Helene Deutsch on Dionysus and Apollo: Deutsch, Helene: A Psychoanalytic Study of the Myth of Dionysus and Apollo Two Variants of the Son-Mother Relationship. The Freud Anniversary Lecture Series. New York:  International Universities Press, Inc., 1969,  101 pp.

In this enthusiastically youthful book, Helene Deutsch develops mythological biographies of Dionysus and Apollo. Using a combination of psychoanalytic approaches, she treats events in the stories as dreams, supplies missing connections by reconstruction, and treats multiple versions of the myths in different times and places as though they were the often contradictory data derived from different psychic levels. Dionysus' mythical life is restricted to a certain period of time; that of Apollo stretches back to the earliest past in which his own existence was identical with the Sun. However, Deutsch unites them through the central element of the relationships to their mothers. The two sections of the book reflect two variations of this relationship: Dionysus is the son who saves the mother; Apollo is the son who kills her.

Discussing Dionysus, the author chooses two interweaving topics: Dionysus' bisexuality and his struggle for immortality. His bisexuality appears in his achieving immortality by producing offspring by himself. She cites many factors in his childhood history that would endanger the development of masculinity in present-day societies which she feels are quite comparable to those of antiquity—among them a lack of objects for masculine identification in his childhood, and Zeus' wish that he be a girl. He was even reared as a girl. It is of interest that in Euripides' Bacchae, the King of Thebes, Pentheus, whom Deutsch regards as Dionysus' self-doubting double, mocks Dionysus' effeminate appearance, particularly his long hair which he commands his aides to cut. This act and his taking the god's wand are the ultimate insults and lead to a revenge in which Pentheus is dressed in women's clothes before he is killed.