interview with serious consequences. When a person is scrutinized
by “Gorgon-Eyed Athena,” he or she feels under the magnifying
gaze of an analytic, impersonal mind whose questions seem relent-
lessly directed toward uncovering inadequacies. Up against what
feels like a dissecting intellect and a stone heart, the person can feel
“turned to stone.”
A colleague of mine once described the unfortunate experience
of meeting the Gorgon Medusa at her advancement evaluation
meeting. Now, this colleague is a therapist who works very well
with seriously disturbed patients. Intuitively able to understand the
symbolic meaning and the emotions that lie behind irrational beha-
vior, she does beautifully with patients. However, describing one
interview with an Athena woman, she said, “I felt my mind going
blank. I was, for a moment, literally struck dumb, I couldn’t think
straight or find words.... I didn’t come off well at all.” More often
than not, when a person feels turned to stone by the judgmental
scrutiny of someone who has the power to destroy career advance-
ment or educational possibility, that someone is a man who carries
the Zeus archetype and “wears the aegis.” But as women gain more
access to power, the aegis may be increasingly worn by women.
And if they are acting as Athena, they may well have a Medusa effect.
Often the Athena woman who is having this Medusa effect is
unconscious of her negative power. It is not her intent to intimidate
and terrify. She is merely doing her job well, as she sees it—gathering
the facts, examining the premises, challenging how the material is
structured and supported by the evidence. But unknowingly she
may be fulfilling Goethe’s observation that we murder when we
dissect. With her objective attitude and incisive questions, she dis-
regards efforts to create rapport. Thus she kills off the potential of
true communication in which the heart of any matter—or the soul
of the person—can be shared.
Sometimes I talk with a patient who is purely intellectual in ap-
proach, who gives me a factual report about her life, a recital of
events without emotion, leaving out the feelings. I find I must make
an effort to stay related to her, fighting to overcome the boredom
produced when there is no “life”—no intensity of feeling attached
to what happened. What is lifeless in her has a numbing effect on
me. As I feel myself “turning
Goddesses in Everywoman