The Maidens

by Alex Michaelides

As a therapist, she knew a baby’s first sense of self comes through its parents’ gaze. We are born being watched—our parents’ expressions, what we see reflected in the mirror of their eyes, determines how we see ourselves.

Boundaries are what therapy is about.”

Boundaries, by definition, are the first thing to go when a child is abused.

“It was written” is the Greek expression. Meaning, quite simply, from that moment on, their destinies were sealed.

The temple

was dedicated to Demeter, goddess of the harvest—goddess of life—and to her daughter, Persephone—goddess of death. The two goddesses were often worshipped together, two sides of the same coin—mother and daughter, life and death. In Greek, Persephone was known simply as Kore, meaning “maiden.”

“Menis. There’s no real equivalent in English. You remember, Homer begins The Iliad with ‘μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος’—‘Sing to me, O goddess, of the menis of Achilles.’” “Ah. What does it mean, exactly?” Clarissa mused for a second. “I suppose the closest translation is a kind of uncontrollable anger—terrifying rage—a frenzy.”

“Tennyson.” Clarissa spoke without hesitation. “In Memoriam—stanza fifty-six,

O life as futile, then, as frail! / O for thy voice to soothe and bless! / What hope of answer, or redress? / Behind the veil, behind the veil…’”

“I sometimes hold it half a sin / To put in words the grief I feel; / For words, like Nature, half reveal / And half conceal the Soul within.”

I hold it true, whate’er befall; I feel it when I sorrow most; ’Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all …

My argument with so much of psychoanalysis is the preconception that suffering is a mistake, or a sign of weakness, or a sign even of illness. When in fact, possibly the greatest truths we know have come out of people’s suffering. —ARTHUR MILLER

Medea took an axe to her children,

German word psychopastiche, literally meaning “suffering soul.”

“It doesn’t take much to save a childhood.” A little kindness, some understanding or validation: someone to recognize and acknowledge a child’s reality—and save his sanity.

And so, when a man comes along and talks like one’s own father and acts like him, even adults … will submit to this man, will acclaim him, allow themselves to be manipulated by him, and put their trust in him, finally surrendering entirely to him without even being aware of their enslavement. One is not normally aware of something that is a continuation of one’s own childhood. —ALICE MILLER, For Your Own Good

Oft have I heard that grief softens the mind, And makes it fearful and degenerate; Think therefore on revenge, and cease to weep. —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Henry VI, Part 2