ner images, musings, and imagined life—a world to which only they
have access. A woman may have spent too much time by herself or
may have retreated there to get away from an intrusive mother or
an abusive father. One of my Persephone patients said, “I had my
special places—behind the big brown chair in the corner of the living
room, under my tree where the branches touched the ground and
hid me from view—where I’d go hide. I spent hours there as a kid,
mostly daydreaming, pretending I was anywhere else but in that
house with those people.”
Sometimes her preoccupation with her inner world cuts her off
from people, and she retreats there whenever the real world seems
too difficult or demanding. At some point, however, what was once
a sanctuary may become a prison. Like Laura in the Tennessee Wil-
liams play The Glass Menagerie, a Persephone woman may become
confined in her fantasy world and be unable to come back to ordinary
reality.
Withdrawing gradually from reality, some Persephones seem to
slip into psychosis. They live in a world full of symbolic imagery
and esoteric meaning, and have distorted perceptions of themselves.
And sometimes, psychotic illness can serve as a metamorphosis, a
way for such women to break out of the limitations and prohibitions
that were constricting their lives. By becoming temporarily
psychotic, they may gain access to a wider range of feeling and a
deeper awareness of themselves.
But psychotics risk being held captive in the underworld. Some
Persephone women (like Ophelia in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet)
avoid what is really happening by staying psychotic when reality
is too painful. Many others, however, go through the experience
with the help of therapy, and learn to grow, assert themselves, and
become independent.
After Persephone emerged from the underworld, Hecate was her
constant companion. Hecate, Goddess of the Dark Moon and the
Crossroads, ruled over the uncanny realms of ghosts and demons,
sorcery and magic. The Persephone woman who emerges from a
psychotic illness may gain a reflecting discernment that intuits the
symbolic meaning of events. When she recovers and returns to the
world from the hospital, she often has an awareness of another di-
mension, which can be symbolized as having Hecate as a companion.
Persephone: The Maiden and Queen of the Underworld, Receptive