Addiction to Perfection: The Still Unravished Bride

“This book is about taking the head off an evil witch.”  With these words Marion Woodman begins her spiritual journey, a powerful and authoritative look at the psychology and attitudes of modern women.

The witch is a Medusa or a lady Macbeth, an archetypal pattern functioning autonomously in women, petrifying their spirit and inhibiting their development as free and creatively receptive individuals.  Much of this, according to the author, is due to a cultural one-sidedness that favours patriarchal value-productivity, goal orientation, intellectual excellence, spiritual perfection etc. – at the expense of more earthly, interpersonal values traditionally recognized as the heart of the feminine.

She continues her remarkable exploration of woman’s mysteries through case material, dreams, literature and mythology, in food rituals, rape symbolism, Christianity, imagery in the body, sexuality, creativity and relationships.

The final chapter, a discussion of the psychological meaning of ravishment (as opposed to rape), celebrates the integration of body and spirit and shows what this can mean to a woman in terms of her personal independence.