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April 16, 2001 |
AWe talks with Jean Shinoda Bolenby Stephanie Hiller |
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"...women over 50 gathering together in circles could initiate the third wave of the women's movement." |
Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen speaks in a gentle voice, so quiet that in my first attempt to interview her over the phone, my tape recorder failed to pick up her words. Last month, as she commenced her book tour for her latest work, she allowed me another opportunity to speak with her. She's a tiny woman, but her size is certainly no indication of the dimensions of her intentions, which is to change the world. A Jungian psychoanalyst, she is the author of many books in which her voice is unmistakably clear. With Goddesses in Every Woman, published in 1984, she initiated what she has described as a new psychology for women, one which suggested we might get deeper understanding of the complexity of our multiple roles by identifying the archetypes at work. Understanding how to balance these disparate and sometimes opposed voices is like meeting with a committee; all our subpersonalities can communicate in such a way that we are enabled to make conscious choices about the direction our lives will take. For Bolen, the choice is always ours. I met Jean at the Congregational Church in Sonoma where she was scheduled to do a book signing. As the meeting room for the reading was already open, she suggested we find a place where we might not be interrupted. On the path, we encountered the church deacon, to whom we made our request. He offered his office. But Jean noticed a small building that must have been the original church. When she inquired, he offered to show us in. Light streamed in through unadorned windows. The church was the image of simple purity that has been the ideal of American Protestantism. Jean asked about the beautifully marbled pipes of the organ, and then suggested we do our interview there. I ask her about her new book, Goddesses in Older Women. How did it come to be? "It started out a decade or so ago, when older women sometimes asked about the little known crone goddess in the story of Demeter and Persephone. When I wrote Goddesses in Every Woman, I wouldn't have put her in because I wasn't old enough. I think you have to live into the crone years yourself in order to have an awareness of these archetypal energies that come into the psyche in a stronger way as you get older. Not that you have to be a crone, because these archetypes are present from the beginning in everybody. It's a combination of fate and circumstances which ones come out at any given point. Often an archetype will be called forth by circumstances, and certainly Hecate knows about the dark and the light, knows about suffering and the underworld, and has a sense of patterns and choices, and places and times that are turning points for that person. It was said in the this mythology that Hecate joined Persephone when she emerged from the underworld, so that she had to have gone through the darkness to know Hecate, after which she became Queen and a guide to others. "So that was my first thought, as I integrated the idea of what about Hecate. The other thing that interested me was that in the midst of patriarchal mythology the divinity of Wisdom was almost universally a goddess, even in Greek mythology. There's a sense that wisdom does emerge in the third phase -- not always, because to grow older is not always to grow wiser, but most people who experience life and have integrated their experience, not seeing themselves as powerless victims, do have a real sense of gaining wisdom. "I had done women's workshops and often invited women to share stories of the wisdom they had gained first hand. I always felt that this was something the woman herself determined and didn't look outside of herself, a willingness to play the role of the wise old woman." Did she have any other reason for writing this book? "I have the sense that you had a definite purpose in writing it," I said. "I think it's behind all my books. There is a naming what I see that grows out of my work as a Jungian analyst, the patterns I see. When I name them and attach them to mythology, which I see as the collective dream, that are empowering to people, that help them recognize what is going on in them. "Also, the archetypes that I wrote about in Goddesses in Every Woman may continue to be active in women in their third phase but often new energies start to come in, and so a book that was very useful in the first phases needed something more… "Also this particular book has a very strong individuation threat. It encourages women to make choices that are consistent with who they are inside. However, this one also includes those women whose wisdom leads them to want to give something back to society, an activist quality, to speak about the priorities they see. So this is also a book that grows out of the women's movement. "I also felt that one of the major archetypes in the third phase was not a goddess but it was the circle -- the circle of wise women, the circle of elders. "Women over 50 seem to have a yearning to be in circles. They often had experience in consciousness raising groups, and out of those CR groups, the world was changed. It seems to me if the direction of humankind is to change, it may well be if women over 50 gathering together in circles could initiate the third wave of the women's movement." Q: How do you see that third wave? "Women have a different perspective than men. They grow up in a different body. We have much more of a sense of vulnerability. It puts us directly in touch with other women everywhere who ever had menstrual periods or had pregnancies or had children than men seem to have with each other. Men have grown up very often in a hierarchical way from the time when they were very little, learning about power over. And also, women use language differently. Men as a gender use language to convey information and to determine their ranking. Women have always used conversation to bond. It's one way to share our vulnerabilities. "It's that perspective that makes women very different as far as their tendencies politically. Women are concerned about the safety of women and children. Women tend to support gun control and tend to be environmentally conscious. I'm not saying all women are, but women as a whole, when they look at political issues, tend towards such things and to bring this kind of consciousness into the culture as the authoritative principle that the world is our home, that if we don't look out for the kids they turn out to have guns and shoot each other. It concerns us all. I think women need to bring that concern into the culture." Q: Is it because we have made progress in winning equality that we can turn our attention to the larger issues? "Women who are in their younger years have to be worried about equality and harassment. I'm saying women in their later years, who have lived through things, there's this perspective of wanting to give back. It is a different phase. "Indigenous people recognize that when a woman becomes an elder she could now devote her energies to the tribe. It's a different phase. We have a sense of looking out for generations after us, a sense of time. We often know that life is precious, maybe because we've devoted so much effort to the one or two children we may have -- a sense of the preciousness of life and the requirements of give and take. That is something that women do know more than men. We are usually the caretakers of ailing parents and we are the people that men as well as women friends confide in. "So we have a bigger picture I think." "I think one of the major attributes of any wise woman is that she has really learned compassion. The Eastern mythologies had goddesses of compassion but the Greeks never did. They had a goddess of erotic love but not compassion… When I found Kuan Yin I could see that she was also present in figures such as Mary, in the Catholic tradition, and in the Statue of Liberty who represents the compassion of the United States at its very best. Enough is Enough "I also saw in crones that there is a point where an energy I call the enough-is-enough archetype comes into the psyche. There are archetypes like Artemis for whom enough-is -enough happens early. The woman who's archetypically the mother, the wife, is more likely to be held in a dysfunctional relationship, for good and for bad reasons; when she becomes a post menopausal woman, chances are her children are now grown, and she realizes what the rest of her life is going to be like if she doesn't do something now. And so I see women reaching that point where enough is enough and there are no such goddesses in the Greek pantheon. "I found Sekhmet in ancient Egypt and Kali the Hindu goddess with remarkably similar mythologies and a ferocity that can come into the life in the third phase really for the first time. But because there is also compassion and often wisdom in this phase, when enough is enough is reached it may be done well, looking out for the best outcome for all concerned -- which never is the case when you've had it when you're younger. "And also there is the capacity for great laughter together that is healing -- that acknowledges that we've been there and we've survived. That we can laugh, and in doing so be sharing the journey. So I brought in the goddess of mirth or healing laughter. "Enough is enough could not be expressed in oppressive cultures where to do so would have brought them to the stake or in certain countries now -- you have to be in a society that's free enough for certain types of archetypes to manifest. "We're living in a time when this particular type of energy could have major impact since there may be an estimated 45 million of us over 50. If this generation of women were to say enough is enough, we would be an enormous force for change. The Million Moms March, I think, was a great sign of what's coming." Q: So you wrote this book because you want to change the world? "I've always wanted to make my life count in ways that had to do with tilting circumstances. Often I've had a chance to speak up (and to remain silent is a choice) and as you speak up to support what you believe in or to support someone you can lend a help to tilt that life, as when doing psychotherapy helps change one person, who changes that family. One person at a time, change comes about. "I can see the potential for women to transform themselves and the world. Writing has always helped motivate people when the timing was right. I do have a hope that I'm contributing to what happens next. And the book is dedicated to Steinem, who has made an enormous difference. It's seeing how it's possible that women can really change things in one generation.
Q: Are you optimistic? "I think the women's movement is a model of how you can bring about changes without bloodshed. In The Millionth Circle I talk about an evolutionary revolutionary movement that is hidden in plain sight: women gathering together and talking. And out of that can come major change. And I believe that."
To order Jean Shinoda Bolen's new book, Goddesses in Older Women, go to Powell's. Read our review in the February issue of AWe. Read our review of The Millionth Circle Jean's website may be found at http://www.jeanbolen.com |