Women who run with the wolves : myths and stories of the wild woman archetype
Clarissa Pinkola Estés (Author)
"Within every woman there is a wild and natural creature, a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. Her name is Wild Woman, but she is an endangered species. Though the gifts of wildish nature come to us at birth, society's attempt to "civilize" us into rigid roles has plundered this treasure, and muffled the deep, life-giving messages of our own souls. Without Wild Woman, we become over-domesticated, fearful, uncreative, trapped." "Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph. D., Jungian analyst and cantadora storyteller, shows how woman's vitality can be restored through what she calls "psychic archeological digs" into the bins of the female unconscious. In Women Who Run with the Wolves, Dr. Estes uses multicultural myths, fairy tales, folk tales, and stories chosen from over twenty years of research that help women reconnect with the healthy, instinctual, visionary attributes of the Wild Woman archetype." "Dr. Estes collects the bones of many stories, looking for the archetypal motifs that set a woman's inner life into motion. "La Loba" teaches about the transformative function of the psyche. In "Bluebeard", we learn what to do with wounds that will not heal; in "Skeleton Woman", we glimpse the mystical power of relationship and how dead feelings can be revived; "Vasalisa the Wise" brings our lost womanly instincts to the surface again; "The Handless Maiden" recovers the Wild Woman initiation rites; and "The Little Match Girl" warns against the insidious dangers of a life spent in fantasy." "In these and other stories, we focus on the many qualities of Wild Woman. We retrieve, examine, love, and understand her, and hold her against our deep psyches as one who is both magic and medicine." "In Women Who Run with the Wolves, Dr. Estes has created a new lexicon for describing the female psyche. Fertile and lifegiving, it is a psychology of women in the truest sense, a knowing of the soul."--Jacket
Print Book, English, 1992
First edition View all formats and editions
Ballantine Books, New York, 1992
Folk literature
xiii, 520 pages ; 25 cm
9780345377449, 9780345409874, 0345377443, 0345409876
25747660
Foreword
Introduction: singing over the bones
The howl: resurrection of the wild woman
Stalking the intruder: the beginning initiation
Nosing out the facts: the retrieval of intuition as initiation
The mate: union with the other
Hunting: when the heart is a lonely hunter
Finding one's pack: belonging as blessing
Joyous body: the wild flesh
Self-preservation: identifying leg traps, cages, and poisoned bait
Homing: returning to oneself
Clear water: nourishing the creative life
Heat: retrieving a sacred sexuality
Marking territory: the boundaries of rage and forgiveness
Battle scars: membership in the scar clan
La selva subterránea: initiation in the underground forest
Shadowing: canto hondo, the deep song
The wolf's eyelash
Afterword: story as medicine