A Re-Visioning of Love

Book excerpt: In A Re-Visioning of Love: Dark Feminine Rising, Ana Mozol parts the illusory veils of persona as she explores the reality of feminine experiences relating to love, trauma and sexuality in contemporary Western society. Mozol takes us on a personal journey through the three levels of experience, delving into the underworld and the trauma of rape, the middle world and the illusions of romantic love, and the upper world and the masculine spiritual ideals that fracture the feminine soul. In this multidisciplinary examination of the feminine, Mozol seeks to understand violence against women intrapsychically, interpersonally and within the field of depth psychology. The book begins with Mozol’s own experiences with violence and her exploration of the demon lover complex and the stages of breaking this complex after trauma. Combining personal testimony, theoretical reflections, historical analysis, and 20 years of clinical experience, Mozol uses a heuristic approach to explore personal stories, clinical material, dreams and depth analysis as they connect to the female individuation process. We follow Mozol’s journey through the middle world and the illusions of romantic love, into the upper world and the complexity of Oscar Wilde’s feminine character Salomé who represents the rising dark feminine energy that must be reckoned with for the possibility of love to exist. Accessible yet powerful, Mozol uses her personal story to place the oppression of women within the Jungian context of individuation. A Re-Visioning of Love: Dark Feminine Rising will be key reading for academics and students of Jungian and post-Jungian studies, psychotherapy, trauma studies, gender studies, women’s studies and criminology. It will also be an indispensable resource for Jungian psychotherapists and analytical psychologists in practice and in training. A Re-Visioning of Love, however, is more than a psychological exploration; it is a memoir of the personal and archetypal feminine and as such will appeal to anyone interested in the story of many women today.