Addiction to Perfection by Marion Woodman
A Depth Psychological Exploration of Perfectionism, Compulsion, and the Recovery of the Feminine
Psychological Reading Circle
Special Guest Announcement: Maureen Murdock Joining Us Live
We were honored to that Maureen Murdock joined our Heroine’s Journey Reading Circle on 6/14 at 1:00 PM PST for a special conversation and Q&A.
When you register for the reading circle series, you will automatically have access to the interview with Maureen.
This intimate gathering will be exclusively available to members of the reading circle.
Together, we explored:
- the deeper themes within the heroine’s journey
-the feminine psyche and individuation
- participant questions arising from the reading and personal reflection process
We were incredibly excited to welcome Maureen into the circle for this special conversation!
“Today’s heroine must utilize the sword of discernment to cut away the ego bonds that hold her to the past and to find out what serves her soul’s purpose. ”
A 6-Month Depth Psychology Reading Circle for The Heroine’s Journey.
A 6-month guided reading journey through Maureen Murdock’s The Heroine’s Journey, blending Jungian psychology and clinical insight to help you better understand your inner world and personal patterns.
We will move beyond the Hero myth of constant doing
to rediscover the power of being.
You’ve most likely already begun this journey…through exhaustion, over-functioning, self-neglect, and external achievements have not brought you closer to yourself.
Over the six-months journey, we will move toward a reorganization of the internal structure.
Throughout this journey, we will work along several core axes:
Mapping Your Own Journey
The Heroine’s Journey becomes a personal map. As we move through each stage, you will begin to recognize where these patterns have appeared in your own life—allowing insight to emerge in a way that feels grounded, relevant, and real.
Jungian Integration
We will use archetypal patterns and the process of Individuation as a guiding map—helping you recognize the movements of the psyche as it turns inward and gradually reorganizes toward greater wholeness.
Self Psychology and the Development of the Self
Through the lenses of mirroring and idealization, you will begin to understand how your sense of self was shaped—and how these early dynamics continue to influence your relationships, needs, and internal experience.
Differentiation and the Inner Spine
We will explore what it means to stay connected to yourself in the presence of others—developing a stronger internal anchor and a clearer sense of where you end and others begin.
Emotional Clarity and Non-Reactivity
You will learn to step back from immediate emotional responses—creating space to observe, reflect, and respond with greater clarity rather than being pulled into automatic reactions.
Our North Star: The Integrated Self
Our journey will be guided by three core pillars that serve as our psychological compass:
- Deconditioning: We begin the slow, steady work of unlearning the "shoulds" of a performance-based culture and early environment. The reading journey experience will strip away the masks of perfectionism and external conditioning to reveal the authentic self beneath.
- Individuation: Through the lens of Jungian theory and Self Psychology, we will integrate the fragmented parts of our history. We will learn to sit with our inner shadows and transform them into sources of strength.
- Liberation: The ultimate aim is the freedom found in the inner spine.
This is the move from seeking external mirroring to establishing internal authority—allowing you to walk through the world with non-reactive clarity.
A 6-Month Depth Psychology Reading Circle for The Heroine’s Journey.
Most women in the modern world have mastered the Hero myth. We have learned to separate from our feminine intuition, identify with masculine achievement, and climb the ladder of external success, only to reach the top and find a profound sense of spiritual aridity.
Maureen Murdock’s The Heroine’s Journey was written as a response to this soul-sickness.
The monthly reading circle is a professional container for those ready to move beyond the exhaustion of performance and toward the liberation of wholeness.
Included with Registration:
Live session, video recording, PDF presentation, and self-reflective questions.
Session 1 | The Perfected Self: When Adaptation Becomes Imprisonment
Introduction
We begin with Woodman’s central psychological problem: the individual who becomes exquisitely adapted to external expectations while progressively estranged from instinct, body, desire, and inner authority.
We’ll explore:
perfectionism as a psychic organization, not simply a personality trait
the split between being and performing
the construction of the idealized self
adaptation, achievement, approval, and the loss of spontaneity
the difference between perfection and wholeness
why the psyche eventually rebels against the life it has been forced to live
Session 4 | The Body Keeps the Revolt: Flesh, Appetite & the Rejected Feminine
Chapter 4 — Through Thick and Thin
Woodman brings the conflict directly into the body.
Rather than reducing her discussion to eating disorders, we’ll use the chapter to investigate the larger mind-body split characteristic of perfectionistic consciousness.
We’ll explore:
the body as carrier of unconscious material
appetite, hunger, disgust, control, and shame
living from the body versus managing the body from above
disembodiment
body image and the idealized self
instinct as psychological intelligence
what the body begins to express when conscious life becomes too narrow
The broader movement in Woodman’s work is toward reunion with the body and recovery of a feminine principle that has been devalued or split off.
Session 2 | Sacred Hunger: Ritual, Compulsion & the Search for Meaning
Chapter 2 — Ritual: Sacred and Demonic
Here we move beneath the behavior to ask: What is the compulsion trying to accomplish psychologically?
We’ll explore:
addiction as distorted ritual
the difference between sacred ritual and compulsive repetition
psychological and spiritual hunger
control as an attempted substitute for containment
what happens when instinct has no symbolic language
symptom as messenger rather than enemy
the relationship between deprivation, excess, repetition, and longing
This is one of Woodman’s radical moves: compulsive behavior can represent a failed attempt to meet needs that cannot actually be satisfied at the literal level.
Session 5 | Assent to the Goddess: Recovering the Feminine Principle
Chapter 5 — Assent to the Goddess
This is where the work begins to turn.
Not “femininity” as performance, but the feminine as a mode of consciousness.
We’ll explore:
receptivity versus passivity
embodiment and presence
cyclical versus relentlessly linear consciousness
intuition, imagination, eros, relatedness, and receptivity
the capacity to wait rather than force
relinquishing domination without relinquishing agency
restoring relationship between masculine and feminine principles
Woodman repeatedly contrasts the driven, controlling psyche with a feminine consciousness capable of listening to bodily and psychic reality. Her work ultimately argues for relationship between the principles rather than simply replacing one with the other.
Session 3 | Addiction to Perfection: The Tyranny of the Inner Taskmaster
Chapter 3 — Addiction to Perfection
This becomes the heart of the course.
We’ll examine:
the internal demand to be exceptional, good, productive, controlled, beautiful, useful, or beyond reproach
the negative animus / inner patriarch
perfectionism and shame
all-or-nothing psychic organization
achievement as protection against worthlessness
why rest can provoke anxiety rather than relief
the inability to receive
the terror of ordinary human limitation
And critically:
What happens when our internal standard no longer serves life, but demands that life serve the standard?
Begin the Journey
You can choose to participate in a single session at a time or register for the full journey.
Single Session | $55 Includes: Live Workshop + PDF Presentation + Self-Guiding Questions. (Please note: Mid-month check-in emails are exclusive to the full series.)
Full 6-Month Journey | $200 Includes: All 6 Live Workshops + All PDF Presentations + All Self-Guiding Questions + Bi-Monthly Check-in Emails. Save $130 by registering for the complete series.
You will automatically receive access to prior sessions when you register for the series.
For those in the U.S., flexible payment options are available at checkout through PayPal Pay in 4, Klarna, and Afterpay.
The Heroine’s Journey
This standalone session offers a focused exploration of a specific stage of The Heroine’s Journey through a depth psychological lens.
Each session can be attended independently, allowing you to engage with the chapters or themes that feel most relevant to you.
The session includes the full recording, a PDF of the presentation, and a set of self-reflective questions.
Attend as a one-time experience or alongside the full 6-month reading journey.
This standalone session offers a focused exploration of a specific stage of The Heroine’s Journey through a depth psychological lens.
Each session can be attended independently, allowing you to engage with the chapters or themes that feel most relevant to you.
The session includes the full recording, a PDF of the presentation, and a set of self-reflective questions.
Attend as a one-time experience or alongside the full 6-month reading journey.
This standalone session offers a focused exploration of a specific stage of The Heroine’s Journey through a depth psychological lens.
Each session can be attended independently, allowing you to engage with the chapters or themes that feel most relevant to you.
The session includes the full recording, a PDF of the presentation, and a set of self-reflective questions.
Attend as a one-time experience or alongside the full 6-month reading journey.
Learning objectives:
- How the mother wound shapes attachment, identity and emotional regulation.
- How to identify and differentiate from the mother complex.
- The distinction between the personal mother and the archetypal Mother.
- How to restore access to the maternal beyond the personal mother.
- What it means to develop an internal maternal function.
- How to transform survival adaptations into mature psychological capacities.
This 6-session reading journey offers a guided exploration of Maureen Murdock’s The Heroine’s Journey through a depth psychological lens.
Each session explores a stage of the journey, helping you recognize patterns in your own life over time.
The series includes all recordings, PDF presentations, self-reflective questions, and a check-in email two weeks after each session.
Join the full journey for a structured, accessible way to engage the material more deeply.
About me
Hi! My name is Lyna. I am the curator of Women of Depth Psychology.
I am an analytic psychotherapist with a passion for exploring the symbolic, emotional, and unconscious dimensions of the psyche.
My work is rooted in psychodynamic, Jungian, and trauma-informed approaches, with a particular focus on abandonment, attachment, individuation, the feminine psyche, and the complex inner narratives that shape our lives beneath conscious awareness.
Originally from France, my own life journey led me toward a deep interest in the human psyche and the question of what allows people not only to survive suffering, but to reclaim meaning, wholeness, and inner coherence after it.
I hold a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology with an emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute, where my graduate work focused on archetypal reparenting and the reconstruction of the fragmented self following early relational trauma.
Refund policy for sessions
Please note that all registrations are final and non-refundable.
Depth psychology values commitment and containment. When someone signs up, it’s often part of a deeper, unconscious process—a psyche-level contract. A no-refund policy reinforces the idea that once a commitment is made, the work begins, even if resistance or ambivalence surfaces later. Live workshops are for women participants only.
No changes, transfers, or cancellations will be accepted once you have registered. In the unlikely event that the workshop is canceled, you will be contacted via email and offered an alternative of equivalent value.
For any questions regarding our policies, feel free to reach out at lyna@womenofdepthpsychology.com.