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In our work, it is often through metaphor that meanings become elucidated and communicated. Metaphors provide a means for opening up new possibilities, new ways of look at “facts” that had become rigid and inaccessible to change or moderation. We often come upon a theme or pattern whose essence eludes our efforts to name it (Charles, 2001a). At times, the pattern has an archaic, essential feel to it and our minds pull toward myth in our attempts to capture and communicate these multiple meanings. The myth, as a purveyor of essential truths in fabulous form, helps us to play with meanings without becoming lost within them.
It was to myth that I turned in my efforts to understand more deeply my work with several individuals whose creativity had been “stolen” from them by narcissistic mothers. Using illustrations from myth along with clinical examples, I focus first on mother-child dyads in which the child's gifts are spoiled and made unusable, and then on dyads in which the mother steals the child's sense of self through her symbiotic attachment.
I have worked with several gifted women who had been frustrated in their efforts to bring forth their talents into the world. In each of these cases, behind the daughter stood a mother whose narcissism seems to have impeded her efforts to facilitate the daughter's development. The envy was so strong that the daughters had receded from it in order to survive. This became their “bargain with the devil” in which they gave up the soul for