I am a clinical psychologist who consults on creative works in progress and offers “Myth in Film; Myth in Your Life” presentations. I write analytic essays on film, viewing film as a modern storyteller reflecting modern mythic themes active in popular culture
I consider my perspective on the archetype, feminine hero, seminal to my work as a clinician and film reviewer. I developed the concept drawing upon Jonathan Demme’s film, “The New Feminine Hero in The Silence of the Lambs”, originally printed The San Francisco Library Journal. It is also published in two anthologies, The Soul of Popular and The Presence of the Feminine in Film as well as in The British Journal of Psychological Types. My presentation, “The New Feminine Hero in Contemporary Cinema” was part
of a film series, “Dialogues in Film”, at LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. With three major award-winning films — Thelma and Louise, The Piano, and The Silence of the Lambs, I annotated the journey of the feminine hero from a woman’s break with tradition to her return home. I’ve also presented “The Feminine Trickster Hero in Contemporary Cinema” at a University of Alabama colloquium, Hermes and Aphrodite Encounters.
I’ve published in academic journals and in newspapers, newsletters and magazines. Commentaries from David Lynch’s film Lost Highway, Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run, appear in The San Francisco Jung Library Journal and Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in Psychological Perspectives. Run Lola Run also appeared in the Los Angeles NOW Times. “Philomena; A Film, A Woman, A Reclamation of Respect” is published in the Women’s Voices issue of Spring 91. For the past four years I’ve been writing monthly film essays for www.NewtopiaMagazine.com.
My “Myth in Film, Myth in Your Life” seminars draw upon a range of mythic themes to be found in films as diverse as Smooth Talk, Don Juan de Marco, Wings of Desire, Blue Velvet, Witness, Master and Commander and Crumb. Past seminars (including presentations at the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute, California Graduate Institute and Jung Institute in Zurich) included “The Emerging Feminine Hero,” “The Myth of Time,” “The Marriage of Opposites,” “New Heroes for New Times” and “Patriarchy with Heart.” I presented “The New Elder Hero”, drawing upon inspiration from a film by Zhang Yimou, to the Assisi Institute and am awaiting publication of what I believe is a key contribution to living myth in our culture. I also led creative writing workshops with poet/author Deena Metzger giving writers a fresh perspective on film resolutions, “New Beginnings for Old Endings”.
In earlier years, I was affiliated with Montifiore Hospital in New York, The Drew Medical School and Martin Luther King, Jr., Hospital, The Integral Nursing Program at UCLA and The Woman’s Building in Los Angeles. My degrees are from California School of Professional Psychology, Ph.D.; University of California at Los Angeles, M.A.; Swarthmore College, B.A.,
