In depth analysis, the fairytale of Psyche and Eros marks the individual transformation from narcissistic love to the capacity for genuine love.
The four tasks that Psyche must complete to be reunited with Eros represent the inner work necessary to be initiated into the deeper mysteries of love—what is required for Soul (Psyche) and Eros (Love) to be joined. The tasks include pulling back projections and freeing oneself from identification with others’ 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 lowest aspects of self without inflating or collapsing, and confronting death and the underworld in a way that allows one to see the soul’s beauty in the self and the other.
During my personal engagement in each of these tasks, Oscar Wilde’s Salomé became one of the central images of the split-off feminine that was rising into consciousness—mine and the collective. Wilde’s Salomé is a complex feminine character who holds within her echoes of past pagan worldviews, surges of authentic sexual energy, and anger at the kingdom in which she finds herself—a kingdom that splits the feminine into lost or fallen, abandoned or desired. She is the rising feminine energy that must be reckoned with for the possibility of love to exist.
In a patriarchal world view and rape culture, the feminine remains possessed by masculine illusions of what love is and what it means to be a woman. This course breaks through traditional boundaries to forge a path that hints at what is necessary for both women and men to become unpossessed by these illusions and relate to the strong feminine as she rises from the depths of the unconscious.
This workshop explores:
- The four tasks of Psyche
- Projection and projective identification
- The transformation of a woman’s inner animus from negative to positive—from a state of possession (demon lover archetype) into authenticity, complexity and freedom (daimon archetype)
- The eight stages of breaking the demon lover complex as seen through contemporary women’s dreams
- A deeper and more complex understanding of love
