Scholars like Sir James Fraser, Erich Neumann, Joseph Campbell, Will Durant and most Biblical Scholars of the19th and early 20th centuries wrote persuasive stories about the meanings of the figurines found by archeologists studying Prehistory, Ancient Mesopotamia, and Ancient Egypt. These scholars argued that the figurines represented mother goddesses, fertility, and perfect images of elite or royal Egyptian women.

Modern feminist archeologists have questioned these visual tropes and have discovered that entirely different realities lay behind the stereotyped images. Like the fixed and usually idealized mental images of their parents that our patients carry from childhoods, these stereotyped images are difficult to dislodge. With new archeological findings and depictions of the figurines, I shall paint a very different picture of the ancient icons, illustrating how an analytic perspective of the past can reveal fresh and liberating insights into both the past and the present.