A Re-Visioning of Love: Dark Feminine Rising
Excerpt from A Re-Vision of Love: Dark Feminine Rising by Ana Mozol @dreamworktheatre
Recommended for: sexual trauma, feminine trauma, narcissistic abuse, repetition compulsion, codependency, shadow work, dream work
"This book questions how the field of depth psychology changes when viewed through a feminine lens. It seeks to understand violence against women intrapsychically, interpersonally, and within the field of depth psychology. The fairy tale of Psyche and Eros marks the individual transformation in depth analysis from narcissistic love to the capacity of genuine love.
The four tasks Psyche must complete to be reunited with Eros represent the inner work necessary to be initiated into the deeper mysteries of (conscious) love—Coniunctio.
The tasks include pulling back projections; facing violence and finding the hidden gold in these shadow lands; developing a psychic container/body that is capable of holding the highest and lower aspects of self without inflating or collapsing; and lastly, a confrontation with death and the underworld that allows one to see the soul’s beauty in the self and the other.
In my personal confrontation with each of these tasks, Oscar Wilde’s character Salome became a central image of the split-off feminine character who holds within her echoes of past pagan worldviews, surges of authentic sexual energy, and anger at the kingdom she finds herself in: a kingdom that splits the feminine into lost or fallen, abandoned or desired.
She is the feminine energy rising that must be reckoned with in order for the possibility of love to exist. In a patriarchal worldview and a rape culture, the feminine remains possessed by masculine illusions of what love is and what it means to be a woman [identified with what the man’s stunted, unconscious anima image is, whether conscious of it or not]. This book is an exploration of women’s mysteries, the dark feminine rising, she who is found [calling to us with despair, love, and destruction] in modern dreams."
Books mentioned:
A Re-Visioning of Love by Ana Mozol
