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This book, dedicated to the memory of Helen Meyers, is an outgrowth of a conference sponsored by the Committee on Women and Psychoanalysis of the International Psychoanalytical Association, held in New York in 2014. The contributors—psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, poets, and academics, many of whom presented at the conference—examine mythic narratives about powerful female heroines and attempt to integrate these stories with contemporary models of female ambition, power, identity, and sexuality.
It is difficult, given this wide-ranging set of essays, to draw together common themes and conclusions. The editors suggest that the struggles of mythic heroines can be related to issues facing modern women and discuss implications of the myths for psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. They assert that exploring these tales of mighty women helped them tease out latent content in the narratives of their patients. For example, in her chapter on a very early myth from Sumer, written down two thousand years before the Old Testament was begun, Arlene Kramer Richards describes a scene in which the goddess Ianna looks at her vulva and declares herself Queen of Heaven. Richards links this scene to modern psychoanalytic understandings of female development involving primary femininity, or pride in the female genitals, rather than penis envy.
Some of the contributors use these mythical women quite directly as models to inspire their students or clients. For example, Merle Molofsky describes how contemporary women feel empowered by participating in a meditative and intense drumming called Taiko, an ancient Japanese tradition associated with the female deity of dawn and revelry. Similarly Ronnie Ancona finds that the figure of Medea inspires strong emotional responses and intellectual discussion among female students in a class at New York's Hunter College.
These attempts to apply myths directly to the lives of modern women do not do justice to their potential psychoanalytic m