BCE), the others being
Isis of Egypt and Cybele o f Anatolia” (Baring and Cashford 176). Inanna is Sumer’s
most revered deity. Queen of heaven and earth, she embodies cycles o f life-and-death in
the heavens as a lunar goddess as well as on earth as a fertility goddess. “ [JJustice and
right ordering o f Sumerian society were believed to derive from the goddess who, as the
lunar deity, the Great Mother, ‘ordered’ all forms o f life” (205). Inanna incarnates justice;
she is holder o f the me, the Laws o f the Civilization. Queen of the universe, Inanna, gives
life as well as takes it away.
In The Myth o f the Goddess: Evolution o f an Image, Anne Baring and Jules
Cashford, two Jungian analysts, are deeply indebted to the work o f Gimbutas and to
Jungian theory in their interpretation o f Inanna. They explain that Inanna embodies the
totality o f life. “Whatever existed was the life o f the goddess manifested as the life of
plant, animal, and human being. One divine life was incarnate in the life o f each and all,
one mother was the source o f everything” (196). As Queen of the universe, Inanna unites
the sky and the earth as well as the divine and the human. “All imagery o f Inanna as the
Great Mother suggests that in the Bronze Age nature was not yet split off from spirit”
(196). Everything earth produced was sacred and the unity of life was understood. The
images o f life and death were not separated. “Life and death were intertwined like the
strands of a rope, two aspects o f a whole. Inanna was identified with the unpredictable,
chaotic and destructive powers o f nature, as well as the nurturing and life-bringing
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powers'” (201). Inanna, not only embodies the wholeness o f life and death, “she is the
first goddess or god we know of who suffers as though she were human” (200).
In her book, Descent to the Goddess: A way o f Initiation fo r Women, Sylvia
Brinton Perera, another Jungian, is primarily interested in the relevance o f Inanna’s story
to the psychology o f modem women. She states that “we find the goddess in and through
our personal connections, incarnated in the place where we suffer our passions: in daily
life” (88). Inanna allows the divine to inhabit the body o f human beings.
New insights about Inanna are documented in an effective collaboration o f two
complementary specialists in the book, Inanna: Queen o f Heaven and Earth, written by
Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer. Wolkstein is a folklorist who collects and
records tales from many modem and ancient societies. Kramer is a world recognized
scholar o f Sumerian history. His is a cuneiformist whose career was devoted to restoring
and translating the written tales o f the ancient Sumerians.
Kramer states that Sumer, often referred to as the “cradle o f civilization,” is
situated in today’s southern Iraq, between modem Baghdad and the Persian Gulf
(Wolkstein and Kramer 115). “Sumer— or rather, the land that came to be known as
Sumer in about 3000 B.C.— was first settled during the fifth millennium B.C., by a
people speaking an unknown language that has left its traces in the names o f places and
occupations. Archaeologists now generally designate this people as Ubaidians” (115).
The Ubaidians established the settlements that gradually became the great urban centers
o f Sumer, and they invented and developed the cuneiform system o f writing, perhaps the
most important Sumerian contribution to civilization. “As their settlements prospered and
flourished, they were infiltrated and invaded by Semitic nomads from the Syrian and
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Arabian desert lands, and it was these Semites who became the politically dominant
group” (116). After years o f great developments and some disasters, Sumerian rule
ended, although the culture remained in form and content. The date 1750 B.C., “may be
said to mark the end o f ancient Sumer and the beginning o f Babylonia” (119).
Discovery o f the ancient Sumerian civilization took place less then one hundred
and fifty years ago, when clay tablets were found and excavated in the ancient cities of
Sumer. Kramer writes that these tablets “reveal the religious beliefs, ethical ideals, and
spiritual aspirations o f the Sumerians, and to some extent of the ancient world as a
whole” (Wolkstein and Kramer 125). Kramer played a key role in the recovery and
restoration o f the tablets that were discovered and excavated between the years o f 1889
and 1900, when the southern half o f Sumer was part o f the Turkish Empire.
The descent o f Inanna is one o f many Sumerian tales, myths, songs and legends
found in fragments of the tablets. After excavation, the tablets not only had to be pieced
together, they had to be read and translated. A complication that made translation even
more difficult was the fact that after excavation, the tablets were divided between the
Istanbul Museum and the University Museum o f the University o f Pennsylvania. Several
translations and revisions o f the Descent o f Inanna were published during the twentieth
century as missing parts o f the tale were discovered and/or deciphered. Parts o f the tale
are still missing, but it is believed that most o f the tale has been pieced together.
Inanna's Stories
Wolkstein explains that Inanna’s name literally means “Queen o f Heaven.”
Inanna is called the First Daughter o f the Moon and is the Morning and Evening Star (the
planet Venus) as well. She was a fertility goddess responsible for growth. Inanna’s story
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begins with her youth, moves through her womanhood, and ends in her maturity when
she returns from her decent into the underworld. “ [Bjecause o f her journey to the
underworld, she took on the powers and mysteries o f death and rebirth, emerging not
only as a sky moon goddess, but as the goddess who rules over the sky, earth, and the
underworld” (Wolkstein and Kramer xvi). Wolkstein made Inanna’s stories come alive
and to be meaningful for readers today. She states as “Inanna’s scribe: Samuel Noah
Kramer, gave me her words. I have sung them as best as I can. Now, we pass them on to
you” (xix).
The Huluppu-Tree is about the beginning o f time. It “is one of w orld’s first
recorded tales o f genesis” (137). The Great Below where Ereshkigal dwells is the House
of Death that awaits humankind.
In the first days when everything needed was brought into being [ ... ],
When the Sky God, An, had carried off the heavens,
And the Air God, Enlil, had carried off the earth,
When the Queen of the Great Below, Ereshkigal, was given
the underworld for her domain,
He set sail; the Father set sail,
Enki, the God of Wisdom, set sail for the underworld. (4)
A seed is planted; a single Huluppu-tree is planted by the Euphrates. The tree from the
river is plucked by Inanna and taken to her holy garden. “Thetree embodies the dual
forces o f the universe: Enki and Ereshkigal, consciousness and unconsciousness, light
and darkness, male and female, and the power o f life and the power of death” (144). A
serpent, Anzu-bird, and the dark maid Lilith find their homes in the tree. Inanna weeps.
Inanna asks her divine warrior brother, Utu, for help, but he declines. When she
asks her earthly brother, Gilgamesh, he agrees to help. With an ax, he strikes the serpent;
the bird flies away and Lilith flees into the wild. “The tree, which was bom from the
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confrontation o f life’s opposing forces, is now shared between Inanna and Gilgamesh;
women and man, goddess and mortal” (145). From the trunk o f the tree Gilgamesh carves
a throne and a bed for his holy sister, Inanna. She wishes for and at the same time fears
her throne and bed which symbolize her rule and her own sexuality. She must awaken to
her desires and fears in order to let them go. Inanna is ready to act on her own and begin
her queenship and womanhood with a new understanding of life’s forces.
Inanna and the God o f Wisdom is the story o f how Inanna received the me, the
holy laws of heaven and earth. Happy with her new womanhood and wondrous vulva, she
sets out to test her fertility powers. “Inanna’s decision to journey to Eridu can be
understood as a wish to be ‘fertilized’ by the sexual as well as the magical, spiritual, and
cultural powers o f life— both for herself and for her queendom” (147). Enki instructs his
servant, Isimud, to greet Inanna, offer her beer, and treat her as an equal.
Enki and Inanna drank beer together.

They drank more beer together
They drank more and more beer together
With their bronze vessels filled to overflowing,
With the vessels of Urash, Mother o f the Earth,
They toasted each other; they challenged each other.
Enki, swaying with drink, toasted Inanna:
“In the name o f my power! In the name of my holy Shrine!
To my daughter Inanna I shall give
The high preisthool! Godship!
The noble, enduring crown! The throne o f kingship!” (14)
After Enki toasts Inanna and offers her the treasures o f his kingdom, she accepts. As she
prepares to leave on the Boat o f Heaven, Inanna puts the me in order. “The first eight
grouping center on the priesthood and the rituals involved in serving the gods, the king,
and the temple” (147) and the last six grouping “are related to humanity’s concerns:
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political power, the secure dwelling place, crafts, husbandry, emotions, the family,
counseling, and decision” (147).
As soon as the beer wears off o f Enki, he asks Isimud where has his me gone.
Isimud replies that Inanna took them on the Boat o f Heaven. Enki wants his treasures
back; he instructs Isimud to find Inanna and tell her thathe want his me back. When
Inanna hears the request, she becomes indignant and calls Enki a liar.She instructs her
own servant, Ninshubur, to help her defend her treasures. When Inanna returns to Uruk
with all of the me, more me appears, with feminine attributes. Inanna’s adventure tested
her powers in battle and she emerges a fuller woman. “She passed from vulva to
provider, from hero to queen” (150).
The Courtship o f Inanna and Dumuzi takes place in the spring, the time for lovers.
The Sun God, Utu, “approaches Inanna and compares her sexual ripeness to the ripeness
of the growing grain” (151).
Young Lady, the flax in its fullness is lovely.

Inanna, the grain is glistening in the furrow.
I will hoe it for you, I will bring it to you. (30)
Utu is preparing her for her destiny and encourages her to take, Dumuzi, as her lover.
Gilgamesh is considered the bodily form o f the deity Dumuzi and “the bond that was
formed between Gilgamesh and Inanna in ‘The Huluppu-Tree’ is to be consummated in
‘The Courtship’ ” (151). At first Inanna does not like the idea as she cries out:
The Shepherd! I will not marry the shepherd!

His clothes are coarse; his wool is rough. (33)
However, Dumuzi persists and compares their families and equates him self to her brother
Utu. Inanna begins to desire Dumuzi and agrees to marry him. After he arrives with gifts,
Inanna begins to adorn herself in preparation for their love making. They share their
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sexual passion with each other. They drink each other’s milk and there is a mingling of
feminine and masculine. “The marriage is consummated officially and followed, almost
immediately, by Dumuzi’s withdrawl to kingly matters, and Inanna’s bereaved memories
o f a lover, a brother, who was once so sweet” (152).
In the last o f the poems, The Descent o f Inanna, the Queen o f heaven and earth,
Inanna, leaves her earthly world and journeys into the unknown to find her sister
Ereshkigal, Queen o f the Underworld.
The fate Inanna has chosen is the same that awaited every mortal
Sumerian. However, from archaeological evidence and literary tests, it
does not seem that the Sumerians believed death was the end. For them,
death marked the separation o f the body from the spirit. The body was
buried in the ground; the spirit moved on to a different realm in the kur.
Both at the royal cemeteries (Ur, Nippur, and Kish) and at smaller private
cemeteries that have been excavated, vessels o f stone and cups o f lead
with remnants o f food and drink have been found in the hands of, or next
to the bodies o f the dead. (159)
When Inanna’s descent and return is interpreted from a Jungian perspective, it is
viewed symbolically as a death and rebirth experience. In the process o f individuation, a
death o f the old ways,, attitudes, and behaviors take place before one is reborn into a more
spiritual understanding o f love and compassion. My focus lies in the descent and return
o f Inanna because it represents what Jungians call an ego death. In Jungian theory, to
become your authentic self, the ego must die. Jung believes that the process of
individuation usually begins or becomes easier in the second half o f life. Inanna’s descent
to find her rejected self, and what else life has to offer her, happens after she is a grown
woman and an established ruler. Women today tend to follow a corresponding
development and desire to learn more about the meaning o f life and discover who they
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are after their careers are developed and their families grown. “When Inanna’s ear opened
and she departed from Uruk, she was in midlife, married, with two children” (162).
From the Great Above she opened her ear to the Great Below.
Inanna abandoned heaven and earth to descend to the underworld. (52)
After Inanna’s ear is opened to the Great Below, her journey begins. “In
Sumerian, the word for ear and wisdom is the same” (156). Inanna prepares herself by
gathering her royal belongings, the seven me, the emblems of her power: her crown, her
small lapis beads, a double strand of beads, her breastplate, a gold ring, a lapis measuring
rod, and her royal robe. She finds her faithful servant, Ninshubur, and instructs her to ask
for help to bring Inanna back from the underworld if she does not return in three days
time. Ninshubur is told to go first to the Air God, Enlil, for help. Enlil is Inanna’s
grandfather on the father’s side.
Go to Nippur, to the temple o f Enlil.

When you enter his holy shrine, cry out:
O Father Enil, do not let your daughter
be put to death in the underworld. (53-4)
If Enlil is not willing to help, Ninshubur is then to go to the Moon God, Nanna, Inanna’s
own father.
Go to Ur, to the temple o f Nanna.

Weep before Father Nanna.
If Nanna will not help you,
Go to Eridu, to the temple of Enki.
Weep before Father Enki.
Father Enki, the God of Wisdom, knows the food o f life,
Fie knows the water o f life;
Fie knows the secrets.
Surely he will not let me die. (54)
Enki is Inanna’s grandfather on her mother’s side. Fie is the God o f Wisdom and the
Waters.
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Inanna sends Ninshubur on her way and continues her journey to the underworld.
She arrives at the first gate where the chief gatekeeper, Neti, wants to know her business.
Inanna explains that her sister’s husband, Gugalanna, has died and that she wants to
witness the funeral rites. After conferring with Ereshkigal, Neti tells Inanna that she will
need to pass through seven gates and at each gate she will have to leave behind one o f her
royal emblems. Inanna must bow low to enter.
Let the holy priestess o f heaven enter bowed low. (57)
At each gate, Inanna leaves one o f her royal emblems and each time she hears:
Quiet, Inanna, the ways o f the underworld are perfect.

They may not be questioned. (58)
After passing through seven gates, stripped naked and bowed low, Inanna enters the
throne room and sees her sister, Ereshkigal. The judges o f the underworld pass judgment
against Inanna, and Ereshkigal hangs her on a hook to die, like a piece o f rotting meat.
After three days have passed, Ninshubur sets out to ask Enlil for help to bring Inanna
back from the underworld. “Enlil, Inanna’s father’s father, the authority and director o f
the rational world, wants nothing to do with Inanna in the kur” (159). He angrily replies,
She who goes to the Dark City stays there. (61)
Ninshubur then goes to Inanna’s father, Nanna. He is “the good son o f Enlil, [who] also
has no appreciation or understanding o f why Inanna might have gone on such a journey”
(159). Both are angry with Inanna for pursuing a different path from their own. Nanna
also declines and angrily repeats his father’s words.
She who goes to the Dark City stays there. (62)
When Ninshubur goes to Enki, Inanna’s grandfather from her mother’s side, to
ask for help, he agrees to rescue Inanna. Enki is a trickster god and like Hermes, knows
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about the passage between the upperworld and underworld. “Not only does the God of
Wisdom value the journey she has set out upon, but he does not forget his daughter’s
significance. Inanna is Queen of Heaven and Earth; her existence is vital to all the lands”
(160). From under his fingernails, Enki brings forth dirt and makes two little creatures,
neither male or female, to send into the underworld to save Inanna. Enki gives the food of
life to the kurgarra and the food o f water to the galatur. He instructed them:
Go to the underworld,
Enter the door like flies.
Ereshkigal, the Queen o f the Underworld, is moaning
With the cries o f a woman about to give birth.
No linen is spread over her body.
Her breasts are uncovered.
Her hair swirls about her head like leeks.
When she cries, ‘Oh! Oh! My inside!’
Cry also, ‘Oh! Oh! Your inside!’
When she cries, ‘Oh! Oh! My outside!
Cry also, ‘Oh! Oh! Your outside!’
The queen will be pleased.
She will offer you a gift.
Ask her only for the corpse that hangs from the hook on the wall.
One o f you will sprinkle the food o f life on it.
The other will sprinkle the water o f life.
Inanna will arise. (64)
After the creatures communicate to Ereshkigal that they experience with her
suffering, she gives the corpse to them. The creatures sprinkle the food o f life and water
onto Inanna and she is resurrected. However, the judges from the underworld are not
pleased and they inform Inanna that if she wishes to return to the upperworld, she must
provide them with someone to take her place.
No one ascends from the underworld unmarked.

If Inanna wishes to return from the underworld,
She must provide someone in her place. (68)
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Inanna ascends to the upperworld while the galla, the demons o f the underworld,
cling to her side. The galla follow Inanna as she begins to look for someone to take her
place in the underworld. She cannot let Ninshubur go because she is her constant support.
She will not allow her son, Shara, to go because he sings hymns to her, or her son, Lulal,
because he is her right as well as her left arm. But when Inanna sees that her husband,
Dumuzi, did not mourn her while she was gone, she gives him the eye o f death. Inanna
picks Dumuzi to take her place in the underworld.
Take him! Take Dumuzi away! (71)
When the galla seize Dumuzi, he screams for help and prays to heaven, to Utu,
the God o f Justice.
0 Utu, you are my brother-in-law,

1 am the husband o f your sister.
I brought cream to your mother’s house,
I brought milk to NingaTs house.
I am the one who carried food to the holy shrine.
I am the one who brought wedding gifts to Uruk.
I am the one who danced on the holy knees, the knees o f Inanna. (72)
Dumuzi begs to be transformed into a snake. The merciful Utu changes Dumuzi into a
snake so he can escape.
Dumuzi has a dream that he cannot escape death. The galla are after him. His
sister, Geshtinanna, encourages Dumuzi to hide and she has the courage to not tell the
galla where he hides. However, they eventually seize him, even after Utu had changed
him into a gazelle.
The galla seized Dumuzi.

They surrounded him.
They bound his hands. They bound his neck.
The chum was silent. No milk was poured.
The cup was shattered, Dumuzi was no more. (84)
Until now Dumuzi had been ruling his kingdom without the feminine qualities of
compassion. Now “he turns to the feminine wisdom o f his younger sister” (164). His old
ways need to transform into a compassionate understanding o f how to live life. Dumuzi
must die.
Inanna weeps for Dumuzi. His mother and his sister weep for him. Geshtinanna’s
grief is so great that she offers to share her brother’s death. “Her offer is o f such
magnitude that the mind can scarcely grasp its meaning. The instinct to live, to survive,
becomes secondary. Love transcends life” (165). The depth of Geshtinanna’s grief
amazes Inanna. Geshtinanna awakens Inanna to compassion and love as she realizes what
is missing from her life. After she learns compassion and love, Inanna is ready to rule the
universe in a new mature wholeness that includes her male counterpart.
Inanna sees her own shadow, her dark cold-blooded power as she realizes that she
has pushed love away from her by condemning the husband who she loves to the
underworld. Inanna tells Dumuzi that he will go to the underworld half of the year and
his sister will go there the other half. Dumuzi will spend half o f his time with the light
side of Inanna and the other half with the dark side o f Inanna, Ereshkigal in the
underworld.
The union of opposite realms— that o f the fixed, willful, judgmental

aspects o f the sky deities with the ever-changing, emotional aspects of
earthly mortals— brings about greater personal integration for individuals
as well as greater prosperity and fertility for the gods and the community
o f Sumer. (167)
The mingling o f feminine and masculine with mortals and gods bring a new world
order to Sumer. With new understanding, all benefit.
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Inanna Lives
My first introduction to Inanna was in 1999 at a Journey into Wholeness (Brevard, North
Carolina), workshop. One o f the presenters was Paula Reeves, a therapist and workshop
leader. The titles o f her lectures and tapes are Embodied Spirituality: Inanna’s Lessons—
Then and Now. In her psychological interpretation, she interprets the decision o f Inanna
to leave her life and riches in the upperworld and to journey into the underworld to face
her sister, Ereshkigal, as a desire for independence. Inanna wants more than what she is
entitled to; she wants something o f her own doing. Her desire is to discover something
that expresses her own essence. She journeys to the inner world to find a deeper meaning
and connection with her self. When she meets her rejected sister, she is allowed to
witness the rejected parts o f herself. “The two sisters together represent the whole, the
unified ‘faces’ o f the Great Mother, the one imaging the light, the other the dark that
"kills’ it, yet restores it in the new cycle to its place in heaven” (Baring and Cashford
218).
Perera writes that today Inanna’s “descent and return provide a model for our own
psychological-spiritual journeys” (21). For contemporary women in the process of
individuation, a descent is necessary. “The descent is characterized as a journey to the
underworld, the dark night of the soul, the belly o f the whale, the meeting o f the dark
goddess, or simply as depression. It is usually precipitated by a life-changing loss” (78-
9). Usually one is thrown into a descent after experiencing a threatening illness, loss o f a
job, or loss o f a loved one. Gertrud Mueller Nelson writes that “[cjrisis in life is often to
be understood as the invitation and initiation to maturity— to another level o f true
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adulthood” (123). Inanna, however, is believed to have made a conscious decision to
descend, even though she thought that her me would protect her.
Inanna’s descent and return becomes relevant for women today when the journey
is interpreted from a depth psychological perspective. In the process o f individuation one
must make a descent and return in order to discover one’s hidden, repressed, and split off
parts. One moves from living life according to an externally adapted ego into a deeper
inner consciousness where one connects to the instinctual and archetypal life o f the self.
Maureen Murdock interprets the descent o f Inanna for contemporary women as
the quest for wholeness. One must journey into the depths of one’s own being to face
truths o f the self as well as o f the world. “It is a sacred journey. In our culture, however,
it is usually categorized as a depression which must be medicated and eliminated as
quickly as possible” (90). Murdock explains that underworld experiences are
characterized by confusion and grief, alienation and disillusion, rage and despair. “There
are no easy answers in the underworld; there is no quick way out. Silence pervades when
the wailing ceases. One is naked and walks on the bones o f the dead” (.Journey 88).
Perera explains that from her perspective, Inanna and Ereshkigal together make
the archetypal feminine whole. She states that the wholeness o f the multifaceted,
passionate, and strong feminine once held by Inanna has been lost in woman today. The
unity o f nature and spirit has been separated by patriarchy. Patriarchy’s splitting o f The
Great Goddess leaves a split in the personality that keeps the ego estranged from reality
and from one’s own full instinctual power. Patriarchy has repressed women’s need for
power as well as for passion. When only the bright side o f Inanna is acknowledged, the
dark side lives unconsciously in women and comes out in demonic form. “For until the
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demonic powers of the dark goddess are claimed, there is no strength in the woman to
grow from daughter to an adult who can stand against the force o f the patriarchy in its
inhuman form” (41). Every woman must suffer an ego death in order to discover herself.
Ereshkigal, goddess o f the underworld, “demands death, complete destruction of
differentiations and the felt sense o f individuality, and total transformation” (27). She
demands that one be stripped naked and bowed low in humiliation. Letting go o f the
illusion that the ego is in charge is experienced as death to the ego. In “The Conjunction,”
Jung writes that “the experience o f the s e lf is always a defeat fo r the ego” (CW 14: 546;
par. 778). As the ego dies, one learns that the total person is much more than the ego and
begins to listen to the soul where mind and heart live in conversation.
Not until one undertakes a journey to the underworld where Ereshkigal is
found and honored, can one be brought back to wholeness. “She must go down to
meet her own instinctual beginnings, to find the face of the Great Goddess, and of
herself before she was bom to consciousness, into the matrix o f transpersonal
energies before they have been sorted and rendered acceptable” (Perera 45).
Murdock writes that to become whole, a woman must reclaim the dark
mother in herself. She must find, face, and bring Ereshkigal back from the
underworld. Ereshkigal
embodies rage, greed, and fear o f loss. She is raw, primal, sexual energy;
she is feminine power split off from consciousness. She is woman’s
instincts and intuition ignored and derided [ ... ]. She is the place both of
death and o f new life lying dormant, the point o f necessary destruction and
of healing. In meeting Ereshkigal a woman confronts her own dark side,
the rage and fury left unexpressed for decades while she tried to please the
fathers above [ ... ]. Ereshkigal represents a woman’s relationship to the
workings o f the deep layers o f her psyche, her body, her instinctive nature.
She demands reverence and respect. She looks upon us with her eye of
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death, seeing what we ourselves do not want to see. She demands that we
look at those parts o f ourselves from which we have split. (104)
One cannot put back together one’s split off or repressed parts until all o f one’s parts are
accepted and reclaimed.
Today, many women are reclaiming these unwanted parts and discovering who
they are by descending into the spirit o f the goddess and leaving behind or sacrificing
who they once thought or were told they were.
A sacrifice o f ego ideals and illusions need to be made in order to break up

old patterns o f thought and behavior. The process requires both a sacrifice
o f our identity as spiritual daughters o f the patriarchy and a descent into
the spirit o f the goddess, because so much o f the power and passion o f the
feminine has been dormant in the underworld— in exile for five thousand
years. (Perera 8)
Descending into the feminine allows woman to discover her own power and passion.
“Like the goddess, Inanna, contemporary women are working to claim and reclaim their
powers from their personal fathers and the cultural fathers. One o f the first things we
learn in this process is how our power has been taken away from us” (Reis 239). Women
must recognize that their power has been taken away before they begin to gain the desire
to take it back.
Perera writes that a descent to the goddess is an initiation for women on a quest
for wholeness. Returning to the goddess is essential for women to connect to the Self, the
archetype o f wholeness. As a woman connects to the Self, there is a valuing o f one’s own
feminine view alone with a feeling o f connection to others. “For when a woman can feel
her own individual self-connected stance she can be open to receive another in,to her own
integral, strong vessel” (40). Inanna’s feminine qualities are “not the feminine as night,
but rather she symbolizes consciousness o f transition and borders, places o f intersection
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and crossing over that imply creativity and change and all the joys and doubts that go
with human consciousness” (16).
Inanna is the Great Mother goddess of all things; she is shepherd o f the people
and queen of the land. Perera states that Inanna is “goddess of fertility, order, war, love,
the heavens, healing, emotions, and song” (18). Poems about Inanna “portray her as
loving, jealous, grieving, joyful, timid, exhibitionistic, thieving, passionate, ambitious,
generous, and so on: the whole range o f affects is o f the goddess” (18). Inanna, as holder
o f the me has the power to judge, “she holds court to ‘decree fate’ and to ‘trample the
disobedient’ symbolizing the feeling capacity to evaluate, periodically and afresh, that
goes with the sense of life as a changing process” (17).
The changing process o f life is represented in life and death, seasons, and the
cycles o f the moon. “The moon is still the primal image o f the mystery o f birth, growth,
decay, death and regeneration” (Perera 49). As a human race, both men and women need
to honor the feminine and the cycles o f nature. Life and death are a continuing process in
which something new is born after something dies.
Healing occurs as one allows something to die in order to make room for
something new. Gertrud Mueller Nelson writes that “every day we die a hundred little
deaths— in losses, in failures, in longing and rejections. We die a little with every
separation and letting go, because we cannot love each other and give life unless we also
give each other the freedom to be separate” (130-31). Learning to let go prevents one
from getting stuck in hell and allows one to use the experience for growth, understanding,
and healing. “It is always critical whether this experience will become a blunder into an
eternal hell— hellish possession— or the cleansing passage through hell to the other side
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where the creative daimon awaits one” (Nelson 124). Although not everyone returns from
a descent, a death and resurrection allows one to emerge from hell healed with the gift o f
understanding and new confidence. Discovering one’s true nature occurs as a result of
passing through hell; in other words, one passes through illusions to see who one is and
has always been.
Women heal and learn to let go by returning to the nurturing earth. In contrast,
men’s healing is more active. James Hollis writes that the hero’s journey can be seen as a
descent into the unconscious. It is a place where one must do battle with the monsters that
waits in the depths o f one’s unconscious. If the hero survives the descent, he or she will
be transformed. “This transformation constitutes a death and rebirth experience. Who the
person was, and what his or her conscious world was like, is no more. All is transformed”
0Gods 72). From the male perspective, a descent into the unknown is about fighting one’s
monsters in order to discover wholeness.
Another male writer from the 13th century is Dante Alighieri, who describes his
journey to wholeness in The Divine Comedy. He is transformed by becoming aware that
he has the potential for darkness as well as lightness as he travels through hell, purgatory,
and heaven. Helen Luke interprets The Divine Comedy from a depth psychological
perspective as a description o f the path towards consciousness and wholeness for both
males and females. “Heaven and Hell are not places but states o f consciousness” (144).
The theme of Dante’s journey is the conscious return “to the Center, which is love made
whole, by the hard road o f individuation” (xviii). Love that moves the universe splits into
love and hate when individuals are separated from the Center. The goal o f life is to
discover the Center, find God, or to live in love. The “journey to God is the journey into
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reality. To know all things in God is to know them as they really are” (120). The gift of
seeing and living in reality allows one to witness and embody the divine. “Only love,
actual and incarnate on this earth, personal as well as impersonal, can take us through the
fire which burns away desire and fear” (93).
One is released from hell when one knows that one has a choice to move and
journey towards the heavens. The freedom to choose between truth and illusion is granted
when denial is broken. Heaven “is about— the relationship of the unique person to the
whole, and the final unity o f time and eternity which is bliss” (121). Heaven is
experienced when one understands that heaven and hell are one and the same thing.
Heaven and hell are not physical places one goes to after physical death; heaven and hell
dwell in the conscious minds of every human being living on earth now.
Murdock writes that “ [wjomen find their way back to themselves not by moving
up and out into the light like men, but by moving down into the depths o f the ground of
their being” (89). Inanna descents into the underworld to find herself; Dante climbs the
mountain o f Purgatory to find himself. Both die and are reborn with new awareness from
the feminine. Dante learns love and compassion from Beatrice and Inanns’s learns love
and compassion from her sister-in-law, Geshtinanna. When the feminine is awakened in
men and women, a softening occurs that allows one to embrace one’s self with a deeper
appreciation o f life. What existed before is dead, and what exists now is different. Both
Inanna and Dante discover and understand, although in different ways, that separation
from the self leaves one living a meaningless life. The journey towards a meaningful life
is a difficult process, whether one is male or female.
Human beings have always had an urge to understand and a yearning to discover
the Center, God, Love, or the Self. It is a never-ending journey because one never totally
arrives. There will always be more to discover and understand. Individuation is a lifelong
process that never ends. The journey is life itself, and it takes work every day to stay on
the path because “the way of individuation demands attention, not just for a few hours or
weeks, or a few minutes a day, but, ultimately, during every moment o f our lives” (Luke
52). Many times “in our weakness we are continually falling back into the neurotic, ego-
centered torment o f Hell, and so the new attitude must be constantly reaffirmed” (50).
Individuation is not perfection; it is wholeness and completeness. Every day, if one is
evolving, one makes a choice to stay on the path.
In the interior world there can be no conscious life, no true awareness

whatever without a continual dying— without repeated deaths o f old
attitudes, o f superficial desires, and finally o f every claim o f the ego to
dominance. The fact is that life after death, or rather life out of death, is
the truth o f the universe, natural as well as psychological and spiritual,
outwardly as well as inwardly. (Luke xi)
As one accepts death, life begins anew. “It is death which makes meaning
possible, for without it there would be only endless repetition and meaningless choice”
(Hollis, Archetypal 52). Life is a journey towards death. Death is part o f life, something
that our Western culture has a difficult time accepting. Learning to accept death means
more than accepting one’s physical death; it means accepting death every day in change,
growth, renewal, and loss.
James Hollis writes “nowhere are we more neurotic, that is, split internally, then
over the question o f mortality. The culture we have evolved is focused on acquisition,
fueled by the power complex and sustained by denial” (Gods 76). Because humans are
powerless in regard to mortality, they see it as the enemy. Hollis explains how in the
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Tibetan tradition death is viewed as a transitions and a period o f rebirth. It is the time for
revelation and the transformation o f consciousness. “We are each obliged to suffer, to
meditate upon, to incarnate, our unique experience o f the cycle o f sacrifice-death-rebirth,
and, equally to overthrow the gremlins o f lethargy and fear to become that which nature
so mysteriously offered” (77).
James Hillman writes that one starts dying the moment one is bom; therefore,
life’s aim is death. One cannot think of life without thinking o f death, and vice versa. It is
through death that life takes on value. The soul is dying daily as the body’s tissue dies
and as the body’s tissue is renewed the soul is also regenerated through this
transformative experience. Understanding death is both a dying from illusions o f the
world in hope that there is no death, and a dying into life, “as a fresh and vital concern
with essentials. Because living and dying in this sense imply each other, any act which
holds o ff death prevents life. 'How to die means nothing less than ‘how to live’ ” (<Suicide
61). Due to the fact that death could happen at any moment, when one embraces death,
one is naturally placed in the now o f life. Hillman states that death is not reserved for the
future. If one waits too long to accept it, one might not really experience death, but will
just be going through its physical motions. By refusing death, one refuses life. “Until we
can choose death, we cannot choose life” (63).
In “The Soul and Death,” Jung writes that most people think o f death as simply
the end; as like the sand that has run out o f the hour glass. He writes that people who are
afraid o f life in older age are usually afraid of life in their younger years. They are afraid
o f the normal demands o f life. When one thinks that death is simply the end o f a process,
one has a difficult time in seeing death as the goal. Life is a process that is directed
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toward a goal that is a state o f rest. “The curve o f life is like the parabola of a projectile
which, disturbed from its initial state o f rest, rises and then returns to a state o f repose”
(CW 8: 406; par. 798). When the psychological curve o f life refuses to conform to the
biological curve o f life, it lags behind. Many individuals hang on to their childhood,
fearing to live life with its climb to the summit as well as fearing life’s descent as they
cling to the peek they once attained. They never live in the moment. Fear o f life holds
them back on the upward climb just as the fear o f death keeps their focus on the summit
and not on the downward flow towards death.
Natural life is the nourishing soil o f the soul. Anyone who fails to go
along with life remains suspended, stiff and rigid in midair. That is why so
many people get wooden in old age; they look back and cling to the past
with a secret fear of death in their hearts. They withdraw from the life-
process, at least psychologically, and consequently remain fixed like
nostalgic pillars o f salt, with vivid recollections o f youth, but no living
relation to the present. From the middle o f life onward, only he remains
vitally alive who is ready to die with life. For in the secret hour o f life’s
midday the parabola is reversed, death is born. The second half o f life
does not signify ascent, unfolding, increase, exuberance, but death, since
the end is its goal. The negation o f life’s fulfillment is synonymous with
the refusal to accept its ending. Both mean not wanting to live, and not
wanting to live is identical to not wanting to die. (CW 8: 407; par. 800)
Embracing life means embracing death. Living without a connection to one’s
soul, leaves one in fear o f life as well as death. The soul is not as concerned with the
dying o f an individual as it is concerned with the attitude o f the dying person and his or
her adjustment to death. The soul understands far more than the ego does. Humans are
afraid to die when the ego is in conflict with the truths o f the blood. In “The Soul and
Death,” Jung writes, “Deviation from the truths o f the blood begets neurotic restlessness
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[ ... ]. Restlessness begets meaninglessness, and the lack o f meaning in life is a soul-
sickness whose full extent and full import our age has not as yet begun to comprehend”
(CW 8: 415; par. 815).
When death has not been embraced and experienced, it takes power over one’s
life and shows its face as fear. Fear of death prevents one from living an authentic life.
One must pass through the death o f a false identify and be bom into the Self, as in the
experience o f Inanna and Dante as well as the handless maiden. Only then is one living in
reality, in Love, in the Center where one lives in life, in the present, rather than living as
though one were dead, like Electra. Separation, parting, new attitudes, and mourning are
all soul deaths. The soul goes through many deaths while the body continues to grow.
What feels like a death to the body or the ego is life trying to break through to
consciousness. The old way o f doing things is trying to stay alive, while the soul is trying
to break down the old patterns. Renewal and growth are part o f life and a way to move
from one realm to another. Life is learning how to live in the tension o f opposites: body
and soul, inner and outer, matter and spirit, and life and death. Resistance to death is
resistance to life. A death o f ego consciousness that denies opposites is necessary to
encounter the reality of the soul. An ego death allows one to inhabit one’s body where
one can experience death, a realization which is a necessity in order to live a soulful life.
Death is not understood by the soul as an ending because the soul does not die; it only
renews itself. The soul is concerned with its continuation, in a flow o f what can be
thought o f as psychic energy. If energy is eternal then the soul is immortal; it lives
forever!
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Chapter Five
The Maiden Without Hands: An Individual Perspective
Once upon a time there was a husband and a wife. As children, they were both
very poor, so their dream o f gold and riches was understandable. Their first-born was a
girl. Three years later a boy was bom; however, the full-term little baby never took his
first breath because he was bom dead. The father held his tiny son, but the mother could
not. Three years passed again and another son was born. This son lived, but only for
awhile. In his prime, a terrible disease took his life. The parents were so devastated that
they couldn’t talk to anyone about his death. Then all o f their attention went to their
daughter because she was all that they had left. They loved her very much, yet were
afraid to lose her. The father protected his daughter and wanted to keep her safe. He
never wanted her to feel the pain o f the sometimes wicked world.
One day a wizard came to the father and made him an offer. The wizard would
supply him with all the gold and riches he could ever want if he were to work very hard
everyday. This sounded too good to be true; however, if it were true, the father could
afford to keep his daughter safe and at home forever. When the wife saw all their new
riches, she was thrilled. She encouraged their daughter to stay at home and reminded her
to appreciate everything that her parents did for her.
The father continued to work day in and day out; he took care o f everything and
made all the decisions in the family. The daughter was devoted to her father as well as his
values. She didn’t have to do or think about anything; everything was done for her. Life
was lived in innocence and obedience, but her own development froze as she became
more dependent and helpless. At times, the daughter thought about leaving, but was
afraid that she couldn’t take care o f herself; besides she didn’t want to lose her parent’s
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love. They had threatened to take away their love as well as all o f her riches that they had
given her, if she ever decided to leave.
Frozen with indecision, she didn’t know her own mind, or even know what she
wanted. Eventually her hands became numb, paralyzed, as if her parents had chopped
them off. She felt useless, as though she couldn’t do anything for herself. Without the
means to help herself she felt inadequate. Tier attitude and her life became mechanical,
without much meaning. Feelings were never allowed in their family, so they all moved
through .life like well-greased machines. The daughter fantasized about her knight in
shining armor coming to rescue her. She was lonely and longed for something, but didn’t
know what. Tears came and left often, without her ever knowing why.
After many years o f not doing for herself, she became resentful. She had spent
half a lifetime trying to please her father, without success. Unable to please her father or
herself, she became rigid, opinionated, bossy, greedy, loud, and controlling. When she
discovered that she really didn’t like who she was becoming, she decided to leave. She
faced the fear of losing her parents as well as their riches. In order to begin the search for
her true self, she had to know that she could live without either.
With a few apples and pears she left her parents house and headed into the dark
forest alone. She wondered for days until one day she came to a little cabin with a sign on
the door that read “Freedom.” The cabin wasn’t big or adorned with gold, but it was
welcoming and peaceful. An angel lived there who taught the girl how to love and
become a human being, rather than a robot. The angel helped the girl reflect on her life
and discover her own truths. She had to mourn the death o f her brothers, the loss o f her
parents, and all the wounds from her unlived life.
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After a while, the girl began to feel blood move into her hands. The feeling was
coming back! Soon she felt blood pulsating through her whole body. She was healing,
becoming an authentic human person. She discovered that her knight in shining armor
was actually an inner guide who had always been with her. It was only after the girl was
able to hold still long enough to begin her inward journey, that she was able to discover
her inner guide who helped her rescue herself. A mythic marriage took place that made
her whole. She was one unto herself; she was now able to take care o f herself. With new
hands, she could make her way in the world and eventually she was able to make a home
that was her own. It was there where she lived happily ever after.
The Grimm Brothers’ “Maiden without Hands” fairy tale is about the maturing
young feminine. In Here All Dw’ell Free, Gertrud Nelson states that fairy tales “teach us
about our culture and they return to us essential psychic facts about ourselves” (3). In The
Fisher King and The Handless Maiden, Robert Johnson writes that “the handless maiden
is the most eloquent portrayal o f the wounding o f the feeling function as experienced by
women that is available to us” (56). He points out that feeling brings us a sense o f value
and worth. “Without feeling there is no value judgment. To lose one’s feeling function is
thus to lose one of the most precious human faculties, perhaps the one that makes us most
human” (4).
A society dominated by masculine principles clutches the feminine in its hands
until a woman gains enough courage to take her life into her own hands. In order to move
beyond victimization in a masculine-dominated culture, a woman must become
responsible for her own life. The symbolism o f handless maiden is relevant in today’s
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society for women o f any age. Many women continue to suffer from a wounded feeling
function, which leaves them with a sense o f inferiority and uselessness.
In a patriarchal society, Johnson explains, the damage done to the feminine
feeling side o f the personality is not easily recognized. He calls ignoring one’s feeling
function or repression o f the feminine, a bargain with the devil. It happens every time a
person, male or female, bargains for a practical advance at the cost o f a feeling value. “To
buy material comfort at the cost o f feeling value is the devil’s bargain” (62). Johnson
believes that the wounded feeling function is the cause o f emptiness that plagues our
modem age.
When one does not believe in an inner life or that one does not have to do inner
personal work, one makes a deal to value only masculine principles and outside forces.
The devil tries to trick one into believing that money, power, and the external world are
more important than the natural gifts of the world, which are the domain o f the feminine
embodied in the mother archetype.
This dilemma can be described as the contrast between the mother

complex and the mother archetype. The mother complex is the regressive
part o f our psychology that wants to go back to an earlier level of
adaptation and be cared for by mother who gives all and requires no effort
from one. The mother complex is the art o f getting something for nothing
by a regression o f consciousness. The mother archetype is the bounty o f
nature, which gives us our life and all that we need for that life and which
is anyone’s legacy by the fact o f being alive. The mother archetype is the
art of living peaceable with the bounty o f nature, which is pure gift and
lies within the ecology o f the natural order. (Johnson, Maiden 61)
When one tries to get the most out o f life with little effort, one is in the hands o f a mother
complex, living unconsciously, and when one is aware o f the wonders o f the world, one
is most likely in the hands of the mother archetype.
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In Ju n g ’s Typology, James Hillman explains that the feeling function is related to
the mother complex. The mother-complex is not the personal mother, but the way in
which the psyche has taken up the mother. Western culture does not model how to feel
one’s feelings; it models how not to feel. The mother passes on her own fear o f negative
feelings and how not to feel to her children. “Without the archetypal perspective, nature
receives a one-sided, only good definition, and everything that does not accord is called
‘unnatural’ and negative” (114). Rather than allowing the archetypal mother to nourish
by offering shelter, trust, and deep understanding, the psyche takes on fear o f feelings and
tries to prevent experiencing them.
When the intensity o f feeling connected to, or better, bound by, the
mother-complex reaches the proportions o f affect, we find the deepest
source o f feeling. Then the feeling function is not free to operate as an
instrument o f consciousness, but brings with it violent rages and
passionate exaggerations of every sort. These overwhelming affects that
swamp the vessel o f the feeling function can cause such suffering, such
utter helplessness, that we find ourselves preferring not to feel at all rather
than run the risk, each time we attempt to use the feeling function, o f the
tidal wave on which is a borne. Lest feeling be carried away by reaction,
we prefer not to react. So does the mother-complex work toward keeping
feeling under the domination o f affect and cutting us off from its use.
(115)
The mother-complex represses expression, so the child learns not to express or feel
because “the feeling function develops mainly through expressing feeling” (115).
A positive personal mother nourishes the wholeness of the child by allowing the
expression o f and accepting both positive and negative feelings. When one is free to feel
one’s feelings, instead o f feeling guilt and shame for valuing what one’s parents or
society does not, one is freed from the mother complex. There is a sense o f liberation
when one is able to deny a request or put dislike into words. “Freedom is shown by
access to one’s feelings and the use of one’s feeling function” (Hillman, Typology 118).
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The handless maiden is content living without expression or consciousness for
awhile. She lives unconsciously tied to her mother and father complexes. At first she
believes what her parents tell her; she does not need to learn on her own. Her parents tell
her what is important and do everything for her. In time, however, the handless maiden
begins to listen to her own inner wisdom, her own authentic inner father’s voice and inner
mother’s feelings, and wants to do for her self. She wakes up to the reality that she
deserves a life o f her own.
Consciously taking one’s life into one’s hands takes courage because it is hard
work that is usually painful. “As long as one blames someone outside or holds some
institution responsible for the problem, there is little chance o f learning or enhancing
consciousness” (Johnson, Maiden 102). There is a cost to consciousness; the cost is
suffering the loss o f innocence and becoming responsible. One must be willing to pay the
price.
The Handless Maiden tale is about growing up and becoming free. One cannot be
free if one does not know how to make up one’s own mind or to choose.
The Handless Maiden part o f ourselves continues to be afraid to state,

even to know her own mind or what she wants, because deep down she •
fears that to have any needs will jeopardize the relationship. Ironically,
that’s exactly what does jeopardize the relationship. So inclined to be
passive, she is not yet able to be assertive. Assertion sounds too harsh for
her—to her, it still sounds aggressive. So her solution is to be passive-
aggressive: in chilly silence she goes about her business, punctuating the
tension with huffs and little snits o f hurt [ ... ]. Choices are often
paralyzing for her. She doesn’t have a clue what she wants. She can’t
afford to want. She may discover she hates what she ends up choosing.
(Nelson 109)
When the handless maiden refuses to have an opinion of her own, she stays disconnected
from herself and the world. She was never taught to make choices, have needs, an
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opinion, or to be herself. Her belief was that she could not survive without her family.
Her family does not trust feelings, so they get ignored and repressed. When feelings are
not acknowledged and expressed, they occasionally come out in excessive emotional
outbreaks that cloud value judgments.
Without feeling, the handless maiden’s family’s consciousness freezes and they
live in unremitting greed. Their devotion is to the father, his word, work, and riches. The
family functions as a unit, fearing any sort of change; all effort goes to defenses that keep
the status quo.
The collective family taboo that forbids awareness or true autonomy has
great gravitational pull to keep the roving family member in place. Any
efforts on the person’s part may be defined by the rest o f the family as
ungrateful or disloyal, crazy or dangerous. When someone shifts into
consciousness and out o f an assigned familial role it threatens to
unbalance the whole family. (Nelson 72).
When a woman exists under the control o f her father, her boss, or patriarchal
society, she is left with damaged hands and unable to do for herself. She suffers with
feelings o f inferiority and uselessness. If life is not in one’s hands, life becomes
meaningless. The handless maiden finds her authentic hands after she gets in touch with
her feelings. She learns how to move from a helpless victim into a responsible human
being. Her journey is about discovering that she has the right to her own opinions, voice,
authority, and life. In the process o f becoming whole, she becomes in charge o f the
progress o f her own development by taking her life into her own hands.
Wholeness occurs when a psychic union o f opposites takes place. Nelson
describes this union as “the overlapping o f any and all opposites to create a single, new
reality— hope of every human soul— where opposites, though separate, become equal,
balanced, shared and fruitful” (Nelson 6). There is a balancing “o f yin to yang, women
and men are inoculated with a bit o f their opposites and do not complete one another in a
clean, straight division o f halves but rather tumble and flow into one another in a
spiraling, perpetual motion” (44). Wholeness is a lifelong process that consists of
continual balancing as material from the unconscious is made conscious. The process is
never completed because there will always be more to make conscious.
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Chapter Six
Summary
Since the beginning o f time, the human race has evolved in adaptation to the
prevailing physical and social environments. We know that questions about self-
knowledge and the meaning o f life have been asked since the time o f Socrates, and we
believe that they were also asked in the Sumer culture o f Inanna and perhaps earlier. We
have every right to believe that women’s desire for growth and development has also
been part o f human experience throughout all that time. Nevertheless, the questions we
ask ourselves today, in the twenty-first century, reveal that important unresolved issues
linger on. How might we as the human race evolve into being with a more conscious
caring relation to the world? How do we change our perceptions and negative patterns of
behavior into healthier perceptions and patterns o f behavior? How does society heal its
wounds? If individuals affect their society, which I believe they do, then it is up to each
person to heal his or her wounds. If everyone could be responsible for healing their own
wounds, could a healthier and mutually rewarding society be created?
Robert Johnson states that our society’s emptiness and unhappiness is caused by
our wounded feeling function. Our culture does not value feelings and teaches us how not
to feel by staying busy and valuing thinking. We are a society disconnected from our
feelings and are uncomfortable when they break through. When feelings are ignored and
repressed, they often come out in excessive and negative expression. Through my
research, I have discovered that many modern women are beginning to see the
importance of connecting to their bodies in order to gain access to their feeling function.
By gaining access to their feeling function and learning to lead life from their heart, they
are becoming more fulfilled human beings. Before one is able to take responsibility for
one’s feelings, however, one must be aware that there is a disconnection between mind
and body. Through the process o f individuation, the concept first understood by Jung,
many women are healing and becoming whole authentic individuals. The split between
the loving, nurturing, Madonna, and the devouring, destructive, whore is lessening.
From the moment one is born there is a longing to return to that peaceful place
where everything is taken care of. At the same time, there is another longing that has to
do with growth, development, and evolving. In other words, one wants to stay
unconscious while at the same time one wants to gain consciousness. In unconsciousness
we try to keep the status quo where familiarity breeds safety and security and in
consciousness we continue to challenge the status quo by embracing the mystery. One
must face one’s fear o f the unknown if one is to move past the denial o f unconsciousness.
Chapter Two looked at the individuation process from a feminine perspective.
The first thing a woman needs to understand is how much our male-dominated culture is
a part of who she believes she is. She needs to understand how her own inner masculine
has conspired with patriarchy to keep her in line and separated from herself. A woman
needs then to stand up to the masculine and know that feelings are important. She needs
to purge all that she was taught that she was, so that she can begin believing in her own
feminine senses and reconstruct her thinking and feeling functions. When women begin
to feel comfortable with their own thoughts and feelings, they transform the way they
relate to the world, others, and themselves. Their patterns of behavior change and they
understand that just because everyone is doing something, doesn’t mean that it is right.
In chapter Three I look at the father-daughter relationship. The personal father
who is out of balance and not connected to his feelings, teaches his daughters to behave
the same way. It is normal for a young girl to look up to her father and see him as a god,
but when she grows up it is important for her to pull back her projection and see him as
he really is, human. Otherwise the daughter stays a victim of patriarchy, both inner and
outer, and never learns how to relate to herself or be herself. When the inner and outer
masculine rule the daughter’s psyche, it leaves her thinking that she is dependent on
masculine ways. Revisiting the myths allows us to see the deep psychological
understanding o f ancient times as well as to make the stories relevant for modem time.
Where the handless maiden was able to leave her father’s house and gain access to her
own life, Electra was caught in her emotional pain that prevented her from growth and
healing. In my own life journey a central transitional moment was my discovery that my
inner masculine was such a big part o f my personality. It was about standing up to my
personal father as well as standing up to my inner masculine that ruled my life.
Chapter Four explores the m otif o f the underworld journey. The underworld is
where most women go in order to let go o f who they thought they were, and to transform
into their own authenticity. Inanna descends to the underworld in order to die. She has to
die in order to be reborn; the old has to die to make way for the new. The journey to the
underworld is not easy and sometimes one does not return; a psychotic episode or a literal
death can take place. Although death is a part o f life, most people in our culture fear
death. Facing death is a way to grow and adapt to the continuing changes in life.
I use the handless maiden tale in Chapter Five, to share my personal story of
handlessness. My story is developed further in my memoir, and I believe it is similar to
the stories o f many other women, who think o f themselves as helpless victims. Through
my own individuation process, I discovered my own hands and became responsible for
104
my own thinking as well as my feelings. However, I first had to get in touch with my
body which was foreign territory to me. I had to face my anger as well as my passionate
desires before love was allowed to enter my body. Embodied love allows me to think
with my heart. I am in my own power, and throughout the ups and downs, my life is now
in my own hands.
The writing o f my memoir and dissertation has given me a better understanding o f
myself and my issues. Through the process o f individuation, I believe that I have
transformed my neurotic misery into a conscious reality that accepts the pain as well as
the joy o f life. The new eyes with which I view m yself and the world have changed; old
patterns of behavior have died and made way for new patterns o f behavior. My life has
meaning now, and I am no longer a victim. I hope that by writing my memoir and
honestly talking about the things that most women would rather not talk about might
make it easier for others to do the same.
We, both the men and women o f our world, can evolve to the good o f humankind
if we both learn how to connect to our bodies and our feeling function. The thinking
function is unbalanced without the feeling function. Both feminine and masculine
qualities dwell in all human beings and it is to our advantage as human being to
acknowledge them and allow them to communicate. As Christine Downing said, we want
to live in a post-patriarchal world and not a contra-patriarchal world.
As years pass, we will continue to evolve. However, if we are presently on the
wrong path, it is up to us to take note and change our direction. By reading, writing, and
trying to understand individuation, we can share our changed behavior and model
105
embodied love. I know it is a difficult process, and it feels impossible when we read the
daily news, but change starts with each person noticing that there could be another way.
106
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Frozen Imagination:
My Journey from Literalism to Myth
I f I really see you, I will laugh out loud, or fa ll silent, or explode into a thousand pieces.
A nd i f I d o n ’t see, I will be caught in the cement and stone o f my own prison.
— Jalal al-Din Rumi1

13th Century Persian Poet and Mystic
Janet Croft Chatwin
Dedicated to my son Troy Chatwin

&
my therapist Kim Pederson
Contents
Poem by Janet Croft Chatwin iii

Words by Heraclitus iv
Preface 1
Introduction 3
Poem by Mary Oliver 13

Chapter One Perfect Childhood: Breaking through Denial 14
Poem by Rainer Maria Rilke 20

Chapter Two Opening to the Invisibles 21
Poem by Meister Eckhart 27

Chapter Three Discovering God 28
Poem by David Whyte 35

Chapter Four Alchemy: Turning Lead into Gold 36
Poem by Pablo Neruda 43

Chapter Five Facing Death: Ego’s Biggest Fear 44
Poem by Derek Wolcott 49

Chapter Six New Eyes: Embracing Change 50
Poem by Rumi 56
Chapter Seven Seized by the Stupid Complex 57
Poem by St. Francis of Assisi 70

Chapter Eight Harmony 71
Notes 78
ii
Pain
Pain,
real pain,
crippling pain.
Where? Everywhere!
Hands,
pain comes,
crippling pain comes,
comes from chains,
heavy chains,
leg chains,
heavy.
Flames,
red flames,
fire flames all around.
Let go— release the pain!
Calm fire after flames,
unlocked chains,
leaves pain,
peace remains.
Janet Chatwin
111
All people ought to know themselves
and everyone be wholly mindful.
Heraclitus
iv
Preface
The idea o f writing my memoir became compelling for me when I was
considering a topic for my dissertation. Writing my memoir would give me voice and
identity, and contribute towards meaning in my life. The silencing o f women that had
begun long before I was bom was demanding attention in my own life. I feel that the
more women find their voices in current times, the easier it will be for women in the
future to find theirs.
Most o f the women in my family have had difficulty in expressing themselves. I
was told by my aunt that my grandmother, whom I barely remember, said, “We have
thick tongues.” Although my tongue does not look thick, this image is good to describe
how I feel at times when I talk. Patricia Hampl writes that the real job o f a memoir is to
seek congruence between stored image and hidden, emotion, a place where they can live
together. Bringing the image and emotion together heals not only the person writing the
memoir, but the ancestors who went before and the generations yet to come.
Before I had a clue o f what bringing image and emotion together meant, I was
trapped in a literal, rigid, rational mind. That mindset froze my imagination and
prevented me from feeling any feelings. The blocked feelings stored in my body helped
to make my body rigid as well. My frozen mind and body kept me separated from
knowing who I was. Only after I softened enough to start crying, did the warmth o f my
tears begin to crack the ice that imprisoned my body and mind. Hell is a place in the mind
that prohibits any form o f movement! It keeps one from the things that humans desire
most, human contact and divine knowledge. As I continue to thaw I am beginning to
know what it feels like to be a human being. I now feel both pain and joy, and at times, I
am not sure there is a difference. I am writing my memoir so I can put back together the
unlived parts of my life and witness the unfolding o f my own beauty. I hope my memoir
will give me back the voice I lost.
Introduction
Socrates believed that an unexamined life is not worth living. When I attended a
Jungian conference in Ireland two years ago I heard this ancient statement reversed: an
unlived life is not worth examining. Either way, examining one’s life is the only way to
make sense out o f life and find meaning; however, it takes courage to examine one’s life
because usually one has to go against society, family, and one’s own ego. It involves an
encounter with what needs to change— and the ego does not like change. I remember
hating change and not understanding why things needed to change. Only after I found the
courage to examine my own life did I begin to understand the dependability o f change;
eventually, I learned to embrace change. I believe that facing one’s self is the scariest
thing one will ever have to do in a lifetime. Not only is it difficult, but it needs repeating
over and over again because there is always something new to discover. The most
important journey o f a lifetime is the journey towards understanding one’s self.
C. G. Jung calls this journey towards discovering one’s self “individuation. ” He
uses “the term ‘individuation’ to denote the process by which a person becomes a
psychological ‘in-dividual,’ that is, a separate, indivisible unity or ‘whole’.”3 1 see
individuation as the lifelong process o f becoming a balanced, authentic, whole person.
Individuation develops as one suffers a conflict o f opposite energies until integration
allows one to view these opposites as two poles o f the same energy force within. There is
a movement back and forth between the opposites until one is flexible enough to hold the
tension of ambivalence. When opposites are balanced there is a better understanding of
the way things are; imbalance leaves humans wounded, unable to see reality. “The world
into which we are bom is brutal and cruel, and at the same time o f divine beauty.”4
Humans are simultaneously good and bad, masculine and feminine, and beautiful and
ugly. Simply stated, individuation means becoming oneself!
I see individuation as the journey everyone is on, whether one is aware o f it or
not. For most o f my life, I was not aware that life was a journey let alone a process. Life
for me was defined and definite without confusion or mystery; I saw in black or white
and people were either good or bad, never both. I was consumed with my exterior world,
unaware that there was an interior world. Reality, as I saw it, was limited to what I could
see or touch; it had nothing to do with anything invisible. It was difficult, therefore, for
me to grasp the concepts of God, metaphor, mythology, magic, or love. My imagination
was frozen and my literal mind kept me rigid, opinionated, and controlling, issues I
continue to struggle with; however, when I am aware o f these negative aspects, I am in a
better position to deal with them.
Individuation begins by facing what Jung calls the shadow, the negative side of
the personality that everyone wants to hide. “This ‘inferior’ personality is made up of
everything that will not fit in with, and adapt to, the laws and regulations o f conscious
life.’0 Generally, shadow material is ignored and/or repressed. When I was stuck in a
literal one-sided perspective, I did not have a clue that I needed to change. I thought that
my problems were caused by outside forces. My rigid perspective prevented me from
connecting to my soul and body. I call this disconnection, the deep freeze. Disconnected
from my body, I was unaware o f my feelings and lived without connection to myself,
others, and the world. I suffered psychological pain, but I couldn’t feel the aches and
pains because I wasn’t in my body. I often wonder if this is why both my father and
brother needed no pain medication after major surgery. Was the reason that they didn’t
feel physical pain because they were not in their bodies?
Jung believes that experience is everything, and that “one possesses nothing
unless one has experienced it in reality. Hence a purely intellectual insight is not enough,
because one knows only the words and not the substance o f the thing from inside.”6
When one is not in the body, nothing is experienced. It took me a long time o f examining
my life before I understood that I was not living in my body. After two years of
psychotherapy and massage therapy I finally was able to inhabit my body and feel the
pain of my unlived life. Eventually, I was able to move from a literal one-sided
understanding of reality to a mythical understanding, a way of seeing reality that allows
for multiple meanings and perceptions. It was then that events in my life became
meaningful experiences. The deep freeze was thawing.
When I learned to feel and experience life, my perception changed and my heart
opened to love. Understanding the world differently changed my thinking as well as my
behavior. I was no longer a victim blaming the outside world for my life, but a person
responsible and in charge of my life. I fell in love with my own destiny. I had to see the
duality in myself before I could see my unity and connection to God. The insatiable
yearning to know one’s self is actually the desire to know God. For I do not understand
God to be a male sitting in heaven waiting to judge people after they die, but as a creative
energetic life force that lives in everyone and in everything. In simple terms, I understand
God to be the. creative force that is expressed in such concepts as truth, love, and reality. I
also understand God to be a force that is greater than one’s own ego. The further away
from my ego, the closer I come to my authentic self, and the more I feel connected to
myself and others. Experiencing the authentic self is difficult to describe because it is
different for everyone. However, I believe when one is in their authenticity it gives one a
feeling o f gratitude and sense o f grace that penetrates every cell in the body.
Experiencing the divine in the body elicits in an indescribable sense o f awe that blends
the mind and body together producing an inner sense o f security that no outside security
can match. God is an experience, an unexplainable encounter. I call this experience
“embodied love” and believe that it is desperately needed to heal our wounded souls.
Individuation is a spiritual journey that teaches one how to live divinely. Most of
my life was lived in a spiritual poverty that kept me feeling empty inside. I remember
vividly a perfect birthday about twenty years ago that I spent with the man I loved. We
skied all day and dined that evening. Afterwards I started to cry and couldn’t stop. When
my boyfriend asked me what was wrong, I could not answer! I DID NOT KNOW!
Everything was wonderful, but something was wrong. Even though everything was great
in my outer life, at the time, I didn’t understand that I was cut off from my inner life,
from a connection to my soul. Without a connection to my soul, I felt empty because half
o f me was missing.
An experience o f awe or horror usually changes a person. It was my brother’s
death from cancer in 1978 that changed my life. That was the turning point in my life that
forced me to turn inward. Although it took me many years o f wondering what was wrong
with me and before I finally started to read self-help books, it took me another ten years
before I got into therapy. I remember thinking, about ten years after my brother’s death,
that it was time to go to the cemetery. When I went there, I quickly looked at his grave
and said to myself, “Now, that wasn’t so bad.” No tears were shed and I was quickly on
my way. I felt nothing, because I was still disconnected from my body. After therapy,
eight years after my first visit, I returned to my brother’s grave. This time, the moment I
saw his grave, I fell upon it and cried until my tears were dry. I lingered until I inhabited
my body enough to begin mourning my brother’s death. I talked to him as I had never
talked to him before, and for the first time I believed I understood my brother’s pain as
well as my own.
I don’t know what would have happened to me without therapy. Probably I would
have stayed a frozen lady disconnected from my emotional and spiritual life. My therapist
provided a mirror so I could look at myself, something I had never done before. My
parents hadn’t taught me to look at m yself because they never were taught to look at
themselves. One cannot teach something one does not know. My authoritarian father told
me what to do and how to think. My mother always said, “You don’t really feel that
way.” In my family we were allowed to be sick, but we were not allowed to feel our
feelings. My parents taught me to repress any negative feelings that I might have had and
to be the person they wanted me to be. Who they wanted me to be had nothing to do with
who I was.
I tried to make my parents happy and actually felt as if it were my responsibility
to take care of them and make them happy. I remember the day we had a family
discussion where my mother asked my father what he wanted from me and my son. My
father’s reply was simple. “I just want them to please me.” That is all he wanted! Some
time prior to this discussion, my son, Troy, had told me that “Grandpa is un-pleasable.”
By the time of this discussion, I already knew that I couldn’t help my father. It was his
responsibility to please himself, and not mine.
I also became aware that my father’s criticism o f me gradually became part o f my
own personality, I internalized it. My father’s criticism became my internal critic,
“negative father complex.” I idolized my father. My identification with my father left me
without an identity o f my own and with no knowledge about how to take care o f myself. I
didn’t know how to make choices, see clearly, or stick up for myself; my critical
masculine kept me a victim. My internal critic fed my separation from myself, prevented
me from connecting to my feeling. My “mother complex” would not allow me to feel. It
wasn’t until I began unraveling my father and mother complexes by feeling my feelings
and standing up to my inner critic, that I was able to find my own authority, self
confidence, and independence. 1 began to see that as we humans become less and less in
touch with our bodies and animal instincts, we become more un-animal like but also
more un-human; in other words, we become more like mechanical robots in stead of
human beings.
I now understand that I was not living my own life. I worked for my father, drove
a company car, and lived in a house that my father owned. I also felt as though I had no
right to change my life. This perception left me passive, dependent, and helpless. When
one is living an inauthentic life, I believe that it causes psychological unhappiness and
issues as well as creating other illnesses to manifest.
I did not know that I was depressed, and so the blocked feelings and perceptions
eventually erupted in physical illness. Many times I could not work an entire day because
I became dizzy or sick to my stomach. At times, I lay down in my car; other times, I went
home. I now know that I literally could not stomach the life I was living. My illness was
my soul crying out to be heard. For a long time there was a distinct feeling inside me, that
I needed to quit working for my father. This was one feeling that I could not shake or
repress no matter how hard I tried. My ego, on the other hand, never really wanted to
quit! I even prayed that something would happen so I would not have to leave. In the end,
even though I did not understand what I was doing, I had to listen to my soul no matter
what the consequences were. I finally came to the conclusion that I could live even if my
parents disinherited me and that I would take any kind o f work to support myself. Scared
to death, after working for my father for sixteen years, I quit.
Going back to school seemed the best way to figure out what I wanted to do with
the rest of my life. I had a degree in Elementary Education, although I had never taught
and my certificate had expired. To recertify, I needed to take nine credit hours at the
University of Utah just in case teaching was something I wanted to pursue. Again, I will
never forget that empty feeling I had in class when the professor started to talk about
passion and how everyone is passionate about something. I thought, NOT ME! “What am
I passionate about?” I asked myself. I sat there in a silent sort o f shock, wondering why I
didn’t have a passion, and if I did have a passion, what could it possibly be? “What was
wrong with me?” I asked myself. At that time I hadn’t yet met the Greek gods and
goddesses and their myths. Eventually, that encounter and knowledge helped me to
understand aspects o f myself and patterns o f my behavior.
I was brought up in an Apollo-Zeus environment, common in our patriarchal
society. The male gods, Apollo and Zeus, are unhealthy when they are not balanced with
the feminine. A patriarchal society values power and thinking and does not value the eros
and feeling side of the personality. In Ancient Greece when someone’s life wasn’t going
well, the questions asked was which divinity had been offended. Today, by looking at the
gods and goddesses as archetypes, psychic instincts, one can gain better understanding of
which one has been offended or ignored. Archetypes have dual characteristics that
manifest in negative or positive ways. Since everyone is simultaneously good and bad, it
is to one’s advantage to be aware o f one’s negative side, so that it does not get repressed
and live unconsciously. Diversity begins at home— to paraphrase a saying— and it begins
by accepting all the aspects o f one’s self, which can only be done seeing both sides o f the
archetype or personality. Not until all o f the parts o f the personality can be honored can
one become a balanced, whole person.
Contemporary Western culture worships Apollo, god o f light and reason, who is
logical, precise and scientific. He insists on clarity, self-control, autonomy, detachment,
and independence. Zeus, the supreme lord o f gods and goddesses, is an authoritarian sky
god who gives orders and makes rules. These male deities are concerned with daytime
consciousness and control. The Apollo-Zeus mindset fears confusion, passion,
unpredictability, and most o f all, feelings, so it spurns the qualities that live in Dionysus,
Hermes, and Aphrodite; however, what the Apollo-Zeus mindset needs is Dionysian
letting go, the beauty and love o f Aphrodite, and the spontaneity o f Hermes.
Today these gods and goddess are part o f my life as I continue to honor them.
Hermes is the messenger god o f communication. His communication has many
meanings; it can be ambiguous and paradoxical as well as nonverbal or symbolic.
Without Hermes, I never could have moved from my literal understanding to a
metaphorical, symbolic understanding that allows me to tolerate the tension o f the
opposites within me, and to be comfortable with not knowing. I remember the first time I
tried to tell my father that I no longer wanted to work for him. My words came roaring
10
out in an emotional cry because I had denied my feelings for so long and I didn’t know
how to access Hermes’ communication skills. Instead, I cried out, “I feel like a prostitute
who has sold her soul for money and security!” To me, it felt as if it was the first time I
had ever told my father how I felt, but the following day he called to inform me that he
knew that I didn’t mean what I had said. Oh Dad, I did; you just couldn’t bear to hear my
truth. Today I honor Hermes by embracing the poetry o f metaphor, which, in that event,
without me “thinking” about it, served so well to express the passion o f my feelings.
Dionysus, the god o f wine and ecstasy has helped me find my passion. I am
passionate about Jungian psychology, mythology, and theater, but more importantly I am
passionate about living my life. Dionysus is that human instinct or raw passion that flows
through one’s veins; his energy is the life force. Dionysus is about proximity, contact,
and intimacy. I honor Dionysus by letting go o f control and having fun. When I allow my
instincts to pulsate through my body, Dionysus helps me feel alive. Dionysus and
Aphrodite both remind me to live in my body so that I can feel what I am feeling.
Aphrodite is the goddess o f sexual love and beauty, and much more. She is the
instinctual energy that allows one to love, to connect with the world and others.
Aphrodite helps one access the essence o f God because without a connection to that
essence, there can be no inner union o f the opposites. One honors Aphrodite not only by
making love, but also by acts such as creating a garden, dressing up, and loving life. She
is goddess of attraction, perfume, flowers, and magical powers. I honor Aphrodite by
always having fresh flowers in my house.
Only after I allowed Aphrodite, Hermes, and Dionysus into my life did I become
spontaneous, alive, and totally in love with my life. I never understood that I was not
11
dwelling in my own body and I was cut off from my feelings. In therapy, I slowly learned
how to feel the pain o f my unlived life, mourn the loss o f my only sibling, and start living
life the way I believe it was meant to be lived. One o f the first things my therapist had me
do was to contact a massage therapist. At the time I didn’t realize that it was to inhabit
my own body. An asset o f not being in my body was that most often I did not feel
physical pain. When I first entered my body, there was a lot o f pain, both psychological
and physical! However, eventually, being in my own body gave me a sense o f power as
well as an incredible joy that I now have access to when I allow my body, soul, and mind
to unite.
My journey from literalism to myth has changed my perspective, which has
changed me as well as my life. Many people use the term myth to mean a lie, and, of
course, this is how I interpreted it for most o f my life. Now I understand myth to mean a
way of seeing reality that allows for multiple meanings and perceptions. Myths have
helped me to understand life on a deeper, metaphorical level. My story reflects how I
perceive my life now; it will change over time as I forget and remember the past. What I
leave out and what I tend to emphasize is my truth for today. In telling my story, I hope
that my soul continues to grow as I become more comfortable with who I am and where I
am going.
12
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You know what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations—
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full o f fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn through the sheets o f clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recongnized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Mary Oliver7
13
Chapter One
Perfect Childhood: Breaking Through Denial
I grew up in the fifties, with the Donna Read television show. We lived in a new
housing development that was predominantly Mormon. Looking back, I remember my
childhood as perfect. How could I remember it as anything else? I came from the perfect
family. My father worked two jobs so he could provide for his wife and two children. We
lived in a nice house on Barbey Drive. Just living on a street named Barbey tells the
perfect story. My mother stayed at home; her job was to take care o f her husband, the
house, my brother, and me. Everyone in my neighborhood wanted my mom for theirs.
She had a sense o f humor and was fun to be with. She talked with me and my friends on
the porch for hours. She was curious about everyone and wanted to know their story as
she told us many tales o f her youth.
Dinner was always at five o’clock. Reflecting back to those years gone by, I
remember the four o f us sitting around the kitchen table. Everyone was talking at the
same time without listening to anyone. I doubt that we ever used complete sentences.
(Years later, my friend, Shirley, was the first to point out that I never completed my
sentences.) While growing up I either got interrupted or thought, what the hell, no one
listens anyway. I remember a time at the dinner table where my brother held out his hand
in a demanding gesture and blurted out “Pass that!” We all laughed because no one had a
clue of what he wanted. It was as though we could or should read each other’s minds as
we reenacted the same mechanical ritual every evening.
We were close in proximity, but had difficulty in communicating, not only in
expressing ourselves, but in pronouncing words. My mother’s sister, aunt Anna, told me
14
that when their family moved from the farm into town, their teacher asked where they
came from. The teacher actually thought that they had come from another country
because it was so difficult for her to understand their speech.
Although my father was usually present at dinner, I didn’t see a lot o f him
growing up. I remember knowing that he would be there if something really important
happened; I guess ordinary living wasn’t that important. He worked in the instrument
department at Hill Air Force Base, an hour away from our house. He left our home on
Barbey before I was awake and returned around 4:30, in time for dinner. By 6:00 he was
off to work with his brother, Tom, in what eventually became a prosperous business
called J and T Airparts. Dad got home from his second job after I was in bed. I don’t
remember connecting with him at dinner time, but I remember eating fast so I could get
outside to play. Was I unconsciously trying to escape from the enmeshment o f my
family?
All my life I was told how lucky I was to be part o f this family. My father made
us feel as though it was us against the world. We were special. Not special in a unique
way, but special in a way that made us believe that we were just a little bit better than
other people. It gave us a feeling of superiority and entitlement. I was taught that friends
were nice, but nothing as important as family. Our family stuck together; not so much the
extended family, but the immediate family. We survived as an enmeshed unit that existed
without any boundaries between us.
I was tossed out of the Garden o f Eden and my perfect world ended in 1969 when
I found out that I was pregnant. My mother told me from a very young age not to have
sex, and for a along time I didn’t. When I was about to turn twenty-one, I wanted to
15
experience sex, so I did. When I married the father o f my child, I physically left my
family, but not emotionally. I now understand why it was fairly easy for me to leave my
first husband and the two that followed. I was psychologically married to my parents.
Cutting the cord and divorcing my parent’s values was very difficult! After two divorces
and one annulment, I knew that something might be wrong with me. This was painful
discovery because I believed I had come from a perfect family that didn’t need help from
anyone, and never asked. We solved our own problems. In my late thirties, I had an
epiphany or numinous experience: a non-rational, awe-producing experience difficult to
explain. In The Religious Function o f the Psyche, Lionel Corbett states that Jung links
numinous experiences with the healing process.8 I now know that it was this experience
that broke my denial and started me on my journey o f individuation.
This breakthrough experience took place while skiing with Shirley, the same
friend who had pointed out that I never finish my sentences. O f course, she was the first
person to listen to me. While riding on a chair-lift that took us high into the mountains,
we discussed family issues. She suggested that I might go to a group for adult children of
alcoholics. I was not pleased with her remark and I retorted, “That’s not my problem!”
My friend then made some comment about alcoholics and workaholics both being
addictions that cause the same result.
What happened next had never happened to me before or since. Although she had
stated this to me before, this time I heard her! Her words penetrated my frozen mind and
spread throughout my body in the most unique experience of my life. The already
beautiful sunny day transformed into the brightest light I have ever seen. Time actually
stopped! We were almost to the end o f our ride when my whole life flashed before me in
16
an illumination o f light. In that moment, I saw the reality o f the dysfunction within my
family. In a few seconds, I gained a different perspective on my family as well as on
myself. I saw how my parents had brought me up and, more importantly, I saw how I was
bringing up my own son, Troy. My whole life passed before my eyes and it was shocking
to discover that I hadn’t come from a perfect family. I, too, had come from a
dysfunctional family!
On the one hand, it was rather comforting to know that I was just like everyone
else and not special. Was I really part o f the human race? On the other hand, breaking
through denial is rather painful. I remember going to Lana’s house, a friend I have known
since the third grade. It was a given that she came from a dysfunctional family because
her father was an alcoholic, but now there was this knowing that, I too, came from a
dysfunctional family. There is more o f an acceptance for a workaholic in our society than
there is for an alcoholic. In fact our society appears to honor this behavior because
workaholics usually have more power and money. How can anyone talk negatively about
a person who works hard to provide for their family? My father came from a poor family
and he watched his father lose all o f his rental properties when taxes for the property
couldn’t be paid during the depression. Money became an obsession with my father and
became his god. I see him as having sacrificed his soul for money.
We live in such an addictive society that many of us don’t even recognize our
addictions. To discover who I was required that I began to understand my own
addictions, which included, television, shopping, keeping busy, cigarettes, and falling in
love. Falling in love was exciting and even the drama of breaking up was addictive. My
ego mind thought that I was searching for a husband and did not understand that I was
17
addicted to the search and the ecstasy o f falling in love. I was trying to find myself
through another person and did not understand that what I was really searching for was
myself. Clinging to addictions, prevents one from finding the authentic self.
My numinous experience was the beginning of my journey towards
self-awareness— or does this journey begin when one is born? Anyway, this breakthrough
helped me change the way I related to my son. I realized that the pattern I was trapped in
shouldn’t be repeated. The fact that my son was about to graduate from high school and
make the brake from home may have prepared me for this awareness. Troy wasn’t
planning on going to college at that time. Why would he need to go to college? He had
been working for his grandfather who had become a father to him after my divorce from
his own father when he was two. Troy also had become a son to my father, particularly
after the death o f my brother, at the age o f twenty-four.
I told my son when he graduated that if he would do me one favor I would never
ask him to do anything for me again. The favor was for him to attend college for one
year. Having been the first to graduate from college on both sides o f the family, I knew
the importance of education and how intimidating college can become for people who
have never attended. Also, I was afraid that my son would end up dependent on me or my
family. If Troy attended college for one year it would be easier for him to return at
anytime. Besides, I thought that he might like it well enough to finish, and that is exactly
what happened. After graduating from college he went to the Wisconsin Conservatory
Music School in Milwaukee. Later, he went back to school to become a physician’s
assistant. He now lives in Seattle with his wonderful wife, Jenny Stone, also a physician’s
assistant, and their newly born son, Jesse.
18
After my epiphany, I also told my son that when he graduated from high school
he would need to pay me $50.00 a month to help with rent and food if he lived at home
and went to college. If he didn’t attend college, he would pay for half the rent and
utilities. He said that he might as well move out. I looked at him and put my arms in the
air as if to say, “So?”. This was very difficult for me to do. In the past my parents talked
about how mean it was for parents to charge their children rent, but I couldn’t allow my
child to become dependent on me as I had with my parents. At first, independence was
difficult for Troy. One example is that I quit making his doctor’s and dental appointments
for him. In the past, I would write the address down for him and make sure that he was on
time. Mothers do want to mother, but there is a fine line between nurturing and
smothering.
Troy certainly knew what smothering was by the time he was twelve, as reflected
in a comment he made when we were in Europe with my friend, Toby, and her two
children. We were talking about dating and Troy said, “When I’m old enough to date, my
mother will probably go with us.” I don’t think I would laugh at this statement now as we
did back then. At the time, I w asn’t aware that my parents wanted to keep me dependent
on them and didn’t encourage my growth, especially if it was different from their beliefs.
They wanted control over me and my life. Once I became aware o f their dysfunction, I
knew that I couldn’t repeat the pattern with my son in the name o f love. I know my
parents loved me the best way they knew how, but their love was conditional. As long as
I did what I was supposed to do, they loved me, and this was not a prescription for
individuation.
19
Ah, not to be cut off,
not through the slightest partition
shut out from the law o f the stars.

The inner—what is it?
if not intensified sky,
hurled through with birds and deep
with the winds o f homecoming.
Rainer Maria Rilke9
20
Chapter Two
Opening to the Invisibles
I used to make fun o f the invisible or inner world because to me it wasn’t real.
The outer world was my only concern. In the beginning, my encounter with the inner
world was very uncomfortable, but as I continued to explore it, it became more natural.
I’ll never forget how strange I felt the first time my friend, Sue, took me to meditate at
the Kanzeon Zen Center o f Salt Lake City. After sitting on a cushion for thirty minutes,
we walked in a circle silently with our hands folded in front o f our bodies while our
fingers touched. My thought as we passed a window was that I would die if someone I
knew saw me! While I sat in meditation, however, another thought flooded my mind: I
am ready to become a Buddhist right now!
Looking back I believe that my first thought came from my ego, which was afraid
to listen to my soul because it didn't want to lose control. My second thought was my
soul screaming, “OH, YES! THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I NEED! JUST KEEP
SITTING!” This might have been the first time that I understood what my soul wanted.
The ego-mind keeps one estranged from one’s soul because the ego-mind is afraid o f the
mysteries o f the world. Today, my inner world is as important, if not more important,
than my outer world. I have had two wonderful experiences with two different shamans
that opened my mind to the world o f mysteries.
The first experience took place in the summer o f 1998 at Machu Picchu, an
ancient site in Peru. One dark night after admittance to the area was no longer allowed to
the public, I followed three shamans with thirty other people up the trails to the top. We
followed in silence as the sacredness o f the place became even more pronounced at night.
21
Back packs were filled with warm clothes and water because we knew we would be there
long into the night; under the full moon there was no need for flashlights. Our destination
was the death stone, a huge stone where humans were sacrificed for the gods many years
ago. I felt a strange sensation as I found my way up to this mammoth rock, and thought
about what it must have felt like to have been sacrificed here.
The rope that kept spectators away in the day was removed and we gathered
around to learn what would happen to us as we stepped up to the stone to lie down for the
journey o f a lifetime. Four people were picked, two to help energetically guide the souls
o f the people lying on the stone to leave the body by moving their hands from the body
towards the skies and two to guide the souls back by moving their extended hands back to
the body. The four chosen people would subsequently take their turns on the death stone.
On each side o f the death stone, a shaman helped a person step up to the stone where two
people where able to lie on the hard rock. The other shaman was already on top o f the
death stone, ready to assist the soul in departure. The three shamans recited
unrecognizable words. Everyone had learned a chant that was continued throughout the
ritual. I felt a little suspicious, wondering if it was possible to lie down on this rock and
have my soul leave my body, go around the world and reenter my body all in the time o f
three minutes!
When it was finally my turn, I remember feeling a little uneasy, not scared, but
slightly doubtful about the whole experience. I was there to try, so I stepped up to the
rock, lay down, and closed my eyes. I could hear the chant of the rest of the group that
surrounded the death stone, and this was comforting. Three minutes was all it took. I felt
22
tingling in my body, especially in my hands, nothing earth-shaking, just a little tingling. I
actually thought nothing had happened.
The group finished and we headed down the trail again in total silence. We were
staying in a motel where all the rooms had a window-wall that faced a mountain. I fell
asleep quickly and slept well, but when I woke I could not believe my eyes. The
mountain was talking to me; it was talking to me in images and symbols. It would not
stop as my eyes jumped from place to place trying to keep up with what it was trying to
say. I started to laugh aloud and thought to myself, “Oh, this is how nature speaks,
through images and symbols.” The message was more about experiencing the invisible
world talking than about what it was saying.
I was one who could seldom see an image in the clouds, even when one was
pointed out. After the death stone experience I could see images in the clouds. In fact,
they speak to me now without my trying; I cannot help but see the images. I gained a
totally new perception o f the natural world. This truly mind-altering experience, and the
one I have yet to tell, occurred because o f psychotherapy which I had entered at the age
of forty-nine. Previously, I thought that I did not need therapy because I believed I could
solve all my problems on my own. I did not realize that I was the problem. I was a
concrete and rigid person who did not believe in the invisible world because I only
believed in what I could see and touch. For me there was no understanding o f poetry or
metaphor, and I would have nothing to do with spirituality, mythology, or even literature
unless it was non-fiction. I very seldom remembered my dreams, and only after entering
therapy, when I invited them in, did I begin to do so. I now know it is the invisible world
and all that it contains that has given my life meaning. Today, I have begun to think of
23
my life as divided into “pre-therapy” and “post-therapy” because o f the drastic changes
that have occurred since I began therapy.
Before therapy there was no way I would have ever considered going on a
spiritual trip to Peru that involved sacred ceremonies. Our trip leader, Alberto Villoldo, is
a Cuban-born man, educated in the United States, who became a shaman, author, teacher,
mentor, and guide. I had been planning to go to Peru for ten years. When my therapist
handed me an article to read in an IONS magazine, the advertisement for the trip to
Machu Picchu jumped out at me and I knew it was time to go to Peru. With the shaman’s
guidance, I purified my chakras, talked with and hugged rocks, prayed, (maybe for the
first time), ate coco leaves, and, o f course, my soul was sent around the world. After this
trip I could not imagine going on a trip that was not spiritually oriented.
The second experience took place the following summer when I worked with
another wonderful shaman, Brant Secunda, who is a healer, and ceremonial leader in the
Huichal Indian tradition of Mexico. This time the pilgrimage included a one-day vision
quest. I was somewhat nervous, and glad it was only one night. We spent a few days
going through ceremonies in preparation for the journey. Some people chose not to go on
the vision quest, but to sleep by the camp fire that would be going all night long.
We were to spend the night alone without a tent, reading material, mosquito
lotion, food, or water, but were allowed a sleeping bag. I remember walking for about a
mile before I found my spot. Here I made a sacred circle by first finding four rocks for
the four directions and then filling in the perimeter o f the circle with smaller rocks. I
thanked Mother Earth by offering her a piece o f chocolate, burying it deep into the earth.
24
so that the bears could not smell it. Throughout the night, I continued prayers o f thanks to
the spirits and asked them to keep me safe.
My friend, Shirley, who accompanied me on this trip, had cautioned me with a
story about friends who pulled into a camp ground in the middle o f the night and parked
right on a bear trail. Her friends awoke in the morning in their car surrounded by bears.
The morning o f our departure on the vision quest bears had been spotted so we had been
instructed to carry rattles to frighten them away.
Once I had made the sacred circle, it was important to stay in it except when
nature called. When I finished honoring the directions, giving sacrifice, and prayer, I
settled into my circle. All of a sudden I thought about my friend’s story and decided I had
made my circle right on a bear path! I panicked. I asked for permission to leave my circle
and knew the spirits would understand while I went hunting for another spot. After a
while, I caught up to myself and realized that I was preventing myself from having the
experience o f being alone with myself by worrying. I gathered myself, went back to my
original circle and decided it was where I needed to stay. Sitting or lying in one place for
many hours gives a person the time needed to see the ordinary turn miraculous.
I spent the night alternating between praying in panic while rattling my rattle and
being calm enough to sleep. Before I fell asleep the first time, I remember hearing Brant,
a mile away, drumming as I knew he would around eleven. The interesting part is that he
never stopped; I heard the drumming whenever I awoke and thought how nice o f him to
drum all night. Only after I found out that he had not drummed all night, did I realize that
what I heard that night was the drumming o f the ancient ancestors and the beating heart
of Mother Earth.
25
As soon as dawn was breaking, I awoke and was ready to leave immediately. I
was in such a hurry to get back to the camp fire and the group that I got lost. When I
calmed down and retraced my steps, I was able to find my way back. I felt a tremendous
rush of exhilaration when my eyes first saw the camp ground and many friendly faces
waiting my return. I felt courageous for making it through the night.
Someday I hope to return Urattempt another vision quest because I believe I
might be able to experience it without the panic now. Even so, after this experience I
have been able to sleep alone at my cabin located in a wilderness area with no neighbors
in sight. I could have never done that without my vision quest and more importantly, I
never would have wanted to. I now enjoy my cabin in the mountains even when I am
alone.
26
I was once spiritually ill— we all pass through that—
but one day the intelligence

in my soul
cured
me.
Meister Eckhart10
27
Chapter Three
Discovering God
“Any God who takes the imagination captive is not a god at all. ”
Greg Mogenson"
I feel, most o f the time, as though I’m the luckiest person in the world and pray
with gratitude for my life every day. This has not always been the case. I spent the first
half of my life struggling, yearning, and searching for something that did not seem
possible. In the outer world, I was searching for a husband to make me happy and my life
complete. I did not understand that I was soul-projecting, trying to gain a soul through
another human being instead o f attaining it through my self. I did not understand that my
search for a husband was actually an inner search for my authentic self.
I believe that everyone is searching for their authentic self and this authentic self
can only be found by following one’s own path. On this path, finding one’s uniqueness
brings contentment, awareness, connection, and meaning to life. Lionel Corbett writes,
“Contact with the self always leads to an experience of meaning which reduces anxiety
and allows us to feel part o f a greater totality, reducing any sense o f alienation or
aloneness.” ] 2
I did not understand what was missing from my life; I just knew something was
wrong because, at times, I wished for death. I never considered suicide, but felt as though
death would be easier than life. But now I understand that God was missing from my life.
In other words, I was not my authentic self; I did not have self-awareness or self-
consciousness. Elaine Pagels writes that “to know oneself, at the deepest level, is
simultaneously to know God.” lj This process o f finding the authentic self is what Jung
28
calls individuation. It is the psychological process o f becoming an individual person who
feels a sense o f wholeness. The process is complicated and never ends.
My process began after my epiphany on the ski lift, when I realized that my father
was a workaholic and our family dysfunctional. After that event, I began to read-self help
books and attend workshops to gain a better understanding of my family issues and
complexes. I made huge changes in my external life; the biggest was to quit working for
my father. It seems that it was necessary for me to make external changes in my life
before I found the courage to look at myself and begin the process o f internal changes.
After doing some personal work, I thought I had found the man o f my dreams, but
I now know I had reverted back to soul-projecting. Complexes never go away; they just
get smaller and more manageable as we become aware o f them. When I began to see the
reality that this relationship was not going to work either, I was so upset that I called a
therapist that my friend, Glenda, had been raving about for over a year. I was lucky that
my first experience with a therapist was with someone who followed Jungian
Psychology. She is not only my therapist now, but has become my spiritual advisor.
In the beginning, when I did not have a clue what spirituality or religion meant, I
thought spirituality was the same as religion. I threw both out when I left the Mormon
religion at the age of twelve. Leaving my religion was not a traumatic event because my
parents were not devout Mormons. They were Jack Mormons. These were the Mormons
who went to church occasionally and did not follow the Word o f Wisdom, which states
that one is not allowed to smoke or drink coffee or alcohol. The other day I heard that the
Jack Mormons are no longer accepted by Mormons the way they were in the fifties and
sixties. Besides, most o f my friends were not regular churchgoers anyway.
29
My spiritual development within my family can be understood in light of E. H.
Erikson’s psycho-social stage-development theory that describes individuals moving
through different crises associated with seven stages in a life-span: infancy, childhood,
adolescence, young adulthood, middle age, and old age.14 When the crisis inherent in
each stage is resolved, the individual goes on to face the dilemma characteristic o f the
next stage. Those who do not successfully resolve the crises o f a certain stage remain
locked in that stage. The following is a summary o f the approximate ages o f the various
stages with the characteristic that develops when the crisis of each stage is resolved
successfully, and the characteristic when the crisis is not resolved:
Stage . Characteristic
>1: trust-m istrust hope-fear;
1-3: autonomy-shame will-power-self-doubt;
4-5: initiative-guilt purpose-un worthiness;
6-11: industry-inferiority competence-incompetence;
12-20: ego identity-role confusion fidelity-uncertainty;
21-24: intimacy-isolation love-promiscuity;
25-65: generativity-stagnation care-selfishness; and
65+: ego integrity-despair wisdom-meaninglessness.
My family was locked in the infancy stage because we lived in constant fear of
everything. I remember the time I told someone that I couldn’t go out because it was
going to snow. It might have already started, but the idea o f going out when it was
snowing had never occurred to me. When it snowed everyone headed home just in case it
turned out to be a bad storm. Members o f my family would never question such
30
“common wisdom,” or risk the adventure o f challenging this fear out o f some passion for
life or self-discovery.
The crises and unsuccessful resolution characteristics o f Erickson’s theory seem
to describe my family and me. It took me almost forty years before I knew that my
family’s beliefs and values were not mine and that I needed to divorce my parents’
beliefs. It took me years o f reading self-help books before I dared to ask for the help o f a
therapist. I now vacillate between all the stages as I still feel, at times, fear, self-doubt,
incompetence; however, I am not stuck in these stages because I also feel hope,
competence, love, and even wisdom.
In my journey towards understanding, I had a spiritual experience that I
documented in my journal, dated June 23, 1997:
I believe yesterday was the best day o f my life. I have never felt like that
before: wonderful, happy, light, energetic, whole and free! I went for a
short hike to Circle All with Sherry, Brenda, and Hank. It was so green, so
many blue bells, a humming bird, and fresh moose tracks. I told everyone
I felt like prancing up the mountain and that is what I did. It felt so good to
have energy. The mountain looked so small. (This hike was four miles
with a 1400 foot elevation gain.) I would go ahead of everyone else then
wait for them to catch up. It was nice to be with people, yet have time to
myself. I would sit and look at all the beauty that surrounded me, meditate
for awhile or hug a tree while I waited for the others. Sometimes I would
cry and other times just sigh. It felt so good to be alive. I touched the rocks
and trees. I saw a waterfall and felt it running through me. Coming down
the mountain I ran through the trees and for a moment felt like I was living
in a past time. It was exhilarating!
When I told my therapist about this experience, she remarked, “You had a spiritual
experience.” At the time I did not understand how my hike could be a spiritual
experience. I was still in denial o f the existence o f God. Now that I am getting more
comfortable with my relationship with God, I understand the meaning o f spiritual
31
experiences, even though they are impossible to explain. I do know that when I’m feeling
off or disconnected it’s time for a hike or to get out in nature.
Erich Fromm15 believes that religion is needed to overcome the split that modern
humans have from nature. He describes religion as either authoritarian or humanist.
Authoritarian religion centers on obedience and finds disobedience sinful. It includes
worship o f a higher power which appears to be controlling people. Everything that is
good is projected onto God and people are at God’s mercy. Humanist religion centers on
human life that allow people to define standards that guide their lives; individuals are free
and responsible for themselves. Humanist religion is grounded on relatedness to the
world. Sin is viewed as not against God, but against one’s self.
It was easy for me to leave the authoritarian Mormon religion; my relationship
with my authoritarian father, whom I saw as my God, replaced it. I stayed stuck in
Erikson’s infancy stage because I feared my father’s rejection. He actually threatened
disinheritance if I did not follow his rules; however, he only disinherited me for one day
when I quit working for him. Our enmeshment was more compelling. I understand why
people stay stuck in the spiritual growth process because o f the fear that God will punish
them. It was really my father I was angry with, and not God, when I left the Mormon
religion. My controlling father took the place o f the authoritarian higher power that
needed to be worshiped and obeyed. I idolized my father. It was not until I resolved most
o f my issues with him that I allowed m yself to experience my own God, an experience
which I now see fits into what Fromm called a Humanist religion.
Another way to distinguish religious individuals is through Gordon Allport’s
character types: immature or extrinsic; and mature or intrinsic.16 Immature religious
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Reproduced with permission o f the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
individuals tend to be complacent, judgmental, unsympathetic to others’ distress, and
self-preoccupied; mature individuals tend to be tolerant o f others, sympathetic, not self
preoccupied, and may place great demands on themselves. Immature religious individuals
seem to fit with Fromm’s authoritarian religion and Erikson’s early stage o f religious
development while the mature religious individuals seem to fit with the Humanist
religion and later religious developmental stages. Again, in my earlier life, my ways were
similar to those o f an immature religious individual, even though I did not consider
myself religious. As I grow psychologically, I am developing spiritually into a mature
religious individual. “Clearly the shift from immature to mature religion does not occur
independently o f other changes. It is a feature o f overall restructuring o f character,
cognitive style, patterning of social relationships and existential outlook.” 17 My process
o f individuation continues when I stay open to new ideas and growth.
Sometimes I get embarrassed when I think o f the way I used to think and behave,
yet it would be more embarrassing if I had never changed—but, then, I would have never
noticed. If I had stayed in denial, I would have continued living my life unconsciously
and never known that there was another perspective. Knowing that there is more than one
perspective reminds me that my life was not all bad before and it is not all good now;
however, I am more conscious now o f what I think and more responsible for the way I
behave.
Somewhere I heard the expression that “we are spiritual beings having a human
experience and not human being having a spiritual experience.” Humans evolve
individually as people, and collectively as a species, each affecting the other. I see
religion as the search for ultimate meaning. Ultimate meaning comes from within and
33
allows one to experience the unexplainable. In other words, one becomes comfortable
with one’s self and with not knowing. Each individual has the choice o f “coming home”
to the authentic self and experiencing God, the Great Unknown. It was in psychotherapy,
along with the reading of Jung, that I discovered or perceived my connection to the
concept of God. Now I experience the world as sacred and live my life as it is a blessing
rather than a curse.
34
What is it like?
What is it like to be alone?

To fall into the abyss
where voices do not speak?
What is it like to have

given everything away?
In the wrong way?
What is it like to love no one?

To live in a house
shared only by servants?
What is it like?
It is like this.
You are alone beneath a cold moon,
you cannot speak,
the bitter night has pierced your clothes
and when you sleep
your body stirs with a chill wind
which hour after hour
and against your will
refuses to stop.
In the cold morning

you will be open
to one comfort only
The barely conceived surprise

o f being shaken awake.
David W hyte18
35
Chapter Four
Alchemy: Turning Lead into Gold
In 1969, at the age o f twenty-one, I thought that my life was over. It actually was,
in one respect, because it would never be the same again. I was a junior attending the
University o f Utah and majoring in elementary education. Looking back at that beautiful
sunny autumn day on campus, I remember feeling lost and alone. I wondered what would
happen to me. It was a surreal feeling o f loneliness that left me wondering if I was really
alive. Time shifted from its normal hustle-bustle pace to a slower pensive pace that led
me to question the meaning o f life. What is real and what is not? Is this really happening
to me?
Hours before, I had been informed that I was pregnant. I didn’t want a baby,
because I thought that it would ruin my life and my plans for the future. Flash backs on
the previous Halloween night flooded my mind as I remembered the moment of
conception. As I felt the sperm inside o f me, thoughts o f creation filled my mind. I was
concerned about the possibility o f pregnancy rather than any enjoyment of the
experience.
Growing up, I remember my mother constantly telling me, “DON’T DO IT!” No
explanation, just “DON’T DO IT!” So I didn’t for a long time. By the time I was twenty,
I just couldn’t refrain from one o f the strongest instincts known to humankind. I didn’t
get pregnant immediately, but, inevitably a few encounters later, I did. Only then did I
begin to understand my mother’s fear. Before that, her words had been empty rules,
without meaning. We had never talked about sex! She had never explained why she
didn’t want me to have sex.
36
Sexual instincts can never be repressed. The energies of Aphrodite and Dionysus
live in us and they need to be acknowledged and honored. Talking about these energies
and acknowledging that we are sexual beings puts us in a better position tovunderstand
and deal with our desires. Marriage doesn’t necessarily change our negative attitude
toward sex and our bodies. I was more afraid to upset my mother than I was about getting
pregnant. Maybe having sex was my way o f breaking the rules and trying to grow up. If I
had any idea what it meant to get pregnant and have a baby, I might have been more
responsible, and then again maybe not.
In The Heroine's Journey, Maureen Murdock, states that when adolescent girls
notice that their parents are uncomfortable with the outer signs o f their emerging
sexuality, they learn to reject their changing bodies. They may use food, alcohol, drugs,
or even sex to numb their feelings o f inadequacy. She explains that our culture’s rejection
of the female body originates from the Old Testament that portrays Eve as the seductress.
Rejection o f female sexuality has been reinforced in male-dominated religions for over
five thousand years. The ability to recognize the wisdom o f the body has been lost and '
split off from the mind. Feminine intuition is lost and ignored for the safer activities of
the masculine mind. At the time o f my pregnancy, I know I wasn’t connected to my
body, because I remember distinctly when I became connected, many years later, after
psychotherapy and message therapy.
Life is truly a paradox. Sometimes what we believe to be the worst thing in the
world that could happen to us actually turns out to be the best thing, although this
realization usually takes time. Examples that come to mind are divorce, sickness, losing
one’s job, or losing a loved one. For me it was getting pregnant.
37
When I told my boyfriend that I was pregnant he didn’t see it as a problem; we
would marry. He almost seemed glad to hear the news. Getting married sounded like the
best solution, but I still felt trapped and as though I didn’t really have a choice. Telling
my parents wasn’t going to be as easy as telling my boyfriend. I don’t even remember
telling my mother; all I remember is my mother yelling horrible things at me. I
understand now why it hurt her so deeply; she took it personally and thought that my
pregnancy was a sign o f her failure as a mother. The bonds between Demeter and
Persephone are indeed strong. And my mother was very concerned with keeping up
appearances. What I do remember very clearly is my father walking into my bedroom
after my mother had told him that I was pregnant. That’s usually the way it worked in our
house; mother was always the go-between when problems arose. That might have been a
good idea, at times, but it left my father and me unable to experience our own
relationship. Instead, we experienced each other in a triangle.
I find it interesting that when my father came into my room he didn’t appear to
be angry. In retrospect, I realize that he never got mad at the big things as he did with the
little things. I never knew what to expect, and what was worse, I couldn’t tell the
difference between the big and the little things. My father’s expression o f concern
surprised me because I had never seen him in a nurturing role before. He was used to
making all o f the decisions for our family. My father was definitely a Zeus father who
protected and made decisions. He asked me if I wanted to keep the baby. Did I
understand him ?....W as he suggesting an abortion? Abortions were illegal at the time. He
told me I did not need to have the baby if I didn’t want to and that I needed to think
carefully about what I wanted to do. My father had never asked me what I wanted before!
38
I didn’t know what I wanted! Even the question felt traumatic because I had never been
asked before. When I mentioned the possibility o f an abortion to my boyfriend, he said
very clearly, “NO.” He wanted to get married and have the baby. I thank him for his
Apollo clarity o f mind at that time, something that is taking me time to develop.
So, we married. I believe that my husband tried to make it work, but I still was not
happy about being pregnant. I still did not want a baby! Even when I went to the delivery
room I didn’t want a baby. I felt a shame in my flesh that seeped all the way into my
bones. It was a difficult delivery; forceps were used. If my son had been bom a hundred
years earlier we both would have died. I believe that my baby didn’t want to be bom
either. Artemis, goddess o f the hunt, helps women open their bodies during child birth.
My body didn’t know how to open, so the pain was excruciating. I now understand that
those who have a hard time giving o f themselves aren’t influence enough by Artemis.
Sometimes, when there is difficulty in birth, it might be because the body is unable to
open. I remember screaming so loud that the doctor drugged me.
When I awoke in bed alone without a child, I wondered what had happened. Soon
the nurses brought me my baby wrapped in a blue blanket. I can’t explain that moment,
but everything changed. When my baby was put into my arms a miracle occurred. An
indescribable feeling o f love filled my body, heart, and soul. All thoughts o f not wanting
a baby were absent when I held my son for the first time. Although I didn’t know it at the
time, he was the best thing that ever happened to me in my life!
I know what it feels like to be a disappointment to one’s parents and yourself. The
shame I felt about myself and my body continued for many years. About a year after my
son’s birth, I remember looking into a full length mirror at my nude body after a shower.
39
I looked at m yself and asked, “How could anyone love you?” This incident was quickly
forgotten until it flooded my memory during my writing o f this story, which now reminds
me o f Marion Woodman’s statement from her book, The Ravaged Bridegroom. “Without
love, fear o f life splits our throats. We cannot sing our own song. Some o f us cannot even
remember we ever had a song to sing. Without love for ourselves and for each other as
we are, we are abandoned, left alone to die.” 19 When I lived in shame, I didn’t know I had
a song, and I wasn’t aware of how to give or receive love.
The shame I felt because I had to get married took many years to resolve. When I
got a divorce after two and a half years o f marriage, I believed that I would never have to
tell my son that I had to get married. I held this secret so close to my heart that it became
a huge burden. It wasn’t until my son was around twenty-eight years o f age that I finally
had the courage to tell him the truth. A huge weight lifted from my shoulders as the
words spilled out o f my mouth. The news didn’t seem that important to my son. Holding
on to secrets often does more harm to the person keeping the secret than the person you
are keeping the secret from, especially if the secret needs to be brought into the light.
I know I don’t have the answers, but I do have some questions. Why does our
society teach young women that they are bad if they have sex before marriage and that
young men are macho? Or is the problem today more about young girls wanting to be
popular or afraid to say no? Why don’t we teach young couples that they need to be
responsible instead o f telling them not to have sex? Young couples need to be aware of
the consequences if they decide to have sex, both literally as well as psychologically.
What kind of society are we that we bring up young women who would rather put their
own baby in the garbage than tell the parents about their pregnancy? I’m assuming, of
40
course, that is the reason they would do such a thing. How can something as natural and
wonderful as sex and creation turn into something so shameful and destructive? I’ve
known women destroyed from having an abortion as well as from giving their baby up
for adoption. Young women (and men) need to know that if they get pregnant they will
have to make a difficult decision that will affect them and their families for the rest of
their lives. Talking about sex needs to happen when children are still young enough to
listen and not only when their hormones are raging.
Some people are obsessed with the idea that a decent girl needs to be married
before having sex. This lopsided rule is left over from the ancient Greeks. In ancient
times the men wanted to make sure that their children were theirs; it was a bloodline
thing, no DNA testing. So the males made it a sin for women to have sex before they
wed. Euripides wrote about this issue during the 5th century BCE in his tragedy, Ion, the
story o f a mother who re-units with her son after fifteen years. She had hidden her
pregnancy from her parents and after the birth she had abandoned her son in the
wilderness to die. In Classical Myth, Barry Powell explains that in ancient Greece this
would be considered normal because “ [n]o respectable man would knowingly marry a
woman who had prior sexual experience, and a father could sell into slavery a daughter
guilty o f it, even if she were the victim o f rape.”20 Let me repeat— even if she was raped.
Today we gasp, as young mothers try to self-abort or leave their babies on door steps
because they don’t want to embarrass their family, or don’t have a clue o f what else to
do. Isn’t it time we move beyond this archaic mind-set that existed during the time of
Euripides?
41
I’m not making a judgment for or against abortion. Every situation is different and
individual. Each woman making this decision has to live with her decision forever. She
must figure out which course o f action would be the best and the least harmful to her
child as well as herself and the father. However, I question the tendency o f our society to
condemn unmarried women having sex and babies. Moreover, it does take two to
conceive a child. Although I believe that some parents are now talking more to their
children about sex, much more education is needed. Young folks need to know that
wanting sex is normal; however, they need to gain the understanding o f the consequences
when making a decision that will influence their lives forever.
I remember being relieved in 1973 when the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe vs.
Wade allowed abortions to be legal. I told myself that I would have an abortion if I got
pregnant again; it seemed like a simple decision. The thoughts o f the fetus becoming a
human being didn’t penetrate my soul, even though I had already given birth to my son. I
still didn’t understand that I wasn’t connected to my own body. I was a victim! I felt no
responsibility! I didn’t realize that I was afraid o f my own sexuality, ignoring my
feminine wisdom and living from my head. I never understood the emotional and
psychological reasons for not having an abortion until I saw Keely and Du, a play by Jane
Martin, at the Salt Lake Acting Company. Seeing this play allowed me to experience the
realities o f the consequences of each side, for and against abortion. The problem isn’t
about sex; it is about our attitude towards sex, women, and the body— all o f which are
wonderful. No matter what one’s decision is concerning a pregnancy, it is important to
keep in mind that responsible human being make better choices than uninformed victims.
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If I Die
If I die, survive me with such sheer force

that you waken the furies o f the pallid and the cold,
from south to south life your indelible eyes,
from sun to sun dream through your singing mouth.
I don’t want my heritage o f joy to die.
Don’t call up my person. I am absent.
Live in my absence as if in a house.
Absence is a house so cast
that inside you will pass through its walls
and hang pictures on the air.
Absence is a house so transparent
that I, lifeless, will see you living
and if you suffer, my love, I will die again.
Pablo Neruda21
43
Chapter Five
Facing Death: Ego’s Biggest Fear
11
One who knows how to live well, knows how to die well.“
When my mother found out that she was going to die she remarked, “I should
have eaten better.” She truly loved steak, bacon, and sweets, especially with her coffee.
Whether her eating habits contributed to her death or not, it doesn’t matter. What matters
is that she died peacefully. Oh, how we all want to die peacefully. I believe that my
mother was able to die peacefully because she came to terms with death. Fler awareness
only came three days before she died, but it came. It almost didn’t happen because I was
afraid to tell my mother that she was going to die.
After my father’s death, my mother had turned to me, looked into my eyes and
said, “If you ever find out that I am going to die, do not tell me!” Four years after my
father’s death, when my mother was ill, the doctors told me there was nothing they could
do for her and that she would die very soon. I didn’t know what to do. I wondered if I
should tell her. I asked myself, how could I tell her? Did she really want to know? Would
it make her angry? I was afraid that I would spoil my mother’s last few days on earth if I
didn’t respect her statement from four years earlier, but I had a definite feeling that it was
her ego’s fear o f death that had told me never to tell her that she was going to die, and
that her soul desperately needed to know!
When the time finally came, to tell her, I was so afraid that I let a couple o f days
pass so that I gathered enough courage. When I told her that she was not going to get
better, she released a sigh o f relief. Oh, wow— she really did want to know! Nothing is
worse than silence when one needs to know. We spent the next three wonderful days
44
talking as we had never talked before. We discussed the mysteries o f life and what it
might feel like to die and have the soul leave the body. We talked about how my only
son, Troy, would probably marry Jenny, a woman my mom had just met and liked. There
was talk about days gone by, both joyous and painful. We talked about what I would do
with my life after she was gone and how much I would miss her. When people came to
see her she wanted to talk about dying; she told friends and family that she was the lucky
one because she knew how she was going to die and the rest o f us didn’t. She was talking
until her last hour o f life, and then she slowly closed her eyes, as her breaths began to
lengthen. One of my hands was on her heart and the other on her arm. She was alive one
moment and breathless the next. Her final breath left a smile on her face.
My father’s death was totally different. There is no doubt in my mind that his
death was not a peaceful death. He never accepted the fact that he was going to die and
could never talk about it. The melanoma cancer eventually spread to his brain and he was
unable to talk for the last three months of his life. At times, my father had a wicked
tongue and I find it interesting that in his last months o f life he was unable to speak. Even
if he had wanted to talk about dying, he literally wasn’t able.
I’ll never forget my mother’s anguished eyes one day when she said to me, “It is
so sad! Look at him there in bed dying, and he can’t even tell me what he is feeling.” I
saw beyond those words and knew that her anguish came not only from his dying, but
from a lifetime spent separated from feelings as well. My father never was able to share
his feelings because he was never in touch with them.
One day my dad slipped into the death-breath which no one talks about. It’s heart-
wrenching to hear, let alone watch. For thirty-seven hours he was in the grips o f this loud
45
breath that kept him grasping for air. Always in control o f everything, my father wasn’t
prepared to die and didn’t know how to let go. When the breath finally left my father’s
body, his eyes and mouth stayed open in an expression o f horror.
After watching each of my parents die in such different ways, I became aware that
embracing death allows one to die more easily. I also believe that life, in a meaningful
way, begins after one has embraced death. As I continue to watch others die and read
material on death and dying, I understand that embracing death means more than
accepting one’s physical death. It also means accepting change, growth, renewal, and
loss. Accepting death becomes possible as one learns how to listen to the soul and
experiences deaths of the ego. After the initial ego death, the experience becomes easier
and continues throughout one’s lifetime. In her book, Here All Dwell Free, Gertrud
Nelson states that, “every day we die a hundred little deaths— in losses, in failures, in
23
longing and rejections.” An ego death allows one the ability to let go o f the idea that
one is only one's profession, money, education, or/and beauty and to become aware that
there is something bigger and more powerful than one’s ego-self.
C. G. Jung writes that life is a process that is directed towards a state o f rest.24
There is a natural curve to life that rises and returns. When the psychological curve o f life
refuses to conform to the biological curve o f life, it typically lags behind. Individuals
hang on to their childhood fearing life and its climb to the summit, as much as they cling
to the peak once attained, fearing life’s descent. Fear o f life holds one back on the upward
climb just as the fear o f death keeps the focus on the summit and not on the downward
flow towards death. The natural psychology that nourishes the soul is lost. Proper
psychological thinking pays attention to the heart, which is the tap-root o f the soul. The
46
soul is not as concerned with the dying o f an individual as it is concerned with the
attitude of the dying person and adjusting to death.
Janies Hillman observes that we begin dying the moment we are bom; therefore,
life’s aim is death. We cannot think o f life without thinking o f death and visa versa. Life
and death are understandable only in terms o f each other. Life takes on its value through
death. In thinking and examining death, one enters the issue o f dying as the examination
becomes a psychological task. Working through the problem o f death allows one a
rehearsal or experience o f death. The soul needs to die and regenerate just as the body’s
tissue die and are renewed. Entering the death experience requires a dying o f the soul to
bring on new life. “Because living and dying in this sense imply each other, any act
which holds o ff death prevents life. ‘How to die means nothing less than ‘how to live’.”25
When death is embraced it naturally places one in the now of life because death can
happen at anytime. If we wait too long we might not really experience death, but will just
be going through its physical motions, as in my father’s death. By refusing death we
refuse life.
Joan Halifax states that dying is about a waking up— which leads to liberation and
freedom. In her tapes, Being with the Dying.26 she explains that people who have had
near-death experiences have a new attitude towards life. They have more confidence, a
greater zest for life, a lessening of interest in material things, a deep sense o f purpose,
compassion, tolerance of others, and a reduced fear of death. It appears that these new
attitudes are the result o f a person, also coming to terms with his or her own mortality.
When death has not been embraced and experienced, it takes power over one’s
life and shows its face as fear, which prevents one from living an authentic life. To live
47
an authentic life one must pass through the death o f a false identify and be bom into a
new person with a new attitude. Throughout life, the soul experiences death with any
kind of separation, change, or mourning. The soul goes through many deaths while the
body continues to grow. What feels like death to the body or to the ego is life trying to
break through to consciousness. The old way o f doing things is trying to stay alive, while
the soul is trying to break down the old patterns. At one time or another everyone says, “I
can’t live this way any longer.” Meaning something has to change: job, marriage,
relationships. Renewal and growth are part o f life. An authentic life allows one to live in
the tension o f opposites: body/soul, inner/outer, matter/spirit, which is symbolized by life
and death. Resistance to death is resistance to life. A dying to the world is necessary to
encounter the realm o f the soul. An ego death usually puts one in the body so one can
experience death, which is a must for a soulful life.
I now understand the world o f paradox; my fear of the unknown has transformed
into my embracing the mystery o f life. Learning to be comfortable with not knowing is
becoming easier. I appreciate the sacredness o f everyone and everything as I try to stay in
the moment. Staying in the moment keeps me in touch with my soul. I know death will
come when it comes. Will I die peacefully? I do not know, but I do know that I have a
different relationship with death and that affects the way I live my life now.
48
Love after Love
The time will come

when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine, Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Derek Wolcott27
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Chapter Six
New Eyes: Embracing Change.
“Saturn would rather die than change. ”2 8
Caroline Casey
"By seeing differently, we do differently ”29
James Elillman
I am a child o f Saturn: my Sun, my Moon, and my Mercury are in Capricorn, the
astrological sign that is ruled by the planet Saturn. In astrology, I understand the sun to
symbolize individual identity, the moon to symbolize the inner world o f feelings, and
Mercury to symbolize communication.
Who I am, outer as well as inner, and how I communicate are all affected by the
darkness of Saturn that stands for the dark nights of winter and is associated with
depression and suffering. There is, however, another side to Saturn. Steven Forrest, the
author o f The Inner Sky: How to Make Wiser Choices fo r a More Fulfilling Life,30
explains that when Saturn is dysfunctional there is depression, melancholy, cynicism,
coldness, unresponsiveness, time serving, drudgery, lack o f imagination, suppression of
emotion, and materialism. In contrast, when Saturn is functional it helps with the
development o f self-discipline, self-respect, and faith in one’s destiny as well as making
peace with solitude.
It has been fascinating to realize that I lived the first half of my life in the
negative grips o f Saturn and that it wasn’t until the second half of life that I began
to develop self-respect, self-discipline, and faith in my destiny. I began to use
50
Saturn’s discipline to help me discover and understand my own story or myth. It
was my myth of sadness that needed to change because it kept me caught in a
single vision that prevented me from seeing my story any other way. I had to
refocus in order to change my myth. I had to find new eyes with which to view
the world.
Reality is made up of many perspectives and is comprehended through
imagery. One’s imagination creates one’s reality. Depth psychology is the
archetypal approach that allows seeing-through to the other side o f an event.
James Hillman states that there are “two perspectives towards events, an inner
psychological one and an outer historical one.”31 One perspective is not better
than another, but allowing both to exist provides a fuller experience o f reality.
The literal historical perspective and the fictional metaphorical perspective exist
simultaneously, just as the outer ego and the inner self are parts of the whole
human being and the negative and positive perspectives are part o f all archetypes.
I understand archetypes as bipolar universal energies; they are psychic instincts
that manifest differently in each human, yet similarly. They seize and capture us.
Individuals become possessed by the archetypes when these are ignored or repressed. As
one becomes aware o f archetypal patterns and how they manifest in individuals, it is
easier to see what the archetypes want. Understanding archetypes allows one to see both
the light and dark sides o f the archetype. Then one has a choice to see the cup half full or
half empty, or a choice to live a life in sadness or happiness. I am not talking about a
Dionysian happiness, although this is grand at times, but a happiness that is more a
contentment settling in the bones and always present no matter what is experienced.
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My literal historical perspective prevented my ego from seeing my fictional
metaphorical self. A single vision prevented me from imagining anything that I could not
see and made it impossible for me to grasp the meaning o f metaphor, symbol, and God.
As Lionel Corbett might say, I was pre-symbolic in my religious development. In The
Religious Function o f the Psyche, he states that some people are developmentally pre-
32
symbolic and do not benefit from extracting meaning out of a symbol. They might
understand the meaning of a symbol, but their intra-psychic structure does not allow them
to use the meaning. The idea of an inner world was unknown to me because I did not
understand anything that I could not literally see. This mindset froze my imagination as
well as any psychological ideas I might have pondered. How can anyone embrace the
divine without an inner life?
I was brought up believing that nothing was more important than family.
My belief was that my purpose in life was to take care o f my parents, especially
after the death of my brother. This single perspective kept me stuck working in a
family business that prevented me from seeing any other way to live my life. I
was depressed and did not even know it. I was sick a lot, and many days I
couldn’t finish the day. I now know the sickness was my soul crying out to be
heard.
My dream o f owning my own home and working for anyone other than
my father became a reality only after I realized that I had the right to my own life.
Although I didn’t understand, I knew that I had to quit working for my father. I
saw through the story that I must take care o f my parents when I realized that I
was not living my own life.
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The spirit of my brother was with me when I told my father I no longer
wanted to work for him. I remember that, before I started to work for my father,
my brother told me to really think hard about what I wanted because if I ever
started to work for our father I would never be able to leave. I needed strength
from my brother to gain the courage to tell my father that I wanted to go back to
school and get a teaching job. I told my brother’s spirit that I was quitting for him
as well as for myself.
It was not until I emotionally started to grow up and take responsibility
for myself that I began to see the little boy in my father. He was never allowed to
grow up and mature naturally because his mother idolized him. My father was not
only the youngest in the family, but he was the perfect child that never caused his
parents any problems. His psychological development ceased because he was
idolized and never had to look at his negative side. He became a powerful Zeus
god-king-father who ruled and protected his family. He wanted to protect me
from the harsh pains of reality, but did not see that this kept me from experiencing
any joy as well.
When parents live their unlived lives through their children, they kill their
own souls as well as their children’s souls. I believe my brother died at the age of
twenty-four from a broken heart that manifested as Hodgkin’s disease (cancer).
My broken heart somehow froze in order to protect it from breaking until I was
strong enough to heal it slowly by allowing m yself to feel my emotions. This
happened only after I got into therapy where I learned how to feel the sadness of
my brother’s death, a sadness that I had denied for so long. Then little by little,
53
joy began to creep into my life until I began to feel alive! This does not mean that
I do not get depressed or feel sad sometimes; but I no longer identify with sadness
and simply allow myself to feel what ever comes up.
In Re-visioning Psychology, Hillman writes that the purpose o f life is to
make soul and that soul is made by personifying, pathologizing, psychologizing,
and dehumanizing. Personifying is “a way o f knowing, especially knowing what
is invisible, hidden in the heart.”j3 It is a way o f imagining things. It was my
brother's death that sent me whirling into my inner life and began my search for
soul.
Pathologizing is about suffering and getting to the pain. It took me many
years to mourn my brother’s death. After he died, I was not allowed to talk about
him with my parents. Even after ten years, when I decided to re-hang my
brother’s picture, my mother said, “You can’t do that.” I replied, “Oh yes I can!”
In therapy, I was finally given the permission to not only talk about my brother,
but to mourn his death. Without mourning, one stalls in grief.
“The psyche wants to find itself by seeing thorough,”34 By
psychologizing, as Hillman calls it, a process o f de-literalizing that allows one to
see differently. The focus is not on fixing, but on examining psychological ideas
to determine what is happening. I could have stayed stuck with the idea that I
could never be happy after losing my only sibling. There is so much suffering in
the world that it is easy to get caught in a sad mindset. Once there is a realization
that suffering exists in the world, some o f the pain is alleviated. Buddha thought
that the first step toward ending suffering is the acknowledgment that there is
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suffering. Acceptance does not take away the suffering, but allows one not to get
caught in asking why.
Dehumanizing, Hillman notes, is an aspect o f soul making, for soul-
making “becomes more possible as it becomes less singly focused upon the
human”35 and moves events to the archetypal and transhuman experience.
Dehumanizing is about becoming aware that life is much bigger than the
individual person. When I opened my mind to the invisibles, I came to the
understanding that there was something much more universal and powerful than
me. As I became acquainted with archetypal realm, I was able to listen to my soul
rather than to my ego and turn events in my life into experiences.
My new eyes have changed my life as well as my story. I have refocused
from a literal perspective to a metaphorical perspective that allows room for
possibilities. I am no longer a victim, stuck in Saturn’s darkness; I am an
energetic woman in tune with her developing process o f individuation. I can now
see the totality o f life because I feel and think psychologically. My life has
meaning. There is a joy in every cell o f my body that stays with me through the
ups and downs o f life. I wake every morning and retire every evening with a
prayer o f thanks to God for my life. I am in love with my destiny.
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The Lame Goat
You’ve seen a herd o f goats

going down to the water.
The lame and dreamy goat
brings up the rear.
There are worried faces about that one,
but now they’re laughing,
because look, as they return,
that goat is leading!
There are many different kinds o f knowing.
The lame goat’s kind is a branch
that traces back to the roots o f presence.
Learn from the lame goat,
and lead the herd home.
Rumi36
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Chapter Seven
Seized by the Stupid Complex
While searching through my shelves for a book, I froze when I realized for the
first time in my life that I was becoming a scholar. Tears filled my eyes as an incredible
feeling o f contentment mixed with joy and pain came over me. It took me completely by
surprise. I asked myself, how did this happen? One who has been caught in the myth of
not being smart is actually becoming a scholar! In an instant there was a knowing deep in
my soul that I had escaped and survived the stupid complex. I was able to move through
my complex by re-visioning my thinking, which now allows me to enjoy the process o f
continual learning. As I sat there in astonishment, my family dynamics and academic
journey re-played through my mind: struggles in school, never encouraged to go to
college, difficulty in college, graduating from Pacifica Graduate Institute with a master’s
degree, and presently writing a dissertation for my PhD. Imagine that! Who would have
ever guessed that a PhD was possible?
I used to think that some people were just born smart and others were not. It was
simple; I was not smart. There was never even the notion that those smart people might
have to work at learning. Granted, some people learn more easily than others and most
people learn differently, but it takes individual responsibility to facilitate learning. When
I thought that I was born dumb, I believed that it somehow let me off the hook from
taking the responsibility to learn. I now understand that my behavioral problems in school
and my rebellious social attitude were caused, in part, by my fear o f not being smart.
Being brought up in a dogmatic environment where I was never listened to or encouraged
to be myself also caused my negative behavior. Dogma does not facilitate learning; it
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encourages status quo. I spent half o f my life preventing others, as well as myself, from
knowing what I was thinking and feeling.
While reflecting on my life, I began to wonder at what point the stupid complex
seized me. I do not remember feeling dumb in elementary school; in fact, I find it
interesting that I do not remember much. I remember a time in the second grade when I
went into my fourth grade friend’s room and saw her teacher writing on the board in
cursive. Standing there in amazement, I was afraid that I would never be able to learn that
way of writing. I asked myself, “How will I ever learn how to do that?” I now understand
that my complex grew because my feelings and intelligence were never validated, which
fueled my feelings o f inadequacy.
All human beings have complexes. Complexes form around archetypes. Simply
stated, archetypes are psychic instincts that have both positive and negative aspects. The
mother and father complexes are two o f the most common. Complexes become a problem
when the conscious mind is not aware o f them. They stay hidden and gain power when
they are not seen, understood and integrated into the personality. The totality o f reality is
not witnessed.
Like my parents, I was not aware o f my complexes. I was never taught how to
grow up because my parents were never taught by their parents. My parents were never
allowed to discover all o f who they were; their complexes were never discovered. They
were not allowed to express their feelings. Instead they were expected to hide half of
themselves because they were not seen, named or listened to with respect. No one gave
them, and consequently me. directions on how to mature.
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It was not until I started to grow up emotionally that I began to understand my
parents better. I believe that they were unable to grow psychologically and lived in a
fixed development, unable to mourn their sorrow. Both o f my parents lived through the
Depression and continued to struggle as their parents did for security and survival. We
become our parents. My father’s mother lost her mother at the age o f three and her father
at nine and was raised by a family who never legally adopted her or educated her, as they
did their birth children. Grandma married a man who had been married before and
already had children. Such a marriage was in itself a disgrace in her time and place. The
story goes, that my grandfather was always threatening to leave the family. He eventually
did by way o f suicide!
My father was never able to talk about his father’s other children, previous
marriage or suicide. Instead he focused on work and became a self-made man who
wanted to protect me from the harsh pains o f reality. He was not aware o f the fact that by
keeping me from experiencing pain he also kept me from experiencing the joy o f life.
My grandmother on my mother’s side lost her mother at the age o f twelve and she
had to raise her five younger siblings because her father never re-married. She married
around the age o f thirty and had three daughters close together. I remember my mother
telling me that her mother was tired from raising all her siblings and never really wanted
children. They lived on a farm and were poor. When my mother attended high school, she
had to live in town because the school was too far away from the farm for her to travel to
school daily. When her parents could not afford to pay for her room and board another
year, she quit school at the age o f sixteen and never finished high school. Mother was
never able to escape her stupid-complex.
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My mother took such good care o f me that she became the too-good-mother. She
anticipated my every wish and tried to give me everything. Often, she kept me safe in a
playpen, until one day at the age o f three I was old enough to take the thing apart and
walk out. She did not know how to encourage my learning. My parents wanted to give
me what they had never had, as they defined it, but when my wants were not their wants,
what they wanted turned into parents trying to live their un-lived lives through their
children. No one has a chance to develop into one’s own authenticity.
Not being allowed to be who I was during my youth, led me in junior high to turn
my energies into rebellion. I started smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol and skipping
school. Junior high school is a difficult time for children as they begin transitioning into
adulthood, and my experience o f trying to be an adult was no different. I gained attention
by acting out rather than by accomplishment. I never studied for tests so when I did
poorly on them, it was because o f not studying rather than being dumb. When possible, I
cheated on tests without any feelings o f remorse. I passed classes by doing my
homework; it was manageable because I could do it on my time in my own way. If I
failed one quarter, I made sure that I passed the next quarter so I would not receive an F
for the semester grade that went on the transcripts.
A memory that I feel badly about is the way I used to traumatize my eighth grade
Spanish teacher, although he was easy to traumatize. One day he moved me away from a
friend I was talking to, but I continued my conversation from across the room by talking
louder. When he asked me to stay after class, I walked out without listening to his
demands. He never did anything about my ignoring him. I must have sensed that he
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would do nothing, because I do not believe I would have done something similar with
any o f my other teachers, just as I definitely could not stand up to my father.
During parents-teacher conferences, I left the Spanish teacher’s name and class
off the list I made for my mother’s visit. The office must have provided her with a
complete list because she went to see him. I remember my mother telling me that when
she told him who she was, he threw his hands in the air and said he did not know what to
do with me. My mother came home and talked to me about my acting out and when she
returned to the next parent-teacher conference, he asked her how she had been able to
totally change my behavior. The change occurred because my mother had talked to me
with such compassion and concern about why I would act that way. My anger was
discharged, I believe, because she actually listened to what I had to say. I really didn’t
want to be a bad girl. Who does?
In high school, I mostly remember having fun. When I was a sophomore,
however, I became alarmed when my health teacher told my mother during parent-
teacher conferences that I would never graduate from high school. Although I flunked the
first quarter o f her class, she was not aware that I would make sure I did not flunk the
following quarter, which I didn’t. Her comment, however, upset me; I never thought of
myself as not graduating from high school. I now wonder if her comment was heard by
my unconscious and that knowledge encouraged me to graduate from high school and
continue on to college. I believe my health teacher’s comment made me angry enough to
prove her wrong! My Capricorn tenacity kicks in when I am faced with a challenge.
One of my friends was planning to attend college, so I wanted to attend, too. I am
not sure why. Part o f me was afraid to get a job and part o f me knew that education was
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important. Also, my health teacher’s comment kept running through my mind while I
thought, I will show her. When I asked my father if I could attend college, he told me that
I could. His comment was “That will be a good place to find a husband.” (I actually
found my husband in a bar, not at the university!)
I remember taking the SAT tests in high school, but was not aware o f how they
were used. I only knew that they were taken before entering college, but I did not know
that one could prepare for them. The results o f my tests showed that math was not a
problem, but I would have to take remedial classes in writing and English during the
summer so I could begin college with my friend in the fall. I worked very hard in the
classes. It was the first time I took school seriously and knew deep in my soul that
passing these classes would make a big difference in my life. I’ll never forget how afraid
I was that I might not pass them. I was on the way home from California with my friend
with whom I was planning to attend college when we stopped at a phone booth so I could
call my mother to find out. I prayed to God, even though I was not a believer at that time.
When my mother gave me the wonderful news that I had passed, I felt like I had just
received a new lease on life. I had passed without cheating and was admitted to the
University o f Utah in 1966.
I enjoyed learning in college, although I found the classes difficult. My favorite
class was philosophy and I remember with great joy how a group o f us would sit around
and discuss how different philosophers would address various issues. This might have
been the beginning o f my learning to think, although thinking is clearly not my leading
function in terms o f Jung’s typology. College was the first time I began to take
responsibility for my learning. I spent a lot o f time studying. My grades were passing and
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improved with time. I never flunked a class, but received two Ds, in Spanish V and
Political Science, even though I did my best and assumed that I had learned something. I
must mention that in my chemistry class I received the third to the highest grade out of
more than three hundred students. I was the first to graduate from college on either sides
of my family, and did so with around a B average.
I loved learning and thought about getting a master’s degree until I discovered
that one had to take a test to be accepted into graduate school. My fear about not passing
the GRE was so great that I immediately abandoned all.thoughts o f continuing school. I
could not share my fear with anyone and felt as though I must keep it a secret. Maureen
Murdock writes that “we wear armor out o f fear”37 and I spent much o f my young life in
armor.
The worst part o f my university years were the times I sat around with my friends
not understanding what they were talking about. Pretending to understand, I would agree
or shake my head while vigilantly protecting my secret. I feared that I might get kicked
out of school if it was found out that I was not smart. This obsession kept me separated
from my friends as well as from myself. That horrible feeling o f not understanding the
conversation stayed with me all my life. Today, at times, I still panic when I do not know
something or believe someone might critique me. I took “critique” as “criticism” and did
not understand that learning is gained by constructive feed back. I did not know how to
look at myself objectively because I took everything personally. I was stuck in a
stupid/smart split that kept me seeing one-sidedly, one way only: I am stupid!
As I became older, my relationship with my father never grew because we were
stuck in a boss/employee, king/slave, and adult/child relationship that only gave him a
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voice. He told me what to do and how to think by criticizing me. A memory that stayed
with me for a long time was when my father criticized me for using a word that he did
not know. It was during my first or second year o f college, and I was excited about
something that had happened. When I used the word “peer” my father yelled at me.
“Who in the hell do you think you are now that you’re going to college? You think you
can make up words that I don’t know. If it was a real word don’t you think that I would
know it?”
I was crushed and confused. I actually remember thinking that I must have made a
mistake. It was not until I got into therapy that I was able to replay this scene with my
father, and in the re-visioning o f the incident, I pulled out a dictionary and read to him the
definition o f “peer” : a person who, or thing which, is equal in ability, standing, age, rank,
or value. My father did not understand the concept o f the word because he always
thought o f himself as superior.
I now try to ask people what they are talking about when I do not understand. It
is surprising how many times they are talking about something I could not have known or
I had not heard a word correctly. I know my stupid complex will never go away, but I can
manage it by understanding when it gets activated and not allow it to seize me. Instead, I
am honest with others and myself by telling people when I do not understand. I
constantly remind m yself that learning is a process and that I need not know everything.
After five years o f college, I graduated from the University o f Utah with a degree
in elementary education. I could not find a teaching job so I took a job as an aide in a
kindergarten classroom, hoping to secure a teaching position the following year. Toward
the end o f the year, when I was asked if I wanted to teach a second grade class for a
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teacher who was retiring, I declined. I told them, as well as myself, that it was because I
was getting a divorce, but I believe the real reason was that I was afraid o f failure.
Besides, my father told me that I would get more money from my ex-husband if I wasn’t
working. This satisfied me; it was easier to believe than to deal with my fear that I could
not succeed at teaching. Without failure one never reaches one’s potential.
After my divorce, I worked as a cashier in a hospital for three years before I
started working for my father, where I stayed for sixteen years. I understand now that my
father called my mother and me stupid in order to control us. We believed his story, as he
did, that it was the job o f the father to protect. My mother and I believed we were unable
to take care o f ourselves, and the payoff for relying on my father was that we felt safe and
contented most of the time. I know my mother felt horrible about not graduating from
high school, but she seemed to use it as an excuse for not being smart. She modeled
dumbness and helplessness very well for me. I remember her telling me that “if you do
not know how to do things, men will do them for you.” Maybe that was not so dumb after
all! Now I understand that because I never faced myself or took responsibility for m yself
my complexes continued to grow underground.
I wondered how I would support myself after I quit working for my father, and
thought about teaching as a livelihood. Even though it scared me, I regretted not having
tried earlier, and wanted a chance to see if I could teach. I went back to school to re
certify and started substituting. I told my friends, family, and even m yself that I wanted to
find out if I liked teaching by substituting, but deep in my soul I knew I wanted and
needed a permanent position to find out. I did not want my friends to know how much I
wanted a job just in case I could not get one. “We don’t want others to know how we
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feel, because we don’t want to be rejected.”381 believe rejection was, and probably still
is, my biggest fear. After substituting for more than two years, I was about ready to give
up when I was hired to teach second grade by a wonderful principal, Sherry Wasden. I
hate to think o f what would have happened, if it were not for her.
Teaching was difficult at first. It took me a while to learn not to react to my
students who had behavior problems, and to understand that their difficult behavior was a
symptom resulting from other problems. After all, I had lived through much the same
relationship to school. I remember running to my principal during my first year of
teaching to tell her all o f the horrible things that one o f my students had done. I was
shocked to see her non-reaction. I remember her saying “And. . as if to say, “So, what is
your point?” It was the first time that someone did not react to my over-reacting. It was a
great lesson.
In my family, there was either over-reaction or under-reaction. I always wondered
why my father never got mad when I’d make a big mistake, but when I did something
small or nothing at all, he did. It was as though I walked on eggshells; I never knew if my
father would come home bearing gifts or vicious words. I learned how not to be there
psychologically.
I believe something similar to this dynamic with my father happened to me with
my first scheduled evaluation as a teacher. At the time, I did not understand what had
come over me, but I knew that I had done poorly. Afterwards, I went to my principal with
tears in my eyes. She told me not to worry; however, she said that she had never seen me
teach that way before and wondered what had happened. It was not until I got into
therapy a few years later that I realized that because I could not stand to be critiqued, I
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had left my body, psychologically, not literally, while being evaluated. At the time, I did
not understand what it meant to be grounded in one’s own body. I took any form of
critique as criticizing; I was so afraid to look at myself or see my negative side. My
egotistical self kept me away from any awareness o f my shadow, all o f my disowned
parts.
An amazing discovery occurred during my second year o f teaching when I had a
student with dyslexia. While reading the information about this learning disability I
realized that I had suffered with dyslexia all my life. Things started to fall into place and I
understood better why learning had been so difficult for me; this explained my problems
in reading, writing, language, and spelling, and why I always transposed numbers and
had difficulty memorizing phone numbers. I am learning to live with dyslexia and
understand that it is a part of who I am. When I write numbers down I’m very conscious
that I transpose easily, and I also try not to criticize myself when I make mistakes. I now
see dyslexia as the gift that has given me compassion.
. Thinking in black and white keeps one in a single perspective that ignores
half of reality and prevents one from feeling compassion. My black and white
mindset froze my imagination as well as any psychological ideas I might have
pondered. My life began to change when my thinking changed and my rigid
thinking expanded to embrace different perspectives.
While talking to an ex-husband recently, he brought up a time when I had
thought in black and white. He told me that during our short marriage he had
mentioned going to therapy to help him understand his feeling toward my ten year
old son. I had told him that my father said that you either like someone or you do
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not. I believed it then, but not now. Today I understand that there are always
things that I do not like about other people and myself, as well as things that I
like. Ambivalent feelings can be uncomfortable, but they are reality. I believe
Jung said being able to hold the tension o f opposites is a sign o f maturity. Before
my thinking changed, I was a victim. I did not think that I had a choice; I now see
that I make choices every day o f my life.
Single perspectives split psychological archetypes that are bipolar by
nature. For many years, I only saw my dumb side and not my smart side, while
some people, like my father, only see their smart side. Intelligence and stupidity
dwell in the same psychological archetype. It is not about being smart or dumb; it
is about accepting that humans are both. The smart/dumb archetype visits
everyone; however, one does not have to own it, get stuck there, and live it as a
complex. Identifying with only half o f the archetype prevents it from moving in
and out o f the personality as new information is learned. I identified with the
negative archetypal energy and was possessed by it so that I could not properly
see either my strengths or weaknesses. I was obsessed with this idea o f being
dumb and nothing else mattered; it still haunts me at times. Even when I received
my first mail from Pacifica Gradate Institute, after already having been accepted,
my thought was “Oh no, they changed their mind and don’t want me.”
My fear o f being dumb froze my imagination and prevented me from allowing my
intelligence to appear. Acknowledging one’s weakness allows one to be human. Saint
Augustine writes that “there is more beauty in the modesty of a mind that admits its faults
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than in the knowledge that I was seeking.” Now I see that my feeling o f inadequacy
might be my path towards consciousness.
I want to remember the advice I used to give my second grade students
when they would get frustrated while learning new things: you don’t know until
you know, and when you know, it is easy. I no longer identify with being dumb.
At times, I feel dumb, but I am learning to move through, let it go, and know that
not knowing is only a part o f who I am. The other part o f me is an intelligent
scholar who loves to learn and knows that learning is a process that will continue
throughout my lifetime. Not knowing is the starting point for learning.
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Wild Forces
There are beautiful wild forces within us.
Let them turn the mills inside
and fill
sacks
that feed even
heaven.
St. Francis o f Assisi40
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Harmony
Human beings’ two most uncontrollable passions are love and war. In ancient
Greece, these two powerful passions are represented by Aphrodite, the goddess o f love
and beauty, and Ares, the god o f war and battle. Today, one has a choice to honor them or
to repress them. If one chooses to honor both o f them, the gift they bestow is a sense of
harmony and peace within oneself. Let me explain: Aphrodite and Ares are lovers, but
not wed to each other. Aphrodite is married to Hephaestus, the lame god who makes her
beautiful jewelry and Ares has no wife, but is the father to many children. The affair
between Aphrodite and Ares produced at least three children: Phobos (Panic), Deimos
(Fear), and Harmonia (Harmony), some sources say they produced Eros (Cupid).
However, it is their daughter, Harmony, who sparks my interest. When love and war are
in balance, they bring peace and harmony into one’s life.
In Pagan Meditations, Ginette Paris explains that Aphrodite and Ares are
opposites. “Aphrodite— Ares is a union o f inverse polarities: war and peace, desire and
aggression, fire and water, hyper-masculinity and hyper-femininity”.41 Ares and
Aphrodite go together; they cannot be separated. Peace does not exist without war, just as
there is not joy without pain. Repressing pain represses joy; if one cannot feel pain, one
cannot feel joy. When one represses or ignores Aphrodite, one also represses Ares. Paris
explains that repression o f rage and anger also drives out pleasure, tenderness and
laughter. She writes, “Those who are too soft can know neither the fire from Ares nor that
of Aphrodite”.42 The fire from Aphrodite and Ares is intense. Although they are
opposites, what they have in common is that they both fully inhabit their bodies and live
in the moment. Paris states that Aphrodite and Ares are hot-tempered divinities that
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provoke emotions. “The rage o f Ares [and] the desire o f Aphrodite [...] have in common
taking possession o f the heart and body at a high point o f intensity.”43
Peace is not gained from the absence o f war or from the absence o f love, but from
balancing war and aggression with love and compassion. People around the world yearn
for peace on earth without understanding that it takes both Ares and Aphrodite to
establish peace on earth. Without aggression and destruction, there is no movement and
the human race ceases to develop; without love and compassion the human race can be
destroyed. Actually it is the friction o f opposites, the continual confrontation between
Aphrodite and Ares that keeps them alive; otherwise, the balancing o f war and love can
be taken over by fear and terror. I see the current war in Iraq as a huge imbalance. The
war was initiated out o f fear of terrorism and continues to be fueled by fear and hate that
lacks any sense o f love and compassion. There can be no peace on earth if one does not
protect and fight for what one loves and believes in; however, the fight is about standing
up for one’s beliefs and values, and not about imposing them on others.
In Jungian psychology, the journey to discover who one is, is believed to occur
when opposite energies unite. Humans are a composite o f opposites: masculine-feminine,
good-bad, thinking-feeling, inner-outer, and divine-human. A union o f opposites brings
one into a balanced wholeness. When love and war are acknowledged, honored, and
balanced in one’s personality, their energies actually allow one to stand up for who one is
and know what one loves. Aphrodite and Ares allow one to live an authentic life o f true
passion, in one’s own power.
Before I got into therapy, I was too soft to know the fire o f Aphrodite and Ares.
My passion and power were repressed. When it came to standing up for my beliefs, I kept
72
quiet for fear o f rejection and criticism. In my fear and denial o f Ares, I repressed any
feeling o f anger; I did not get angry. I actually needed the courage o f Ares to help me
face and fight my fear o f anger.
I find it interesting that in my astrological natal chart, my Ares does not have a
major aspect. This means that it is not connected to the other planets in my chart. Most
planets have major aspect to other planets. I believe that the absence o f an Ares aspect in
my chart has contributed towards my difficulty in understanding and expressing my
anger, o f which I was unaware. In the beginning o f therapy, my therapist had me get my
old tennis racket out so that every morning I could hit my bed with it. My instructions
were to hit the bed as hard as possible while letting out a loud scream. When my son
came for a visit and saw the tennis racket— he asked me if I had taken up tennis again. I
smiled and said, “sort of.” I carried out this ritual for about a year and a half until one day
I quietly put away my racket and never took it out again. Only after allowing myself to
feel anger, was I able to begin using Ares’ energy to stand up for myself and step into my
own power. Without the fight o f Ares, I had not possessed the courage to state what I
wanted, needed, or thought. I was afraid o f hurting someone’s feelings by just stating my
view, especially if it was a different viewpoint. What appeared true to me felt either too
harsh for me to say or for someone else to hear. Truth is found in the body and my mind
prevented me from connecting to my body.
Disconnection from my body had prevented me from accessing the power o f Ares
as well as the love and beauty of Aphrodite. 1 didn't really know how to see beauty in the
world and thought love was only about sex. Paris writes that “decadent orgy and sexual
promiscuity have nothing to do with pure Aphrodisiacal mysteries,”44 and that “the
73
depressed person no longer devotes any o f his or her energy to Aphrodite.”45 Aphrodite
helps one to see and enjoy beauty in the world, in others, and in one’s self. It was the love
of Aphrodite that helped me to learn to love myself. One cannot love others if one does
not love one’s self. When Aphrodite is allowed to work her magical powers she gives one
a sense o f love and beauty that lingers throughout the day. When I am in love with living
my life, I know that Aphrodite is present.
In her book, Goddess: Mythological Images o f the Feminine, Christine Downing
writes that she no longer sees Aphrodite only in terms o f physical beauty and unfettered
sexuality, but that she also represents a trust and intelligence about feeling. Aphrodite
enters life to influence one with response to events and persons as a way o f knowing what
is valuable. Downing tells Aphrodite that “the subtle intertwining o f the physical and
spiritual is among your most important gifts”.46 The power o f Aphrodite allows love to
inhabit the body so that one feels connected to everything in life.
Individuation can only occur when one is in one’s body and experiences a
universal pull to unite one's instincts with the divinities in an embodied wholeness.
Without the body’s awareness, there is no connection to the self, others, or the cosmos.
When the body opens to consciousness, opposites are perceived as two dimension o f the
same essence. One must live in the body to be fully conscious. Marion Woodman
explains how the body “has to be flexible enough to expand with divine energy. It is the
instrument through which divinity manifests. It is the instrument o f the divine; it is not
the God or Goddess. It has to be humble enough to return to its human dimensions”.47
The authentic self breaks through when the body opens to both the divine and the human.
74
Aphrodite and Ares are alive. One chooses whether their energies reside
consciously or unconsciously within. If they live unconsciously, they tend to rule one’s
life through greed and desire. Without awareness o f the more positive aspects o f their
energy, one feels an emptiness, as though one never has enough love or power. However,
if one chooses to honor Aphrodite and Ares consciously, they allow one to embody one’s
passion as well as one’s power, and gain a sense o f harmony that no other person can take
away.
75
Notes
1 Arrien, A ngeles. The Tarot H andbook: P ractical A pplications o f A ncient Visual Sym bols. NY: Penguin
Putnam, 1987.
2 Heraclitus. The C ollected W isdom o f Heraclitus. Trans. Brooks Haxton. Ny: Penguin, 2001. 71.
J Jung, C. G. The C ollected Works. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. Vol. 9ii. Bollingen Series 20. Princeton: Princeton
UP, 1969.275.
4 Jung, C. G. M em ories, D ream s, Reflections. NY: Random House, 1961. 358.
2 Jung, C. G. P sychology a n d Religion: West a n d East. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. Vol. 11. Bollingen Series 20.
Princeton: Princeton UP, 1969. 197-98.
6 Jung, C. G. The C ollected Works. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. Vol. 9i. Bollingen Series 20. Princeton: Princeton
UP, 1969. 61.
7 Oliver, Mary. D ream Work. NY: Atlantic Monthly, 1986. 38.
8 Corbett, Lionel. The R eligious F unction o f the Psyche. London: Routledge, 1996. 13.
9 Rilke, Rainer Maria Life Prayers. Eds. Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon. NY: HarperCollins, 1996.
372.
10 Eckhart, Meister. L ove P oem s fr o m God. Trans. Daniel Ladinsky. NY: Penguin, 2002. 116
11 Mogenson, Greg. G o d is a Trauma. Dallas: Spring, 1989. 80.
12 Corbett, Lionel. The R eligious F unction o f the Psyche. London: Routledge, 1996. 40-1.
Pagels, Elaine. The G nostic G ospels. NY: Random, 1989. xix.
14 Loewenthal, Kate. P sychology o f Religion. Oxford, England: Oneworld, 2000. 68.
17 Fuller, Andrew. P sychology a n d Religion: E ight Points o f View. Lanham, MN: Rowman & Littlefield,
1994.211.
16 Fuller 115.
17 Loewenthal, Kate. P sychology o f Religion. Oxford, England: Oneworld, 2000. 133.
18 Whyte, David. W here M any Rivers Meet. Langley, WA: Many Rivers, 2004. 38.
19 Woodman, Marion. The R avaged B ridegroom : M asculinity in Women. Toronto: Inner City, 1990. 139.
20 Powell, Barry B. C lassical M yth. N ew Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 2001. 34.
21 Pablo Neruda. Luis P oirot Pablo Neruda: A bsence and P resence. Trans. Alastair Reid. N ew York:
Norton and Company, 1990. 14.
“ Parabola: Myth, Tradition, a nd the Search fo r M eaning. “Dying” Summer, 2002. Cover.
N elson, Gertrud Mueller. H ere AH D w ell Free: Stories to H eal the W ounded Feminine. N ew York:
Ballantine, 1991. 130-1.
24 Jung, C. G. “The Soul and Death.” Trans. R. F. C. Hull. The C ollected Works o f C. G. Jung. Vol 8.
Bollingen Series 20. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1960. 404-15.
23 Hillman, James. Suicide a n d the Soul. W oodstock, CT: Spring, 1997. 61.
26 Halifax, Joan. B eing with the D ying. Audio. Sounds True. Boulder, CO: 1997.
27 Walcott, Derek. Collected Poems 1948-1984. NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986. 328.
28 Casey, Caroline W. Inner a n d O uter Space: The A strological Language o f the Psyche. Sounds True
Audio. 1997.
29 Hillman, James. Suicide a n d the Soul. W oodstock, CT: Spring, 1997. 122.
’° Forrest, Steven. The Inner Sky: H ow to M ake Wiser C hoices fo r a M ore F ulfilling Life. San Diego: ACS,
1988.
Hillman, James. H ealing Fiction. NY: Random Colophon, 1983. 26.
Corbett, Lionel. The Religious F unction o f the Psyche. London: Routledge, 1996. 99.
” Hillman, James. R e-visioning Psychology’. NY: Harper Perennial, 1992. 15.
’4 Hillman 123.
° Hillman 181.
16 Rumi. The E ssential Rumi. Trans. Coleman Barks with John Moyne. NY: HarperCollins, 1996. 144.
37 Murdock, Maureen. U nreliable Truth: On M em oir a n d M em ory. N ew York: Seal, 2003. 60.
38 Murdock 132.
39 Augustine, Saint. Confessions. Trans. Rex Warner. N ew York: Penguin, 2001. 87.
40 St. Francis o f A ssisi. Love Poem s fr o m God. Trans. Daniel Ladinsky. NY: Penguin, 2002. 47.
41 Paris, Ginette. P agan M editations. Quebec, Canada: Spring, 1986. 79.
76
42 Paris 83.
43 Paris 83.
44 Paris 74.
45 Paris 32.
46 Downing, Christine. G oddess: M ythological Im ages o f the F em inine. NY:Continuum, 1981. 206.
47 Woodman, Marion. Leaving M y F a th e r’s H ouse. Boston: Shambhala, 1992. 14.
77

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EMBODIED LOVE:

HEALING THE FATHER WOUND THROUGH INDIVIDUATION

PACIFICA GRADUATE INSTITUTE

This dissertation has been

Walter Odajnyk, PhD

Christine Downing, PhD '

Lyn Cowan, PhD

All rights reserved.

ProQuest Information and Learning Company

Embodied Love: Healing the Father Wound Through Individuation

tendency as the process o f individuation.

In this dissertation, I revisit Jung’s concept o f individuation and apply it

feminine perspective into the definition o f humanity in our patriarchal society.

depression, and passive-aggressive behavior. We who have been wounded by a negative

In contrast to Electra, the ancient Sumerian goddess, Inanna, takes responsibility

Thank you to my committee members:

Christine Downing, Walter Odajnyk, and Lyn Cowan

and my Jung group:

Mary Mahler, Becky Christman, Dwight Holt, and John Shavers.

A special thanks to John Bjom Ostbo.

Chapter 1 Introduction, Review of Literatureand Organization 1

Chapter 2 Individuation: A Feminine Perspective 20

Chapter 3 The Father-Daughter Relationship 43

The Handless Maiden 47

Chapter 5 The Maiden without Hands: An Individual Perspective 93

Chapter 6 Summary 101

Works Cited 106

Memoir: Frozen Imagination: My Journey from Literalism to Myth

I d o n ’t know that I d o n ’t know...

— Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

How is it that, as human beings, we come to know? What prevents humankind

afraid o f the answers?

inborn drive toward consciousness, a quest for self-knowledge. “Everything in the

process o f coming to consciousness and experiencing oneself as a whole individuation. In

The Creation o f Consciousness: J u n g ’s Myth fo r Modern Man, Edward Edinger describes

and working on such conflicts promote the creation o f consciousness” (31).

I see individuation as the lifelong journey o f becoming an authentic whole person.

On the journey toward wholeness it is necessary to explore one’s wounds. My intention

My research looks at the effects that the negative or out-of-balance father

is usually found functioning successfully in the workplace, or with a less developed

mind, spirit, goals” (Bridegroom 111).

the feminine side.

left in the hands o f other people to decide what is valuable.

o f stepping into one’s own authority and authenticity.

thing from inside” (C W 9ii: 33; par. 61).

uniting archetypal opposites: spirit/body, light/dark, conscious/unconscious, life/death,

Usually on the journey towards psychological and spiritual wholeness there

knowing myself. “Without self-knowledge, that is to say, a feeling self-recognition, a

avenged for the death o f her father.

psychological perspective, my understanding o f my own father complex will increase,

to continue and deepen my understanding o f the father wound as it relates to me

essential to a meaningful human life” (16).

The process o f individuation, which includes a relationship with aspects o f the

heal the father wound.

By remembering and writing my memoir I hope to have validated my experiences

work through similar experiences. My writing is designed to be a ritual to bring closure. I

letting it be an obstacle, as I move through my feelings o f inadequacy, I am hoping to use

this learning disability as a stepping stone, by taking the responsibility to develop my

than to write a memoir?

mind. In my journey of individuation, it is important for me to express my understanding

o f this process so that I can explain my experiences to others.

C. G. Jung’s depth psychology, in combination with the archetypal and feminine

individuation, coming into balance psychically, is actually, I have come to believe, a