The Seba library treats Frozen in 9 passages, across 4 authors (including Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph D, Liz Greene, Howard Sasportas, Giegerich, Wolfgang).
In archetypal psychology to be cold is to be without feelings. There are stories of the frozen child, the child who could not feel, the corpses frozen in the ice, during which time nothing could move, nothing could become, nothing could be born.
Estés establishes the archetypal meaning of frozen as total affective arrest — a state in which becoming, movement, and birth are all suspended, antithetical to soul-life.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017thesis
A frozen woman without nurture is inclined to turn to incessant 'what if' daydreams. But even if she is in this frozen condition, especially if she is in such a frozen condition, she must refuse the comforting fantasy.
Estés diagnoses the frozen woman's characteristic symptom — anesthetizing fantasy — and insists that the only cure is action, not comforting internal narrative.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017thesis
Being with real people who warm us, who endorse and exalt our creativity, is essential to the flow of creative life. Otherwise we freeze.
Estés frames freezing as a direct consequence of relational and communal deprivation, making nurture — not solitary will — the primary antidote.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017thesis
The puer himself has movement and vitality, but he is the spiritual dimension of a woman; and the woman herself, her femininity, is frozen and static when the puer dominates her.
Greene identifies the puer-dominated psyche as the structural cause of a woman's frozen condition, where ascendant spirit abstracts femininity away from feeling and instinct.
, The Development of Personality: Seminars in Psychological Astrology, Volume 1, 1987thesis
The aqua permanens that the alchemists were after is not frozen water. As belonging into the Inverted World of the soul, it is the inversion of the relation that 'frozen' (or 'permanent') and 'water' (or 'liquid') in the notion of 'frozen water' have.
Giegerich uses 'frozen' as a dialectical foil to articulate alchemical aqua permanens, distinguishing soul-permanence — which is fluid movement — from the mere stasis of ice.
, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020supporting
Vince told me why his shoulder got frozen: 'I was fine before I saw the kid … I'm used to doing things like that, things that are dangerous … but when I saw the kid, part of me wanted to grab my arm back and turn away.'
Levine presents a clinical case in which a single overwhelming perception produces somatic freezing, linking the body's arrest directly to the traumatic moment of unbearable conflict between action and withdrawal.
, In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, 2010supporting
Frozen Feeling, Frozen Creativity
Estés's chapter heading explicitly pairs affective arrest with creative arrest, treating them as a single compound pathology within the feminine psyche.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting
The neo-cortex is not powerful enough to override the instinctual defense response to threat and danger — the fight, flee, or freeze responses. In this respect, we humans are still inextricably bound to our animal heritage.
Levine grounds the freeze response in neurobiological heritage, explaining how cortical interference with the instinctual discharge cycle produces lasting trauma rather than natural recovery.
, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma—The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences, 1997supporting
Animals, however, do not have a highly evolved neo-cortex to interfere with the natural return to normal functioning through some form of discharge.
By contrasting animal and human nervous systems, Levine argues that the human capacity for freezing-as-trauma is specifically a product of neocortical over-control.
, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma - The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences, 1997aside