Cork author uses Greek myths to help people deal with trauma

In a new book, psychotherapist Dr Gillian O'Shea Brown channels the likes of Narcissus and Medusa to address issues such as trauma, grief, and fear

Dr Gillian O'Shea Brown with her book, Psyche's Awakening

Deep trauma healing and Greek myths may not seem like natural bedfellows, but author Dr Gillian O’Shea Brown saw the potential to use the pairing to illustrate the healing process.

In her book Psyche’s Awakening, O’Shea Brown, a psychotherapist and complex trauma specialist, re-frames 10 Greek myths and uses them as a type of psychological lens through which we can examine our own experiences of trauma, shame, attachment, self-love, grief, fear, and healing.

As we chat over Zoom, we discover that although O’Shea Brown is based in Williamsburg, New York, she was born and raised in Carrignavar, down the road from where I grew up in Glanmire, Cork. It’s a small world.

Growing up in Ireland, O’Shea Brown had a love of folklore, myth, and fairy tales.

I remember getting all my childhood wisdom from Aesop’s Fables. The stories were never just stories.

She always wanted to be a writer but chose instead to work with people as a psychotherapist.

In 2021, she wrote a textbook, Healing Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Clinician’s Guide. She takes it from a nearby bookshelf and shows it to me. It has a standard textbook look and, for someone who wanted to be a writer, O’Shea Brown says it was “a bit anti-climactic”.

“No-one’s ever going to probably read it cover to cover,” she admits. “When I had my own kids, it got me thinking, ‘What was that all for?’ All those academic papers and the textbook, and they’re not going to be able to benefit from it.”

The Cork woman says she wanted to find a way of taking all the textbook knowledge and making it “more accessible and meaningful”.

It needed a story, she says. She has taken some of Greek mythology’s best-known stories — from Narcissus to Medusa — and applied them to the stages of healing.

Given her interest in Irish folklore, I ask why she focused on Greek mythology.

“The first chapter of the textbook is on attachment and I was thinking, ‘What’s the simplest way you could describe that?’ Which led me to think about the difference between narcissism and self-love.

“I did play with Irish mythology and Nordic mythology, then I remembered Freud got the word narcissism from Greek myth, from the story of Narcissus and Echo. And then the next chapter of my textbook is on core negative beliefs. That’s your psychological Achilles heel.”

She realised that so many words from the world of psychology have their roots in Greek mythology. Phobia comes from Phobos, the Greek god of fear and panic, for example, and even the word psychology itself comes from Psyche, goddess of the soul.

She becomes the goddess of the soul through trials and tribulations, and falls in love with the god of love. Of course, psyche means soul, and psychology is the study of the soul. So [Greek mythology and modern psychology] are very interwoven. I’m surprised no-one else did this before me.

With all the obvious Greek myths referenced in her book, I note the absence of perhaps one of the best known — Oedipus. O’Shea Brown laughs: “I honestly could kick myself that I didn’t put that in the book.” We agree there’s room for a sequel.

Though most of these Greek myths are well known, O’Shea Brown’s goal was to “teach readers something new in terms of a psychological principle, using the stories to create resonance”.

As she was researching her book, she realised some of the stories did start to change meaning, like that of Medusa. “For many years, I would have just seen Medusa as an iconic femme fatale who is beauty and danger in one mythical creature. But on researching her story, I realised Athena was an enabler for Poseidon who violated Medusa. Medusa is, in fact, a rape survivor, and her body is taken from her and she’s silenced in the worst way possible.”

Through her research and re-telling of Medusa’s story, O’Shea Brown says the character came to life for her.

I feel like I really got to know her on a more intimate level, and the tragedy that is Medusa.

It’s no surprise, she says, that today people all over the world use Medusa as an emblem — a survivor of sexual abuse.

Though the stories from Greek mythology are 3,000-3,500 years old, the Cork native says the trials, tribulations, and traumas that exist in them are still alive and well today. “There’s a complexity to these Greek mythological heroes. They’re a blend of vices and virtues, weaknesses and strengths, exactly like we are.

“I’m basically looking at the 11 core psychological principles, and the principles are in order of the healing process I go through with my clients: ‘I’m going to be open to self-love. What is my core negative belief? What is the bite that fits the wound? What’s the pain I keep reliving?’

“I was just trying to find mythical characters that I felt tied in with each one.” O’Shea Brown uses these complex, flawed characters to illustrate the steps towards self-healing. The book takes us from understanding ourselves and cultivating healthy relationships to learning how to listen to yourself and returning to who you really are.

Divided into four sections, the opening chapters focus on identifying your “soul story” created by childhood experiences and relational trauma. Through Narcissus, Echo, and Achilles, O’Shea Brown looks at self-worth, narcissism, shame, vulnerability, attachment, and how we arrive at core negative beliefs — like believing we’re not lovable, we don’t matter, we’re a burden, powerless.

Using the myths of Sisyphus, Medea, and Pygmalion, she explores how our core negative beliefs lead us down a path of repetition compulsion (making the wrong decisions over and over), toxic relationships, family dynamics, emotional abuse, people-pleasing, and how unresolved childhood wounds are often replayed in adult relationships.

Through the stories of Phobos and Icarus — one overcome by fear, the other who flew too close to the sun — she is trying to illustrate that fear and pain can be “a catalyst for change or a circuit breaker”. She adds: “We don’t change when we’re comfortable. We don’t evolve when we’re comfortable. We tend to do all of that in deep discomfort.”

In her final chapters, O’Shea Brown uses the story of the Phoenix, Chiron (the wounded healer), Psyche, and Eros to explore post-traumatic growth, finding purpose, self-discovery, healing through service, and the idea that suffering can become wisdom.

For O’Shea Brown, the story of Psyche is the emotional and creative high point of the book. “I think people will resonate with that because she keeps putting her heart out there, not knowing if it’s going to work out but just wanting love. She’s terrified and scared but trusts the process, surrenders to fate, and keeps venturing into the unknown. Then, eventually, she does find love.”

In the prologue, O’Shea Brown tells the story of how, as a child, she tied a wish to a local “rag tree”. Her wish was to create a book that was “a warm hug”. With Psyche’s Awakening, she hopes she has created “a companion in the dark, lonely times… because you can get really lost in that darkness and I wanted to illuminate a pathway out of it.”