Bolen’s goddesses and gods

This index keeps Bolen’s two books in one row because they are one method applied twice: a psychiatrist and Jungian analyst uses the Greek Olympians as names for patterns of personality and asks readers to find which gods are active in them. Goddesses in Everywoman (1984) presents seven goddesses in three groups. The virgin goddesses, Artemis, Athena and Hestia, are oriented to independence and their own aims; the vulnerable goddesses, Hera, Demeter and Persephone, are defined by relationship; and Aphrodite stands alone as the alchemical goddess of love and creativity. Gods in Everyman (1989) presents eight gods, three fathers, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades, and five sons, Apollo, Hermes, Ares, Hephaestus and Dionysus, and makes the relation between fathers and sons its organising theme. The provenance point is that these are Bolen’s readings of myth as personality types. Jung wrote about the Great Mother and the anima, not about Hera or Hermes as types of person; the goddesses are Bolen’s list, dated 1984, and the gods her list of 1989. No study has tested either set, and no instrument based on them has published psychometrics.

Sources

• Bolen, J. S. (1984). Goddesses in Everywoman: A New Psychology of Women. Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0-06-250082-3.
• Bolen, J. S. (1989). Gods in Everyman: A New Psychology of Men’s Lives and Loves. Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0-06-250098-4.