An Interview With Marion Woodman - Michael Bertrand
Your whole work seems to be in a way about soul making.
I would say that's true--or soul mirroring. More and more I tend to see the soul expressing itself in body symptoms--in the way the body moves, in the dreams. I see it almost as a prisoner with the complexes squeezing in to take the life out of it.
There are a lot of books out on the concept of the soul. Do you have a definition?
Well, for me, the soul is the divine part of us that is embodied in this physical form for a few years. Eventually it is released, but I see soul as the embodied part. I see spirit as the energy, the disembodied energy that can come in to union with the soul in the body. For example, a great dancer like Nureyev can prepare his instrument. His muscles can be in perfect shape through his attention and his concentration. So, his consciousness, his light in his body--which for me would be soul--can be a perfect instrument. But, he's a great dancer when spirit is in union with that instrument. The leap is in the union of soul and spirit.
So, a lot of your work is freeing up the soul so that it can be able to get in that union?
Yes, so the soul is strong enough to be able to accept that union. If it is weak, or if the body is not conscious, the spirit could come flashing in and cause a psychotic episode. It's like a Rolls Royce engine in a Volkswagen car. The energy could blast the container to pieces and that does happen to people.
I think of the soul as feminine, because it's the receiver--in both men and women. The artist, for example, has to have a receiver and just hopes to God that the spirit will come and touch into soul so that there will a poem come out of that union or a piece of music or art. It's in that surrender to the transcendent, or however you want to call the spirit energy, that art is created.
That manifests in dreams. A lot of people dream that there's going to be a wedding and the bride is all ready but there is no groom or there's something wrong with the groom. He's too young or he's got no legs or no heart or he's dying. Sometimes there's something wrong with the bridesmaid--the shadow side of the bride. So the union can't take place until they come together as equals and some people are at that stage now.
It seems that's the place at the end of a long quest. Does that have to be done through processes like psychoanalysis? Not everyone is going to be able to find the therapist to get them there.
I don't think it has to come through psychoanalysis. I mean not many people will get there if it did. I think it can come through life, with an experience, through loss--if people care enough about consciousness. You know, what does this loss--of relationship, of my partner in love, the job--mean? Suffering does seem to give us a chance to really come to consciousness.
I think the world we're in so many people would rather go into an addiction or into unconsciousness. The journey I'm talking about is a conscious journey and certainly many people in the past, through their religious faith, have gone on this journey. But, I do see psychotherapy as a speeding up of the psychic process. In the Middle Ages people were terrified of miners and blacksmiths. Miners went into the earth and raped it before the jewels or minerals were ready to come out. They thought this was going against God's timing and that they would be punished.
A lot of people have similar feelings about therapists and analysts, that they are raping the unconscious by putting this kind of heat on the psyche. What this process does is speed up the maturation process and one has to be strong to take that kind of fire. Not everybody that goes into therapy goes into the fire.
No. They step back or...
They fool themselves. They're just not committed and are more interested in being supported than they are in doing the work. That sounds rough, and I certainly support so long as I see a need. Some people come in very, very broken and then one does support, but there is a point I think in our culture where people are addicted to being victims. It's very important to want to walk on your own legs instead of on crutches.
You said something like staying with the process is what matters, through imagery...
Yes, and body symptoms and experiences that just seem to come in from nowhere. It's amazing how synchronistic things become when you're going through the process. You can get to the point where you can hardly tell the difference between inner and outer. When you realize that inner and outer are the same, the kind of person that you love in your dreams will be the kind that you are seeking in your outer life or indeed are married to. As the inner relationship changes the outer relationship changes or you find a different person outside.
Your writing in some way is an antidote to what's been called patriarchal thinking, some way of moving out of the bind that we seem to be in.
I want to make clear that I don't associate patriarchy with men any more. To me men are the victims of patriarchy just as much as women are, in fact more so. I know many women are now coming into their femininity and they're looking for a masculine to balance that in themselves and they dream of poor broken men with no hearts and no legs. They're often little boys who've been smashed over the mouth so that they're very damaged. I think the full horror of what's happened to the masculine is just beginning to come into consciousness and to me patriarchy is a power principle of which Nazism was the epitome.
I think all of us have to really look so carefully at how we collude with patriarchy. We're so used to it that we don't even know how we're being struck by it.
Is the process for doing this sort of work different for men and women?
I think the rituals involved are different. Women's rituals tend to be around body, menstruation, women's biological worlds. Men's rituals, I'm sure, are around men's biological worlds. They'll likely be on a very spiritual level.
Every process is different. No two women's process is the same either. So I think while the imagery is different in men's and women's dreams and certainly while the energy in the body is different--you know, when I worked with men only in body groups I used to get blown against the wall. But, there is an archetypal part that is very similar.
The journey, the quest.
Yes, the fundamental images of the quest seem to me very much the same. In the man's dreams he has to separate out from the mother, then reconnect and find the virgin within himself. I think many men think that once they've found mothering they've found the feminine and they aren't anywhere near the virgin in themselves, with that kind of femininity. But, it's all beginning to flower.
I do have men in my practice. I like to hold that balance. But, I like to take 30 women away into nature alone and let the process take over. Most women can't endure being with men at this point. They're too vulnerable. They don't know what their own femininity is and they can't deal with the confusion of being with men, at least until they get stronger.
Source: Empowering Soul Through the Feminine
