Medusa, trauma-informed

Abstract

Medusa is a cadaverous head that has been disembodied by sword and malice. Her wide-open, fierce eyes glare over a gaping mouth with a wriggling red tongue, her black lips are crowned with sharp fangs and tusks, and she wears a mane of hissing snakes instead of hair. Medusa is a cephalic monster that emanates visceral terror, draining the life force out of any mortal onlooker by instantly turning them into stone. Even evil spirits stand back from her in fear. Her visage decorates artifacts, armoury, and sepulchral art from the Neolithic period onwards, and nowadays she is the face of a luxury fashion label. Legions of artists and literati have drawn inspiration from her. Dante places Medusa within the cycle of anger at the lower part of Hell, alongside the wrathful and the sullen. Cellini immortalised her in marble as the triumphant display of Perseus's kill, her severed head bearing an unnerving likeness to her slayer. The unconventional Caravaggio dared to give a lover's countenance to her legendary portrait. Psychoanalytic scholars have identified Medusa as a vagina dentata that threatens castration and should be killed. Others have examined her lethal gaze as the insignia of the precarity embedded in interpersonal relations. Among some feminist thinkers, Medusa stands for the archetype of the so-called monstrous feminine, an exposé of patriarchal narratives that transform non-subservient women into monsters. Of late, Medusa has appeared in the mental health discourse as a symbol of trauma. She is a powerful muse, irrespective of how she is interpreted. From prehistory to modernity, she keeps shape-shifting her way into immortality, nourishing the creativity and nightmares of generations.