Psychic Numbing

“Psychic numbing means never having to feel anything. Refusing such anesthetization and unearthing our passions means facing our emotions, especially those that have been the most anathematized, such as rage, female pride, and self-love. In short, it entails embracing monsters. Lesbian novelist Bertha Harris tells it truly: Monsters express what ordinary people cannot: feel. Monsters are emblems of feeling in patriarchy. Monsters represent the quintessence of all that is female, and female enraged. The monster most emblematic of feeling, most communicative of female rage, is the Gorgon. Many people, consumed by fear, simply cannot meet her gaze. Others, steeped in greed, ignorance, fear, and self-loathing, quite frankly want to lose their senses. Rather than look into the Gorgon's all-seeing eye, they turn themselves to stone - that is, they become psychically numb. Yet those of us who are sick of pretending, denying, suppressing, and repressing our knowledge, our emotions, and our powers journey to her island of rock and stone and there face a laughing, welcoming, and gorgeous Gorgon. As we do, we turn not to stone, but to sentient flesh, sensual mind, and boiling blood.” - Jane Caputi; Gossips, Gorgons and Crones