Unearthing the Third: The Crone in Depth Psychotherapy

Abstract

This dissertation utilizes the archetypal and symbolic image of the Crone as a way to imagine and integrate present-day depth psychotherapy as a model for the treatment of stuck-ness. The Greek myth of Demeter is used as a mythical and archetypal background to explore the inclusion of the analytic third (Ogden, 1985, 1994, 2010) as embodied in the Crone. This allows for the connection and treatment of unconscious narcissistic defenses, collaboratively enabling the patient’s transformation towards individuation and wholeness. Demeter, as a mother in depression, illustrates characteristics of a patient who presents as narcissistically organized, complicated by grief with the inability to mourn. This hermeneutic research recognizes the isolative nature of depression as well as the patient’s identification with a role that leads to feeling stuck and separated. The importance of Christine Downing’s (2010) understanding of mythology as the study of the other is examined and the psychoanalytical presentation of envy, pride, and the denial of mortality are explored. The depth psychological notion of the integration of the unconscious through counter-transference and the experience of co-creation through the analytic third and as represented through the feminine archetype of the Crone, are presented.