to the better world that a feminist revolution might bring. She helped
to create a center of change inside one of the country’s most presti-
gious and influential professional organizations: all this as a woman
and a minority woman inside a profession that was 89% male, even
more overwhelmingly white, and often still limited by the male-
dominant theories of Freud. When the history of the American
Psychiatric Association is written, and perhaps the history of social
responsibility among psychiatrists in general, I suspect that the ac-
tions of this one small, soft-spoken woman will be an important
force.
As I read the first chapters of Goddesses in Everywoman, I could
hear Jean’s trustworthy voice in each sentence of its clear, unpreten-
tious prose; yet there were still hints of a romantic or inhibiting
predestination in my thoughts about the goddess to come. Because
Jung and others who placed such archetypes in the collective uncon-
scious ended with either/or, masculine/feminine polarities—thus
inhibiting men as well as women from wholeness, and leaving wo-
men at the inevitably less rewarded end of the spectrum—I worried
about the way these archetypes might be used by others, or the way
women ourselves might be encouraged to imitate and thus accept
their limitations.
It was the explanation of the individual goddesses themselves
that not only put my worries to rest, but opened new paths to under-
standing.
For one thing, there are seven complex archetypes to examine and
combine in various ways, and each has within herself myriad vari-
ations. They take us far beyond the simpleminded dichotomy of
virgin/whore, mother/lover that afflicts women in patriarchies.
Yes, there are goddesses who identify themselves entirely by their
relationship to a powerful man—after all, they lived under patri-
archy, as do we—but they also show their power, whether by sub-
terfuge or openly. And there are also models of autonomy that takes
many forms, from sexual and intellectual to political and spiritual.
Most unusual, there are examples of women rescuing and bonding
with each other.
Second, these complex archetypes can be combined and called
upon according to the needs of a woman’s situation or the un-
developed part of herself. If a glimpse in the media of a female role
model can have such important impact on the lives
xiiGoddesses in Everywoman