The Myth of the Handless Maiden

Like most fairy tales, The Handless Maiden by the Brothers Grimm, reflects a compensatory psychic function for the culture, uncanny in its relevance to our troubled times. It is one of the most complete stories of individuation. This talk explores the wounding of the feminine by the patriarchal shadow, in both men and women, and how to recover the sensual and feeling functions of the psyche, through the mytho-poetic lens of the Handless Maiden.

Speaker Bio:

Raïna Manuel-Paris is the product of a French father and a mother from the Dominican Republic. She has an MFA from Columbia in Film and a Ph.D. in Myth and Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. She is a documentary filmmaker. Her documentary The Bridges of My Father was presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009. She also produced and starred in the one-woman show Anaïs, based on the diaries of Anaïs Nin, which was performed in America and Europe. She has taught Myth, Ritual, Psychology and Creative Writing for the last 18 years. She taught for 15 years at the Art Institute, and she is an adjunct professor at Pacifica. She also teaches at Studio School and PRS. She is part of the Joseph Campbell Writers Room, has lectured for the Joseph Campbell Roundtable, and has written for Psychological Perspectives: A Quarterly Journal of Jungian Thought and the Joseph Campbell Foundation. She is a published author of nonfiction (The Mother-to-Be's Dream Book: Understanding the Dreams of Pregnancy), numerous articles, a screenplay, poetry, and has recently completed her first novel. She offers her The Cradle and The Crown seminars on a regular basis, and she gives Tarot readings from her unique alchemical perspective. She is a student of the Frame Drum and of Natural Horsemanship. She divides her time between Ojai and Los Angeles.