Persephone in the Time of Anorexia. Myth, Psychiatry, and Women’s Writing

Psychiatrists, psychologists, poets, novelists, and patients keep connecting the goddesses to anorexia and bulimia. Demeter appears as a helicopter mother, the pivotal consumption of a pomegranate as a body-positive step towards recovery, and the sexual violence committed by the underworld god Hades as a romantic act opening a repressed girl’s eyes to autonomy and sexuality. Despite their oddities, these adaptations follow a certain logic: Versions of Greek and Roman myths already tap into food-symbolism and present hunger strike and self-emaciation as possible strategies against patriarchal verdicts. What makes 20 contemporary writers independently connect Persephone to modern anorexia? And why do clinicians use myth rather than medical case studies? The lecture discusses the myth’s psychiatrically shaped retellings in medical research and poetry, their variations, risks and merits.