from a chosen path—the choice-maker as a captive of her instinct.
For example, a woman graduate student I knew almost lost sight
of her own goals as she felt herself caught up by the urge to become
pregnant. She was married and working toward a doctoral degree
when she became obsessed with the idea of having a baby. During
this time, she had a dream. In it, a large female bear held the wo-
man’s arm between her teeth and wouldn’t let go. The woman tried
unsuccessfully to get free herself. Then she appealed to some men
for help, but they were of no use. In the dream she wandered until
she came on a statue of a mother bear and her cubs—reminiscent of
a Bufano statue at the San Francisco Medical Center. When she put
her hand on the statue, the bear let her go.
When she thought about the dream, she felt the bear symbolized
the maternal instinct. Real bears are superb mothers, nurturing and
fiercely protective of their vulnerable young. Then when it is time
for the now-grown cubs to be on their own, the bear mother toughly
insists that her reluctant cubs leave her and go out into the world
to fend for themselves. This symbol of maternity had gotten a grip
on the dreamer, and would not let her go until she touched an image
of a maternal bear.
To the dreamer, the message of the dream was clear. If she could
promise to hold on to the intent to have a child when she finished
her degree (only two years longer), then maybe her obsession to get
pregnant now would go away. And sure enough, after she and her
husband had decided to have a child, and she had made an inner
commitment to get pregnant as soon as she finished the degree, the
obsession disappeared. Once again she could concentrate on her
studies, uninterrupted by thoughts about pregnancy. As long as she
held the image, the instinct lost its grip. She knew that if she were
ever to have both career and family, she had to resist the power of
the bear long enough to get her doctoral degree.
Archetypes exist outside of time, unconcerned with the realities
of a woman’s life or her needs. When goddesses exert an influence,
the woman as heroine must say yes, or no, or “not now” to the de-
mands. If she does not exercise conscious choice, then an instinctual
or an archetypal pattern will take
The Heroine in Everywoman