TY - JOUR AU - Nilofer Kaul PY - 2022/01/25 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - A Terrible Beauty is Born JF - Stasis JA - SJ VL - 12 IS - 2 SE - Articles DO - UR - https://stasisjournal.net/index.php/journal/article/view/197 AB - Psychoanalysis from the time of Freud has borrowed generously from mythology. This paper looks at how mythology has been thought of psychoanalytically. It looks specifically at the cult of a particular mother goddess, Durga in Bengal. This figure— especially in popular or folk evocations—refuses any univocal meaning. In fact, this powerful image seems to provide a psychic space where it is represented variously as murderous, tender, playful, enigmatic, and forbearing. The mythic mother goddess is not so much a repository of fixed meaning/s, but rather an elastic psychic space that is a bearer of shifting projections. The paper plots different psychic positions that become points of locution.  ER -