BOOKS
THE MADDING CROWD
WOMEN AND MADN ESS
by Phyllis Chesler. Doubleday. $8.95.
I speak in many voices throughout this book: as a
psychological researcher, theoretician, and clinician
-and
as a literary and philosophical person, a lover
of poetry and myths. -
PHYLLIS CHESLER
A lover of myths, Dr. Chesler has contrived a few. The first
of her mythological treatments is a retelling of the story of Demeter, to
whom Chesler assigns four daughters, Persephone, Psyche, Athena, and
Artemis. "To amuse tJheir mother - with whom they were
all
passion–
ately in love - they invented language, music, laughter - and many more
useful 'and boisterous activities." In the current fates of Demeter and her
daughters, Chesler proposes to discover the models of contemporary fe–
male psychology. The wise and skillful Athena and her sister Artemis,
"the founder of Amazon cities," have virtually disappeared from the
earth. When they do appear they are caught
in
acts of violence. Perse–
phone and Psyche are very much with us, representing, along with Virgin
Mary, Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty, the prototypical
female. Persephone-Psyche-Cinderella is the embodiment of female traits:
self-hatred, anxiety, naivete, romantic heterosexuality, pride
in
childbear–
ing, compassion and conservative fearfulness. Chesler further proposes
that so long as women act out this syndrome of tJheir devalued sex-role
stereotype, they will continue to be dominated, raped, labelled as mad,
become chronic psychiatric patients, and be locked away in mental hos–
pitals.
T here is, however, one Persephone-Psyche-Cinderella trait that Ches–
ler pins her hopes on. In the female mindlessness and superficiality that
is "neither mindless nor superficial," she locates the dialogue between
women. There is a ". . . retelling of the entire experience in which their
feelings are embedded ...," a monologue that seems to go nowhere with
a sensitive matching of pauses, sighs, and unrelated responses that allows
female thinking to achieve emotional reality. Chesler also recognizes in
this special thought process, "the basic tool of art and psychic awareness."
