The Rape of Medusa - Beth J. Seelig, MD

The Rape of Medusa in the Temple of Athena:
Aspects of Triangulation in the Girl1
Beth J. Seelig, M.D.
The relationship between the Greek goddess Athena and her father Zeus, together
with the competitive hostility she displays towards other females, is presented as
illustrating some previously neglected aspects of triangular developmental
conflicts in the little girl. Literature on ‘the Oedipus complex in the female’ is
reviewed and discussed. The mythological early histories of both Athena and the
female monster Medusa are examined for the light they can shed on female
developmental vicissitudes and resultant conflicts in both women and men.
Unconscious split representations of women as assertive, phallic and dangerous, or
alternatively passive, castrated and receptive result in defensive repudiation of the
idea that a woman can be both actively assertive and also feminine and sexual.
Athena's enraged action of transforming the beautiful young maiden Medusa into a
monster as punishment for the ‘crime’ of having been raped in her temple is
discussed as illustrating an outcome of the lack of resolution of the little girl's
early triangular conflicts.
The psychoanalytic understanding of female psychosexual development has
long been marked by theoretical disagreement and at times by heated political
rhetoric. Theories about the nature and role of triangular conflicts in female
development, as well as what constitutes female or feminine sexuality, have been
debated.
Concepts of masculinity are easily integrated with images of activity,
authority and power. Such phallic masculinity is generally respected, although it
may also be feared. Receptivity and femininity have frequently been equated with
passivity and/or weakness. Passivity and weakness are sometimes regarded as
attractive feminine qualities, but are not usually regarded with respect. Active
receptivity and assertiveness are far from being universally accepted as being
normative components of mature femininity. Mythological stories about the
goddess Athena will be used to illustrate difficulties both women and men have
had in integrating femininity with assertion and aggression. These difficulties
relate to triangular developmental issues in both sexes.
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1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the meeting of the International
Psychoanalytic Association in Nice, France in the 26 July 2001 Panel on Gender in the
Psychoanalytic Method.
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Freud found the subject of female psychology puzzling. He stated, ‘in general
our insight into these developmental processes is unsatisfactory, incomplete and
vague’. (1924, p. 179). In his famous exasperated plea to Princess Marie
Bonaparte, he asked, ‘What does a woman want?’ (quoted in Jones, 1953, p. 421).
Richards (1999) has reminded us that he listened to and respected his female
colleagues and was a strong advocate of equality for women. However, as Fliegel
(1973) described, when he felt that his cherished psychoanalytic theories were
under direct attack by his erstwhile followers Jones (1927) and Horney (1926,
1933), particularly in the area of female psychosexual development, he defended
his formulations vigorously, even going so far as to categorically deny the
existence of vaginal sensations in the little girl (Freud, 1933, p. 118), recognised
by Klein (1932).
Considering it inevitable for a young girl to feel castrated when she learned
about the genital difference between males and females, Freud regarded penis
envy as the psychological bedrock of the female. This theory, in combination with
his ideas about the relative weakness of the female superego (Freud, 1925, 1931,
1933), led to the unfortunate consequence that Freud's theories were globally
denounced and subsequently disregarded by many feminist authors.
In his recent paper on female subjectivity Hoffman attributes the root of
Freud's problem in understanding women to the fact that ‘Freud's philosophic and
intellectual roots include the assumption that subjectivity is to be considered
possible only for men’ (1996, p. 24). As Dimen stated, ‘Freud's anatomical map of
a brave new sexual world plots a passage that begins as though generic to Homo
sapiens but ends in masculinity: in a failure of nerve, it inscribes things female on
a “dark continent”’ (1997, p. 528).
Orgel wrote about Freud's conviction that all males must repudiate the
feminine. Unable to accept his own feminine and maternal identifications,
he would not gaze upon his mother in her coffin. He sent Anna to his
mother's funeral. Anna, his female self, his Athena-Antigone, would be
his eyes. She could bear to look and take his mother in—for him, as him
(Orgel, 1996, p. 46).
Freud's difficulties with femininity and female sexuality formed a strong
precedent for generations of subsequent psychoanalysts. His formulations about
women seemed to be clinically confirmed in the analyses of many women. It was
difficult to get beyond the idea of ‘bedrock’ for many who respected his authority
and may have suffered from similar unexamined areas of countertransference
blindness in the area of female psychosexual development. Gradually, however,
alternative formulations have gained recognition and female development is
recognised as separate and quite distinct from male development, rather than being
regarded as a variant on the male norm.

Chasseguet-Smirgel was one of the authors who suggested that penis envy
should be seen as a defensive construct, rather than bedrock. She focused attention
on the girl's conflicted relationship with her mother.
The girl's penis envy seems to me not to rest upon her ignorance of the
vagina and her subsequent feelings of castration … but on her need to
beat back the maternal power … My experience with women patients has
shown me that penis envy is not an end in itself, but rather the expression
of a desire to triumph over the omnipotent primal mother through the
possession of the organ the mother lacks, i.e. the penis. Penis envy seems
to be as proportionately intense as the maternal imago is powerful
(1976, p. 285).
I will return to this formulation in my discussion of Athena and her
relationship with junior females.
Following Freud's use of the myth of Oedipus as the prototype of
triangulation in the little boy, the myth of Electra was suggested as illustrating the
vicissitudes of triangulation in the developing girl (Jung, 1913). However, Freud's
formulations about the girl's regarding herself as a castrated male
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led to his strong repudiation of the notion that the little girl has her own parallel,
but distinct and different ‘Oedipus’ complex to that of the little boy (Freud, 1931).
He stated that only the boy demonstrated, ‘the fateful combination of love for the
one parent and simultaneous hatred for the other as a rival’ (1931, p. 229). He
directly denounced the notion of an ‘“Electra complex” (Jung's proposal), which
seeks to emphasize the analogy between the attitude of the two sexes’ (Freud,
1931, p. 228) and the term dropped out of general use in the writing of Freudian
analysts. Recently, the idea that the little girl has an intense and distinct phase of
triangulation and that it should be given a name of its own has received renewed
attention in the psychoanalytic literature (Halberstadt-Freud, 1998; Kulish &
Holtzman, 1998; Holtzman & Kulish, 2000). I am suggesting another group of
stories, those involving the Greek goddess Athena, as providing a useful rich
illustration of some of the difficulties faced by the girl as she struggles with the
inevitable conflicts involving loving, hating, sexual and aggressively competitive
feelings towards her parents.
Beginning with Freud, many psychoanalytic writers have made extensive use
of mythology to illustrate their psychodynamic formulations. However, presenting
a new reading of an old myth can always be questioned. In her book on
psychoanalytic perspectives on metaphoric representations of women in ancient
Greece, duBois (1988) takes issue with the usual psychoanalytic reading of the
Greek myths involving women. She contends that ideas of castration and penis

envy were foreign to the ancient Greeks and are not central to understanding their
mythology. However, one can also argue that it is useful to employ a myth as
illustration, independent of its origin, and this is my intent. I do not wish to engage
in a dispute about the culture of the ancient Greeks, rather, I wish to borrow their
robust imagery as metaphoric illustration of some powerful psychodynamic issues.
In this regard, I agree with Arlow's perspective on psychoanalysis and mythology.
Psychoanalysis sees mythology as a concretization in the form of an
unconscious fantasy of the wishes of childhood. Derivatives of these
fantasies are projected on to some historical, mythological figure of the
past, who in the myth acts out a direct or symbolic representation of the
unconscious wishes shared in common by the members of the community
who sustain the myth (1982, p. 187).
The Myths of Athena and Medusa
The virgin goddess of wisdom Athena, born from the brow of her father Zeus,
is generally portrayed bearing a spear and wearing the image of Medusa's head on
her shield or breastplate. She has been regarded (Balter, 1969) as a phallic woman.
However, the story of the conception of Athena makes her a far more complex and
interesting figure.
Athena was originally conceived in the womb of the goddess Metis, with
whom Zeus had one of his many affairs. However, Zeus received a prophecy that
the child of Metis, whose name means ‘council’, would be very powerful. His
solution to the problem was to swallow the pregnant goddess. Subsequently he
gave birth to the child Athena from his brow.
The image of the snake-haired female monster Medusa, one of three sisters,
the Gorgons, is familiar to everyone. Medusa's hideous face had the property of
turning to stone anyone who gazed upon it. She was slain by the hero Perseus with
the assistance of Athena and Hermes. Perseus used the petrifying power of her
severed head to secure his promised bride Andromeda. Athena is later portrayed
wearing the visage of Medusa on her breastplate or shield.
The severed head of Medusa attracted Freud's attention. He regarded the
hideous face of Medusa as representing the horrifying penisless female genital, in
particular the genital of the mother (Freud, 1922). The multiple snakes of her hair
both disguised
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and expressed the mother's terrifying state of castration. There is, however, a tragic
prehistory of Medusa, not addressed by Freud. This early history of the monster
sheds another light on her story and expands its latent meanings.

Medusa was originally a very beautiful young girl, especially renowned for
the beauty of her hair. Her tragedy began with her rape in the temple of Athena.
Accounts of who raped her vary, some saying it was Zeus, others Poseidon, god of
the seas and Zeus's brother. In the words of Ovid, who used the Roman names
Minerva for Athena and Jove for Zeus:
Medusa was once renowned for her loveliness, and roused jealous hopes
in the hearts of many suitors. Of all the beauties she possessed, none was
more striking than her lovely hair. I have met someone who claimed to
have seen her in those days. But, so they say, the lord of the sea robbed
her of her virginity in the temple of Minerva. Jove's daughter turned her
back, hiding her modest face behind her aegis: and to punish the Gorgon
for her deed, she changed her hair into revolting snakes. To this day, in
order to terrify her enemies and numb them with fear, the goddess wears
as a breastplate the snakes that were her own creation (1955, p. 120).
In this story, Athena apparently excuses the action of her father or fatherrepresentative
and blames the victim, turning her into a hideous monster with
snakes in place of the lovely hair that was so attractive to her own father or his
representative.
I will now return to the history of the Greek goddess Athena and her
relationship to her father Zeus and some other female figures of Greek mythology,
particularly her connection with Medusa. Like the stories of Electra and
Persephone, discussed later, these myths provide a useful illustration of some of
the vicissitudes of female development. The story of the relationship of Athena
and Medusa is especially useful as an illustration of problems interfering with the
development of mature feminine sexuality in combination with power or authority.
The myth also illustrates common defences against the fear of feminine sexuality
and power, and the need to defensively regard any powerful woman as masculine
or phallic. This fear is prevalent in both men and women.
The story of the rape of Medusa can be understood as defending against and
at the same time representing, by a process of decomposition, a story of the
forbidden: father-daughter incest. The daughter is doubly portrayed. She is on the
one hand the intellectual pure Athena and on the other the sexual
temptress/monster Medusa. Athena's temple represents her body. The rape of the
virgin in the temple-body of the virgin goddess represents the deflowering of the
daughter by her father. Athena's rage at the violation of her temple-body is
displaced on to Medusa, now the degraded and repudiated repository of the
daughter's forbidden wish for a sexual relationship with her father.
Athena, one of the virgin goddesses in the Greek pantheon, is strongly
attached to her father, Zeus. This attachment is represented as ‘pure’ and asexual.
This revered virgin, without apparent interest in sexuality, can be regarded as an
example of an individual with severe conflict about her sexuality, who represses

and/or sublimates her sexual drive. Athena is the Goddess of Wisdom, thus
epitomising ‘asexual’ intellectual prowess. We need only look at her competitive
envy and hostility towards sexual women, who represent her own forbidden
sexuality, to see the envious and competitive aggression inherent in her incestuous
attachment to her father and rivalry with other females.
Athena can also be regarded as an altruistic maternal figure, at least towards
males. She may be regarded as exemplifying Anna Freud's (1946) concept of
altruistic surrender in her renunciation of sexuality for herself, and her furthering
and enjoying vicariously the success, both sexual and otherwise, of her male
protégés such as Perseus. Such vicarious enjoyment of otherwise forbidden
activities, by a process of identification with a proxy, who is assisted in those
activities, is a subtype
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of ‘conflicted altruism’ (Seelig & Rosof, 2001). Perseus is helped by the goddess
to obtain the powerful head of Medusa with which he defeats his foes and wins
both his bride, Andromeda, and his kingdom. This male-identified ‘Daddy's girl’,
born from her father's head, is both her father's agent and the patroness of chosen
male proxies. In this context, she is the patron goddess of Athens, centre of classic
Greek culture.
Having sprung in full battle costume from the brow of her father Zeus and
bearing a spear, the goddess is ‘Athena Parthenos’, a father's phallic daughter
without a mother. The parthenogenesis is complicated, however, by Zeus having
originally incorporated his pregnant consort Metis. In this sequence, male fear and
envy of woman's procreative powers leads to incorporative and aggressive action.
This aspect of the myth will be discussed in greater detail later. Balter refers to
Athena as the benign phallic mother in contrast to the malignant phallic mother,
Medusa.
She is the warrior-maiden goddess who always wears a helmet and
carries a spear. She will never accept a male as lover or mate. She has
many benign qualities, though she is ferocious in combat. It is significant
that Perseus gives the Medusa-head to Athena. This act reverses the
symbolic castration of the phallic mother; it represents the return of the
penis to the phallic mother, now benign (1969, p. 223).
However, Balter neglects Athena's destructiveness towards potentially
competitive women. In this regard, she is far from benign. She cannot tolerate
competition from other women. Her anger at Paris for having chosen Aphrodite
over her as the most lovely of the goddesses leads to her helping the Greeks
destroy the city of Troy. A patient with such extreme envy and narcissistic rage
would be recognised as showing clear evidence of her pathological narcissism.

Athena could not get revenge directly on Aphrodite, who is also a goddess, her
equal. She wreaks her vengeance on Aphrodite's protégés, Troy and all its people.
However, when faced with competition from mortal young women (daughterfigures)
she is directly aggressive. I have already described Athena's destructive
competitiveness with the young Medusa and her subsequent role in the
decapitation of her former beautiful young rival by the hero Perseus. Another
example of Athena's aggression towards young female competitors is her
relationship to Arachne, who dared to challenge her supremacy as a weaver, which
I discuss below.
The virgin goddess Athena is forever connected to her father Zeus. Having
been born from his brow, she need not recognise a maternal rival for his affection.
Her male-identification and resultant pattern of helping junior males in their
struggles, while enviously destroying potential female rivals, is nowhere clearer
than in her relationship with the unfortunate Medusa. After she assists Perseus in
slaying Medusa so that he can use her severed head as a weapon, she places its
image upon her own shield. Just as her father both protected himself from female
power and incorporated it by swallowing her mother, she claims the powerful
attributes of Medusa for her own; having earlier made her rival hideous, she
destroys her and takes her power for herself.
As has been discussed, after Medusa's decapitation by the hero Perseus, the
image of her severed head is placed upon the shield of Athena to frighten the
enemies of the goddess. Athena, depicted with the face of Medusa on her
protective shield, is two-faced. The fearsome split-off and repudiated face of
female sexual power, denied as being her own attribute, is displaced but still
carried by Athena. The purity and virginity of the goddess is defended by her other
(sexual) face, a hideously transformed representation of the female genital.
The symbol of horror is worn upon her dress by the virgin goddess
Athena. And rightly so, for thus she becomes a woman who is
unapproachable and repels all sexual desires—since she displays the
terrifying genitals of the Mother (Freud, 1922, pp. 273-4).
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A detail of the myth, as narrated by Ovid, underlines the identity of the two
female figures. Jove's (Zeus's) daughter hides her face behind her aegis to avoid
seeing the rape of Medusa. Later Medusa's likeness is placed upon the aegis. The
faces of Athena and Medusa are on opposite sides of the same protective shield.
Athena and Arachne
Adams explores the myth of Athena and Arachne and that of Athena and
Medusa in connection with creative challenge in women. She suggests that the
Arachne myth illustrates the dangers for the daughter when she competes with her

mother in the area of creativity. As told by Ovid, the young Arachne was very
proud of her outstanding ability as a weaver and made the serious error of
challenging Athena to a weaving competition. Her skill was so great that her
product rivalled that of the goddess. As punishment, Athena turned Arachne into a
spider.
Athena owes her possession of Medusa's head to her intelligence, which
is appropriate to her role as the goddess of wisdom. It was her advice to
Perseus—to use the indirection of Medusa's image reflected in his shield
to avoid looking at her—that made it possible for him to slay Medusa,
the only mortal Gorgon. The male hero Perseus, who, in turn, renounced
the regressive implications of Medusa by giving her head to Athena, thus
carried out Athena's wise advice. The pervasive appeal of the Gorgon's
power is evidenced by its traditional use as an armour or shield device
throughout Western Europe—as if the wearer triumphs over his enemy
with the aid of Medusa's petrifying glance. Unlike Perseus, Arachne fails
to renounce her childhood attachments and follow Athena's advice. As a
result, rather than profit from Athena's wisdom as Perseus did, Arachne
insists on pursuing the competition (Adams, 1990, p. 598).
In this reading, the (bad) competitive feelings reside in the junior female
Arachne. Athena is not described as competitive. However, it is she who avenges
herself by transforming the unfortunate young woman into a spider. The spider is,
like Medusa, frequently regarded as a figure of horror. Additionally, the multiple
legs of the spider are much like the multiple snakes of Medusa's hair and the
spider has long been regarded as symbolic of the bad mother (Abraham, 1923)
and as a ‘polyphallic’ creature, symbolising the castrated female genital (Flügel,
1924). Thus, Athena transforming her rival into a spider is another version of the
transformation of the young Medusa. In the case of Arachne, her successful effort
to surpass the goddess in weaving is unacceptable, while in the case of Medusa,
the young girl's success in attracting her father is severely punished. In both cases,
the junior female victim of the older woman's hostile competitiveness is blamed
and severely punished for her success.
Electra, Clytemnestra and Agamemnon
The term ‘Electra complex’ comes from the story of Electra, daughter of
Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks in the Trojan War. I am using the Oresteia of
Aeschylus (1984) as my source for this myth. Clytemnestra is Agamemnon's wife
and Electra's mother. Having taken a lover during Agamemnon's long absence,
Clytemnestra murders her husband on his return. She has several reasons for
murderous rage at her husband. He had previously sacrificed another daughter,
Iphigenia, to gain a favourable wind for the Greek assault on Troy to recapture the
abducted Helen at the beginning of the Trojan War. Also, he returned from the war
with a concubine, the Trojan prophetess Cassandra, who is also killed by
Clytemnestra. As the story is generally told, Electra in turn became murderously

enraged at her mother because of the murder of her father by her mother and her
mother's lover. She plots the death of her mother, inciting her brother Orestes to do
the deed.
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In the early years of psychoanalysis some psychoanalytic authors followed
Jung (1913) in regarding the myth of Electra as the female equivalent of the
Oedipus myth in the male child. The term ‘Electra complex’ was used. However,
after Freud's vigorous condemnation of the use of the term, it virtually disappeared
from subsequent mainstream psychoanalytic literature. More recently, however,
the Electra complex has been gradually regaining popularity.
In a paper on psychosexual development in the girl, Parens (1990) reflects on
the Electra complex in a footnote. He suggests more extensive examination of
clinical material in girls before ‘Electra complex’ should supplant the expression
‘Oedipus complex in the girl’. Again in a footnote, Tang and Smith state in
connection with their paper on triangular conflicts in various cultures, ‘In this
chapter, we consider only the Oedipus complex involving the male child. A similar
analysis can of course be made for the Electra complex’(1996, p. 562n.).
In a recent paper, Halberstadt-Freud argues for the use of Electra as a
paradigm for female psychosexual development. In her discussion of Freud's
rejection of the Electra complex, she suggests that Freud's lesser empathy for girls
led to his insistence that it is only the male child who feels the painful combination
of passionate love for one parent with concomitant hatred of the other. She goes
further, saying, ‘the Electra complex describes the much more fateful combination
of love and hatred for the same parent and seems particularly applicable to the girl’
(1998, p. 46).
Persephone, Demeter and Hades
Spitz (1991), Fairfield (1994), Tyson (1996) and Kulish & Holtzman (1998)
regard the myth of Persephone as being most helpful in illustrating the oedipal
configuration of the little girl. The myth is widely known and reported in many
forms. In this brief description, I am following Kulish & Holtzman (1998) by
employing The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Foley, 1994). In the myth of
Persephone and her mother Demeter, the young girl, at this time called Kore or
maiden, is gathering flowers in a meadow and is kidnapped by Hades who is ruler
of the underworld and brother of Zeus and Demeter. Hades takes Kore, thereafter
called Persephone, to his underground kingdom of the dead where she grieves for
the loss of her mother. At the same time her grieving and enraged mother Demeter
removes her blessing of fecundity from the world, plunging it into winter.
Eventually, Persephone is returned to Demeter and winter ends. However,
Persephone has eaten some pomegranate seeds while she was in the underworld

and, as a result, she must spend seven months below ground with Hades each year.
This is the origin of the seasons. Winter is visited upon the earth as a punishment
by the mother, Demeter, for the loss of her daughter, and spring comes as the
mother's gift when the mother-daughter dyad is reunited each year.
In her paper on the ‘the Kore complex’ Fairfield suggests that the myth of
Demeter and her daughter Kore, later called Persephone, is an excellent depiction
of the early history of the little girl. She says:
If the relationship of a mother and a female child is the central motif in
the myth, this is because, where children are raised in nuclear families by
mothers, the pre-oedipal child of either sex experiences itself as feminine
in primary maternal identification: it is thus not, as Freud (1925) would
have it, a little male, but rather a little female: a kore (1994, p. 249).
She goes on to differentiate the difficulties traversed by the male and female
child as follows:
oedipal conflict may tend to be especially well defined in the boy, with
his more acute castration anxiety; the girl, however, facing the challenge
of separating from her mother while remaining identified with her, is the
rapprochement-subphase child, the kore, par excellence, representing the
child
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of either sex struggling both to escape and to retain its feminine
identification with its mother (p. 249).
Spitz emphasises the triadic aspects of the myth. She points out that in some
versions of the story, ‘this sweet-smelling flower, the narcissus, is placed before
Persephone as a lure by her father Zeus on behalf of his brother Hades’ (1991, p.
161). Further, she reminds us that:
on this ‘oedipal’ level, the plot follows the paradigm articulated by Lévi-
Strauss (1969) who, in addition to analyzing the structures of myth,
theorized kinship as casting women in the role of a medium of exchange
between men—a perspective that Freud himself did not precisely adopt
but which might have served him well. In the ‘Dora’ case, as has been
much remarked, his lack of attention to this dimension of the material
caused him to become in fact one of the very men among whom Dora
was passed (See In Dora's Case, Bernheimer and Kahane, 1985) (Spitz,
1991, p. 162).
Kulish & Holtzman (1998) regard the myth of Demeter and Persephone as an
excellent illustration of the specifically female Oedipus complex and suggest
renaming the Oedipus complex in the female after Persephone. They underline the

incestuous nature of the rape of Persephone by her uncle Hades and their
subsequent marriage, symbolically the union of a father and daughter. The ongoing
tie of mother and daughter is emphasised in most psychoanalytic readings of the
myth. Kulish & Holtzman have highlighted ‘the girl's defensive abdication of her
own agency and ownership over her sexual desires in order to preserve a
closeness with the mother’ (1998, p. 66). While they agree with Chodorow (1978)
that the task of separating from the primary maternal object while identifying with
her makes the task of separation between mother and daughter more difficult than
it is between mother and son, they point out that it does not follow that the girl's
resolution of her ‘Persephone complex’ need be any less definite or mature than
the boy's resolution of his Oedipus complex. They argue persuasively in favour of
abandoning the terms ‘Oedipus complex’ and ‘oedipal phase’ when attempting to
describe the development and conflictual issues of girls and women. In a later
paper, Holtzman and Kulish stress that, in many female patients:
passionate sexuality, especially with a ‘forbidden’ male, is opposed by
the mother. Sexuality is seen as belonging to the mother and not to the
girl. This perception produces the striking need in the girl to
compartmentalize intrapsychic representations of a sexual and nonsexual
self. We view this compartmentalization primarily as defensive, in the
interest of sustaining the tie to the mother while entering into an erotized
relationship with the father. Thus passions and sexuality are relegated to
a secret part of the self, separate from mother (2000, p. 1431).
Triangulation in the Female
Electra's father Agamemnon, like Persephone's father Zeus, is absent during
her childhood. He is away fighting the Trojan War. Her rage at her mother has
been generally read as being in response to her mother taking a lover and killing
her father, with the emphasis on the murder of Agamemnon. However, Electra's
rage began long before her father's murder. As she says to her brother Orestes,
‘We're auctioned off, drift like vagrants now. Mother has pawned us for a husband,
Aegisthus, Her partner in her murdering’ (Aeschylus, 1984, p. 183). In these
words, Electra expresses her fury at having been rejected by her mother. Her
connection to her absent father is not the primary reason she sought revenge on her
mother, as is also suggested by Halberstadt-Freud (1998). Clytemnestra's earlier
crime is neglect of her children. Aeschylus uses the children's nurse to tell of the
mother's neglect. Electra's rage originates in her unfulfilled desire for her
abandoning mother, rather than in thwarted sexual longing for her absent father
who was off fighting the war against Troy.
The Persephone myth can be read convincingly,
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as it has been by Kulish & Holtzman (1998), as depicting the girl's sexual love for
her father conflicting with her attachment to her mother. When she eats the
pomegranate seeds, she symbolically unites with Hades sexually. As a result, she
must return to him every year. She shuttles between her mother and her husband,
who also represents her father. The girl's forbidden desire for sexual fulfilment
with her father is portrayed by rape by his proxy. All direct sexual desire is
attributed to the male. Persephone's own desire is represented as oral only. In the
male-dominated Greek culture this form of female desire might have been less
threatening. According to the myth, Persephone knows that if she eats anything
while she is in the realm of Hades, she will have to stay. Therefore, from her
eating the seeds of the pomegranate, we can infer that, at least in part, she wanted
to be forced to remain with him. Her vaginal hunger for the seed(s) of Hades is
represented and disguised by her oral hunger for the seeds of the pomegranate.
Athena and Demeter are both powerful goddesses. They both represent
maternal figures. They are also sisters, daughters of Zeus. However, unlike
Athena, Demeter is a mother. Her daughter Persephone is her brother Zeus's child.
Both Persephone and Medusa are raped by father-surrogates, but Demeter does not
blame Persephone for having been raped as Athena blames the victimised Medusa.
Persephone is regarded as virginal and blameless until she eats the pomegranate
seeds.
The story of Medusa in the temple of Athena depicts the dilemma of the
oedipal daughter from another perspective to that of Demeter and Persephone, in
which the attachment to the mother is the primary focus. Medusa, like Persephone,
is attractive to her father. However, unlike Persephone who keeps her mother's
love, by a process of projection Medusa becomes a hideous monster to her envious
mother. In the case of human Medusas and Athenas, the mother's sexual
possession of the father is regarded as monstrous by her daughter. Mother and
daughter can agree that there is a sexual monster in this story and that she is
female. However, the two disagree passionately about which of them is the
monster. From the perspective of the Athena-daughter, who has successfully
repressed her sexual desire for her father, Mother's sexual relationship with him is
horrifying and disgusting. Her sexual face is hideous in the eyes of her ‘pure’
daughter. Similarly, in the eyes of the narcissistic Athena-mother, the daughter's
burgeoning sexuality is hideous. She is the Medusa.
The male figure in these mythological stories is depicted as a rapist god, in an
incompletely successful effort to delegate all sexual desire and aggression to the
male. However, although a rapist, he is regarded as entitled to satisfy his sexual
desires, even forcefully. In the Medusa myth, he has been seduced by the power of
female sexual attractiveness and is not to be condemned for succumbing to her
allure. She is entirely to blame for attracting his desire. In this way, the male is
also protected from female condemnation. Paradoxically, he is also regarded as

weaker, unable to master his own passions and thus less responsible than the
perfidious Medusa.
Athena and Medusa can be viewed as representing aspects of one person. So
long as the maturing daughter remains virginal and submissive to maternal
authority within her mother's temple-body (fused with the pre-oedipal mother) she
is safe. However, when sexual maturity makes her attractive to and interested in
men and she separates from her mother, she becomes a threat to her mother. In this
situation she projects her sexual and aggressive impulses. It is not she who wishes
to have the sexual attention of her father; it is he who rapes her. It is not she who
aggressively separates from and competes with the mother she envies; it is the
envious mother who punishes her for her sexuality. Female sexual maturity can,
therefore, result in the transformation from lovely maiden to hideous monster. It is
well known that both
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separation-individuation and triangulation conflicts between mother and
daughter are more complicated and often stormier than between mother and son
(Chodorow, 1978; Tyson, 1994, 1996).
Gender and Power
In the reading of the myth I am presenting, Athena represents asexual and
intellectual femininity and the Medusa image represents sexual and aggressive
femininity and power. In the generally accepted accurate, but incomplete, reading
in the analytic literature both images have been regarded as being alternative
aspects of the phallic woman (Abbott, 1969; Balter, 1969; Adams, 1990).
The monster's physical characteristics give a clue to her psychological
significance. She has snake-hair and protruding eyes, tongue, and teeth.
All these show a phallic quality. Her ability to petrify, that is, render men
stiff, also has phallic—and malignant—significance (Balter, 1969, p.
222).
In this interpretation, which follows Freud (1922), petrification represents
castration through representation by its opposite. Thus, Medusa can be regarded as
a maternal imago of the phallic period of child development, especially in societies
in which strength and power are regarded as male attributes. However, it is not the
only meaning of these symbols of female power. As Adams has suggested, ‘the
petrifying glance (of Medusa) resonates with an even earlier developmental
period’(1990, p. 598).
In Adams's reading of the myths of Athena and Arachne and Medusa, we see
the ease with which the male figures are able to accept the benefit of Athena's
wisdom and the difficulty faced by young women such as Arachne in accepting

her advice. Perseus and the subsequent knights wearing the image of Medusa on
their shields have not suffered the girl's more intense conflict over separation from
and competition with the powerful maternal image. Perseus has no need to
challenge Athena. He can accept her guidance and protection as gifts from the
good mother. However, Arachne claims her ability to weave as her own, refusing
to accept subordination to the goddess-mother. This is the quandary the little girl
finds herself in as she struggles to separate from, while identifying with, her
mother. To accept maternal authority and superiority during this process can
threaten the development of a coherent identity that is independent of Mother.
Athena is like many excessively narcissistic mothers who cannot accept their
daughters’ independence. She employs a potion made by the witch Hecate to
vengefully turn Arachne into a spider when the girl insists on continuing to
compete with her in the art of weaving. As in the Medusa myth, the ‘bad mother’
aspect of Athena is split off and projected on to another female figure, the witch.
Athena only uses the destructive potion (bad poisonous milk from the witchmother).
The ability to make it belongs to a completely separate hated and feared
image of the mother. This allows the image of Athena to remain benign, despite
her malignant competitive action.
Medusa has been widely regarded as representing the negative aspects of the
mother. Miller (1958) suggested that the hideous face of Medusa can represent
projection on to the mother of the daughter's ugly, evil and hostile impulses, an
expression of competitive wishes. More recently, Herman stated,
Must every Kore not stand in relentless opposition to this entangling
aspect of the mother who would wind her coils about her and never let
her go? And indeed, it was Athene who, when the Medusa defiles her
temple with her lecherous seductions, changed the hair of the offender
into coiling snakes and serpents, as a just punishment for her vile habits
of the swamp (1999, p. 55).
She goes on to tell us that when Demeter was looking for her abducted
daughter in the guise of an old woman, she wore the mantle of Medusa and was
described as ‘the Black One’,
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Demeter Erynis. In this reading of the myth, the equation of Medusa with the
bad mother is very clear. In contrast, duBois states, ‘The myth of Medusa, is a
myth of fear of women, fear of their archaism, their self-sufficiency, their buried
power’ (1988, p. 92).
The worship of Athena goes hand in hand with a fear and devaluation of the
sexual and powerful woman represented by Medusa. Persephone is saved from the
devaluation because she is regarded as being the victim of male lust. Medusa is not

only attractive to males, but the suggestion is clear that she enjoys the sexual act.
Such enjoyment and success cannot go unpunished by the envious Athena.
Authority and power are abstractions that need not be regarded as inherently
gendered. However, there are gender differences in the development and
expression of authority. In his paper on the development of authority in females
and males, Hanly rejects the idea of a neat, gender-based separation of authority
functions. The dichotomy—maternal authority/desire and paternal authority/law—
is as inadequate to the role of the father as it is to the role of the mother’ (1996, p.
90). In differentiating male and female superego development in the small child he
goes on to say:
The mother, whose cunning is powerful enough to cast a spell upon the
father which the small oedipal girl can see with her own eyes, is
certainly able to cast a mortifying evil spell upon her. It is perhaps for
this reason that it is primarily the fear of the loss of love that gives the
girl's conscience the authority to exact obedience from her, leaving guilt
in a secondary place—whereas guilt is primary in the boy, with fear of
the loss of love secondary (p. 94).
We could introduce Athena/Medusa into Hanly's statement quite easily. The
‘small oedipal girl’ regards the mother who casts her (sexual) spell on her beloved
father as the evil Medusa. On the other hand, if the mother perceives her little
daughter's competitiveness for Father's love, she may well condemn the girl as the
evil sexual temptress, the dangerous Medusa. In this everyday drama, both mother
and daughter agree that there is a dangerous competitive sexual rival for Father's
affection. They disagree only about which of them is Medusa.
There is a group of Athena-like women familiar to psychoanalysts. These
intellectual successful women can be quite nurturing, especially to male students,
peers and even superiors. An Athena-woman can be nurturing to younger women
as well, as long as her own superiority is unquestioned by her junior. However,
competition from women peers, who are often former students or protégés,
claiming equality or superiority may result in intense hatred and destructive
retaliation. This is particularly the case when the intellectual rivalry is combined
with rivalry for the favour of a revered senior male mentor. In such cases, the
junior rival is regarded with hatred and fear. By the process of projective
identification, she becomes the repository of the competitive envy and hatred and
is regarded as Medusa. Reciprocally, the junior female former follower, now rival,
generally regards her erstwhile maternal nurturer as having been transformed into
a hideous, envious and competitive monster.
The developing small girl, Athena-like, may protect her idealised father, who
is the chief of her individual intrapsychic pantheon, her Zeus, from her own
aggression. She does this by turning her aggression against her own sexuality,
repudiating this portion of herself. If we regard Athena and Medusa as split part-

epresentations of the same individual, this action represents aggression directed
against the split-off sexual part-self. In this reading of the myth, Athena represents
the sexually repressed intellectual ‘pure’ daughter and Medusa represents the
sexually aware daughter, temptress of the father. This formulation is consistent
with that of Chasseguet-Smirgel (1976) quoted earlier. Anna Freud (1958) wrote
about the phenomenon of asceticism in adolescents who renounce their sexual
strivings to preserve the tie to the forbidden object. The asexual
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Zeus-identified Athena can be regarded as illustrating this tie between the ascetic
daughter and her powerful father. Additionally, this defensively driven asceticism
can also preserve the relationship with the mother, as has been discussed in
connection with Kulish & Holtzmann's (1998) reading of the myth of Persephone.
Green wrote:
the fact that aggression in the boy is turned outwards may correspond to
the fact that his genital organs are external. In the female, the internal
location of her genitals may be related to the internal orientation of
aggression. Internal orientation of aggressive drives and the inhibitory
retention that follows have many consequences; among others, it may
represent a permanent danger to object-cathexes (the latter being
continually threatened with destruction or damage) and a protective
reinforcement of some narcissistic cathexes alike (1972, p. 206).
Athena's temple represents her interior genitals. The repudiation of, and
assault on the sexually attractive Medusa, represents turning aggression away from
her god/father and expressing it by an attack on the devalued feminine sexual
aspect of herself, personified as the deflowered maiden/monster. The
reinforcement of the narcissistic fantasy of idealised desexualised intellectual
union with the god/father is gained at the expense of the repudiation as hideous
and concomitant sacrifice of satisfying genital sexuality.
From a male perspective, Athena must remain a virgin and phallic so that,
although very powerful, she is not a threat to men. Being female, but carrying a
spear as well as bearing the likeness of the head of Medusa on her shield, she
reassures the men that, although she possesses power, this power is inherently a
phallic attribute and is not truly a female power. By remaining a virgin, she
renounces female sexual pleasure and power. She can be worshipped by all men
without the threat that she will give her sexual favours exclusively to any one
male. In this way, male competitive strivings are avoided. Her repudiation of
female sexuality is linked to her phallic powers. She is not only the Goddess of
(phallic) Wisdom; she is also Goddess of War.

The Desire to Have Everything
The envy by one sex of the powerful attributes of the other leads to serious
difficulties. Kubie ventured to say, ‘Out of early preconscious and guiltless
identifications and misidentifications, rivalries, envies, hostilities, and loves grow
many unconscious drives, among which the drive to become both sexes is one of
the most self-destroying’ (1974, p. 353). This envious desire to have everything,
which Kubie elevated to the position of drive, can lead to abuses of power on the
part of both men and women. It is beyond the scope of this paper to review the
extensive literature on women's envy of the penis and of the male position in
society. However, Green's interpretation of the myth of Hercules spinning at the
feet of Omphale is interesting in this context.
We find here a typically feminine wish to have constantly at her side the
man of her desire in a double role—protecting and virile like the father,
and at the same time being used as if he were the mother. Man is
feminised here, not so much because the woman wants to castrate him
but because she wants to be sure of his loving, maternal, reassuring and
undangerous role. The object here is neither external nor internal, but at
a point where the two meet. The ancient Greeks display once more their
deep intuition of the meaning of myths; ‘Omphale’ is related to
omphalos, which meant both ‘navel’ and ‘umbilical cord’ (Delcourt,
1955, pp. 144, 150) (in Green, 1972, p. 208).
Green's reading of the myth focuses on the gratification for the female who is
able to have a relationship with a feminised, but still strong, protective male. Other
authors (Fenichel, 1930; Chiland, 1998) have utilised the myth of Hercules and
Omphale as an illustration of the transvestite fantasy of a phallic woman.
However, just as the myth represents
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the man inside a woman, it can equally well be read as representing the woman
inside the man. Just as the woman ‘wants to be sure of his loving, maternal,
reassuring and undangerous role’ (Green, 1972, p. 206), the fantasy of the phallic
woman (Hercules in Omphale's clothing and Omphale wearing the lion skin of the
hero) reassures the male that he is protected from castration and that he will be
protected by a benign powerful woman. Envy and destructiveness are kept at bay
by the fantasy that everyone has everything, a fantasy similar to Mayer's everyone
must be just like me’ (1985).
The birth of Athena is an example of the desire to have everything or be both
sexes on the part of a male. Zeus has swallowed Athena's pregnant mother Metis
(Grant & Hazel, 1995), taking this action to protect himself from the threat of
female power. This reading of the myth is consistent with Lax (1997) in her paper

on the relatively neglected topic of boys’ envy of the procreative power of the
mother, first described by Klein (1921). This male envy of female attributes,
especially their procreativity, has received less recognition by psychoanalytic
authors than the parallel envy female children have of the penis, until relatively
recently. Both forms of envy can be regarded as subtypes of the desire to have
everything. Athena is transformed from the womb-child of Metis, herself
considered very wise, to Zeus's brain-child. By swallowing his pregnant consort,
Zeus incorporates and transforms the power of female intellectual and physical
fertility into a male attribute, simultaneously protecting himself from future threat
by his powerful warrior-goddess daughter. She is henceforth an extension of his
phallic power. Male envy of woman's power to give birth to babies can be both
expressed and defended against by transformation into the desire to give birth to
ideas, which is possible to both sexes.
The power of creative thought is symbolised by the goddess Athena, but is
often regarded as being predominantly a male attribute. Women in predominantly
male groups often complain that they are rarely given credit for their ideas. The
typical sequence described is: a woman voices an original idea or suggestion. It is
initially ignored, but later adopted by the group, with one of the male members of
the group taking the credit for origination of the notion, just as Zeus swallowed the
pregnant Metis and gave birth to Athena himself. The myth directly attributes the
orally aggressive behaviour to Zeus's fear of the power inside the female Metis. By
swallowing both mother and child in one gulp, he takes the potential power of his
unborn child into himself and simultaneously acquires the envied female power of
giving birth to children. In this behaviour, we see the drive to become both sexes
(Kubie, 1974) expressed in undisguised fashion by a male.
Conclusion
Freud was an astute observer. However, as has been discussed, he made the
error of considering a common neurotic compromise to represent the feminine
norm, requiring no further analysis.2 Adherence to a model of female development
that is based on an incomplete understanding of female psychosexual development
can encourage counter-transference-based difficulties in hearing and
understanding clinical material, and subsequent difficulty analysing both female
and male patients. Kulish (1986), Tyson (1994), Mayer (1995), Basseches et al.
(1996), Dorsey (1996), Frenkel (1996), Lax (1997) and Hoffman (1999) are
among those who have recently contributed to our growing
—————————————
2 See Dahl (1996) for a reconsideration of penis envy as a complex layered compromise
formation, different in adult women than in girls. Also see Fast (1979).
- 907 -

understanding of female development and female psychology.
Kulish & Holtzman (1998) are correct in saying that it is problematic to use
male-based metaphors and terms such as ‘Oedipus complex’ to describe women,
as doing so can contribute to perpetuating the view that male psychodynamics are
the norm, with the implication that female development is a variation on a male
theme. This author agrees that as long as we use ‘oedipal’ as our verbal shorthand
for this crucial phase in the development of girls as well as boys, we continue to
increase the risk of countertransference denial of the developmental differences
between the sexes.
Numerous authors since Freud such as Hartmann (1958) and Arlow (1979)
have warned against allowing any theoretical frame to become a Procrustean bed.
As Grossman recently wrote:
A useful theory to some extent narrows the field of observation even as it
directs attention to relevant observations. As we know, chance favors the
prepared mind, or as an old witticism says: ‘I never would have seen it if
I hadn't believed it’ (1995, p. 888).
It is my hope that this psychoanalytic reading of Greek mythology will
contribute to furthering our efforts to understand analytically and treat our
patients. All human beings have struggled with the complex psychological
sequelae of their own triangulation experiences. The power of these early
experiences is reflected in the illustrative power and evocative nature of these
myths, even thousands of years after they were first told.
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