User:Mmald065/Women Who Run with the Wolves

In this book, Clarissa Pinkola Estés explores various tales, legends, and myths of different cultural and ethnic background to evoke the archetype of the Wild Woman. Dr. Estés's analysis expands on what seems to be common psychic experiences of the female self In her work, Estés uses her background as a Jungian psychoanalyst to examine the Wild Woman archetype as it resonates with the characters and storylines in the myths and tales used for analysis.

Background
Dr. Estés's background as a psychoanalyst and a journalist led her to use stories as a way to heal and work with her patients. She had become so well known from her productions of audiotapes about her research surroundings myths and folktales that she made a deal with publishers to make her tapes into a book. The personal anecdotes, folktales, and legends analyzed in her book come from stories she received from her family and on her travels. Women Who Run with the Wolves is intended to teach women, out of touch with their purpose and identities about instincts, intuition, and the cycles of nature. With this book, the author introduces a large body of work explaining the universitalities of the Wild Woman archetype that praises the liberation of women’s spirituality, and natural resourcefulness, and interior should life. The archetypal Wild Woman personifies the instinctual and intuitive nature in a woman that fuels her psyche and an inherent creativity.

“Why do women keep trying to bend and fold themselves into shapes that are not theirs? I must say, from years of clinical observation of this problem, that most of the time it is not because of deep-seated masochism or a malignant dedication to self-destruction or anything of that nature. More often it is because the woman simply doesn’t know any better. She is unmothered.” ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

The main themes involve what Estés calls the Life/Death/Life cycle which is meant to be understood as a means of personal transformation. It expands on the notions of trust in the inner being, freedom, and the consequences of trading the soul for safety. It deals with the female essence which the author claims aligns closely with the archetype of the Wild Woman, who is passionate, instinctual, assertive, and freedom-loving and is present in the psyche of every woman. Dr. Estés asserts that a woman's nature is ruined when she loses contact with her instinctive self, as her natural life cycles become absorbed by a culture or intellect that is not necessarily her own. The objective is to re-establish a connection between the outer woman who goes about the mundane tasks of daily life and the inner woman, who is free from societal pressures.

The use of folktales and stories in the book "is meant to take the spirit into a descent to find something that is lost or missing and to bring it back to consciousness again,” Estés says in an interview for Radiance Magazine. "It’s supposed to travel inside of your body, touch you on a deep level and heal your inner wounds."

Chapter 3: Nosing Out the Facts: The Retrieval of Intuition as Initiation
The fourth story recounted by Estés is the story of Vasalisa the Wise, which is also a tale of initiation, although, this time it is a fuller initiation in which intuition plays a crucial role. Although Vasalisa is called the Wise by Estés, in other accounts she is known as the Fair or the Beautiful. With a Jungian approach, Estés offers a different perspective in looking at the story of Vasalisa. She describes the theme of the tale as “the retrieval of intuition as initiation”, intuition which is viewed as the treasure of the female self, “inner seeing, inner hearing, inner sensing and inner knowing”. Estés writes: “Vasalisa is the story of handing down the blessing on women’s power of intuition from mother to daughter, from one generation to the next” Nevertheless, in order to gain intuition a woman must complete certain tasks which form the whole process of initiation. The first stage is letting the good mother die and accepting her legacy. Estés points to the importance of eliminating all the obstacles inhibiting women’s development and maturity, one of them being an over-protective mother who prevents a girl from facing new challenges. In the story, it is only after her mother’s death that Vasalisa confronts her fears and accepts to take up a challenge of meeting Baba Yaga. Yet, Vasalisa also accepts the mother’s legacy, that is the doll. For Estés learning to listen to this doll means learning to listen to one's own intuition or "the voice of inner reason, inner knowing, inner consciousness"

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