to have a child may be barren, or a child may die or leave home. Or
her job as surrogate mother may end, and she may miss her clients
or students. Then, rather than rage or actively strike out at those she
holds responsible (Hera’s way of reacting), the Demeter woman
tends to sink into depression. She grieves, her life feels devoid of
meaning and empty.
Dr. Pauline Bart, a professor of sociology at the University of
Illinois, wrote an article about depressed Demeter women entitled
“Mother Portnoy’s Complaint.”^4 Bart studied the records of over
500 women who were hospitalized for the first time between the
ages of forty and fifty-nine. She found that extremely nurturant,
overly involved mothers who lost their maternal role were the most
depressed.
Prior to their illnesses, these women were “super-mother” types
with a history of making sacrifices. Quotes from these depressed
women revealed their emotional investment in providing for others
and the emptiness they felt when their children left. One woman
said, “Naturally as a mother you hate to have your daughter leave
home. I mean it was a void there.” Another commented, “I was such
an energetic woman. I had a big house, and I had my family. My
daughter said, ‘Mother didn’t serve eight courses, she served ten.’”
Asked what they were most proud of, all these women replied, “My
children.” None mentioned any other accomplishment of their own.
When they lost their maternal roles, life lost its meaning.
When a woman of late middle age becomes depressed, angry, and
disappointed because her adult children are emotionally or physic-
ally distant, she becomes a grieving Demeter. She is obsessed by her
sense of loss and constricts her interests. Her psychological growth
stops. “Possessed” by the grieving aspect of the Demeter archetype,
she is practically indistinguishable from other similarly suffering
women. Such depressed patients show symptoms that are very much
alike: their depressed facial expressions; the way they sit, stand,
walk, and sigh; the way they express pain and make others feel de-
fensive, guilty, angry, and helpless.
THE DESTRUCTIVE MOTHER
When grieving Demeter stopped functioning, nothing would
grow, and famine threatened to destroy humankind.
Demeter: Goddess of Grain, Nurturer and Mother