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Marion Woodman writes for women afflicted with serious eating disorders (obesity, anorexia, bulimia) and for those who try to treat these difficult cases. True to the traditions, of her particular school of analytical psychology she presents the root problem of addiction to perfection in the language of Greek mythology. Her image is that of Athena (‘“born fully armed with a mighty shout” from the head of Zeus after he had swallowed her pregnant mother, Metis’) who, angry with a more beautiful Medusa, takes her cruel revenge by changing Medusa's locks to snakes. Woodman then puts the question ‘Is it possible that the modern Athena is not in contact with her Medusa?’ This Athena/Medusa myth seems to be as firm an image and concept in her clinical work as Freud's Oedipus myth was for him— and equally effective.
In the context of more humdrum regular analytic therapy with other sorts of people some of the author's extra-analytic and post-analytic practices come as a shock. For example, she writes about the workshops that have evolved out of her practice. Having made the point that these provide ‘a different experience for each participant because each has had sufficient analysis to be well established on her own path’, she writes that,
Our workshops almost always conclude with creative dance. The intense concentration has created sacred space and sacred time and in that world we reconnect with the ancient energies that are so ready to enter when the container is properly prepared. To dance is to enter the here-and-now and to know that Now is all there is. A movement in a dance has no past, no future. It has only the instant of movement. When it is over, it is over. The movement cannot be repeated. That present time Being in the body is the essence of play, the essence of dance.
In places Marion Woodman over-romanticises femininity. This has to be seen against the highly self-denigratory attitudes manifested by her women patients until she has brought some balance into thei