The Medusa Mother: individuation in the shadows

Abstract

Medusa symbolizes regression, the encounter with the archaic, what is unrepresentable; on the other hand, Perseus represents the process of individuation, the moment of Self-consciousness and the victory over the terrible Great Mother. In this work, we explore a rarely mentioned aspect: Medusa's ability to generate. The myth tells us that, after her beheading by Perseus, Medusa – dead – gives birth to Chrysaor and Pegasus. Medusa reveals to us the tension between mothering and the erotic and that the Medusa-Mother imago can be defined simultaneously as a phallic mother and a not-good-enough mother. We also suggest that phallic mother and dead mother can be complementary in the imago proposed here, the two sides of the same coin – the evil, persecutory and ubiquitous object; and the good object, always vulnerable and absent, respectively. This split is present in Medusa's blood and offspring. Therefore, bi-triangulation would occur between the subject and two symmetrical objects, since both the mother and the father would be absent.