Maureen Murdock - The Heroine’s Journey

Though the book is rich with examples drawn from myths and Jungian psychology, it is surprisingly easy to read. The journey requires serious, often frightening, wandering before ones true identity and power are known. Like the journey Murdock describes, there are no cheap, easy lessons. There are many rich, rewarding lessons, but these are gained only through integrity, courage, and the willingness to meet challenge with all the resources one can muster.

Creation

Murdocks personal journey will surely speak to many women, but I hope also to those men willing to hear these newly awakened female voicesand of the feminine in their own souls.

Utne Reader

Combining personal experience and painstaking erudition, Maureen Murdocks The Heroines Journey shares with us the essence of the female journey. A fine, warm, and insightful book.

Carol Pearson, author of The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By

The HeroinesJourney offers a map of the feminine healing process. Murdock writes in a clear and compassionate voice which draws inspiration from her experiences as a mother, artist, and therapist and from the collective wisdom of the community of women on the path of the goddess. This book speaks to each woman who longs for a spiritually alive feminine self, one who is actively engaged in the world, and who embraces the masculine principle as a mirror of herself. The Heroines Journey guides the reader in reweaving the threads of her life story into a mantle of empowerment for herself, for other women, and for Gaia, the Planet Herself.

Patrice Wynne, author of The Womanspirit Sourcebook and cofounder of the Gaia Bookstore and Catalogue Company

Maureen Murdocks important book on the heroines journey contains a wealth of insight that is of great value to contemporary Western women. It explores a rich territory of the feminine psyche and opens an understanding of female development that relates not only to personal transformation but cultural transformation as well.

Joan Halifax, President of the Ojai Foundation

A great roadmap for the changing landscapes of womens lives. Its assuring, rich in personal stories, and leads us securely to the Goddess.

Z. Budapest, author of The Holy Book of Womens Mysteries and The Grandmother of Time

ABOUT THE BOOK

This book describes contemporary womans search for wholeness in a society in which she has been defined according to masculine values. Drawing upon cultural myths and fairy tales, ancient symbols and goddesses, and the dreams of contemporary women, Murdock illustrates the need forand the reality offeminine values in Western culture today.

MAUREEN MURDOCK is a licensed family therapist in private practice in Venice, California, and teaches in the UCLA Extension Writers Program. She is also the internationally published author of Spinning Inward and Fathers Daughters.

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THE HEROINES JOURNEY

Maureen Murdock

Shambhala

Boston & London

2013

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.shambhala.com

1990 by Maureen Murdock

Cover art: Conversation at the Wall (1950) by Wolfgang Hutter. Reproduced by permission of the artist.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Murdock, Maureen.

The heroines journey/Maureen Murdock1st ed.

p. cm.

eISBN 978-0-8348-2834-6

ISBN 978-0-87773-485-7 (alk. paper)

1. WomenPsychology. 2. Femininity (Psychology). 3. Sex role. I. Title.

Tomy mother and my daughter

Contents

When I wrote The Heroines Journey almost twenty-five years ago, in 1990, I thought the future would eliminate certain challenges women were dealing with along the road of trials on their journey of individuation and balance. Women were victims of what I called at the time the myth of female inferiority or the myth of deficit thinking. Little did I imagine that we would still be facing this gender stereotype two decades later. We are still banging our heads against the glass ceiling.

We live in an androcentric society, which continues to view the world from a masculine perspective. Despite womens advances in academia, business, and the professions, stereotypes persist that impede womens economic, political, and professional progress into top leadership roles. Research from psychologists about stereotypes informs us that there is still a double standard when it comes to human behavior. Behaviors such as being active, independent, objective, and logical are equated with males, while more dependent, subjective, emotional, and illogical behaviors characterize females.

Women make up 51 percent of the U.S. population but still only 18.3 percent of our Congress, despite the fact that we are better educated, engaged, informed, and involved than ever. Even though women make up over 50 percent of management, professional, and related occupations, only 14.3 percent of Fortune 500 corporate officers and 16.6 percent of Fortune 500 board directors are women. The percentage of individuals serving on the boards of nearly three thousand publicly traded companies is 88 percent men and 12 percent women.

The technology field is one of the worst offenders. The absence of women in positions of power undermines the progressive image the industry has long tried to project. The exceptions in leadership roles are Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook and Marissa Mayer of Yahoo, but the technology industry is largely a mens club, despite the fact that most consumers of social networking websites are women. Sandberg reported that at a recent gathering of technology experts talking about the scarcity of women in the industry, one man commented publicly that he would like to hire more young women but theyre not all as competent as Sandberg. Another said he too would hire more young women, but his wife fears he would sleep with them. And he admitted he probably would.

Womens share of computing jobs has fallen to 27 percent since the 1970s, and the number of women studying computer science is shrinking. Only a tiny fraction of the engineers at many tech companies2 to 4 percentare women. This decline is in contrast to the gains women have made in other fields like the life and physical sciences and mathematics, where they are approaching parity with men in total numbers yet still lag in leadership roles. In the legal field only 20 percent of law partners are women.

We also see the lack of womens voices in the media. Every issue that faces Americans, such as economic implosion and the resulting unemployment, has tremendous implications for womens lives, families, and the various economic and political roles that women play, and yet womens opinions about those issues arent represented adequately in the press, much less on the op-ed page.

However, women are making a huge difference in Washington by showing what can be done when women step forward. The recent federal government shutdown was resolved largely by women senators working together. Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine went to the Senate floor and instead of blaming her Democratic colleagues proposed a plan to end the crisis. She said, I ask my Democratic and Republican colleagues to come together. We can do it. We can legislate responsibly and in good faith. This plea was seconded by Maryland Democrat Barbara Mikulski and Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski.