based reality of the “real” world and the unconscious or archetypal
reality of the psyche. When the Persephone archetype is active, it is
possible for a woman to mediate between the two levels and to in-
tegrate both into her personality. She may also serve as guide for
others who “visit” the underworld in their dreams and fantasies, or
may help those who are “abducted” and who lose touch with reality.
In I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, Hannah Green wrote her
autobiographical story of the illness, hospitalization, and recovery
of a sixteen-year-old schizophrenic girl who retreated from reality
into the bondage of an imaginary kingdom. Green had to vividly
recall her experience in order to write of it. Initially, “the Kingdom
of Yr” was her refuge, a fantasy world that had its own “secret cal-
endar,” its own language and characters. But eventually this “under-
ground” world took on a terrifying reality. She became a prisoner
in it and could not leave; “she could not see except in outlines, gray
against gray, and with no depth, flatly, like a picture.”^3 This girl was
an abducted Persephone.
Ex-psychiatric patients, like Persephone, can help guide others
through the underworld. Hannah Green’s I Never Promised You a
Rose Garden, Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar and her poetry, and
Doree Previn’s songs have served as guides for others who were
pulled into their depths and needed help making sense of the exper-
ience. These women were hospitalized psychiatric patients who re-
covered and wrote of their “abductions” into the world of depression
and madness. I also know several superb therapists who as young
women were hospitalized for psychiatric illnesses. They were, for
a time, “held captive” by elements in the unconscious, and were out
of touch with ordinary reality. Because of their firsthand experience
of the depths, and their recovery, they now are especially helpful to
others. Such people know their way around in the underworld.
Finally, some people know Persephone the Guide without the
experience of being captive Kore. This is true for many therapists
who work with dreams and images that arise in the imagination of
their patients. They have a receptivity to the unconscious without
having been held captive there. They intuitively know and are famil-
iar with the underworld realm.
Persephone: The Maiden and Queen of the Underworld, Receptive