Women Who Run With The Wolves

Women Who Run With The Wolves – Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Within every woman, according to Jungian psychoanalyst and storyteller Clarissa Pinkola Estés, lives a powerful force she calls the Wild Woman: an instinctive, creative, intuitive and wise nature that modern culture often suppresses. In Women Who Run With The Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, she explores how women can reconnect with this vital part of themselves.

Estés compares the Wild Woman to wolves, animals that are intelligent, loyal, playful and fiercely protective, yet have been misunderstood and hunted. Just as wolves have been driven from their habitats, she suggests, women’s instinctive natures have been tamed and constrained by expectations that cut them off from their creativity, intuition and sense of self.

To illustrate her ideas, Estés retells myths, fairy tales and folk stories from many cultures, including tales such as Bluebeard, Vasilisa the Wise, the Ugly Duckling, the Red Shoes and Skeleton Woman. After each story, she offers a detailed psychological interpretation, showing how the tale reflects stages in a woman’s inner life, such as recognizing danger, trusting intuition, reclaiming creativity, healing wounds, embracing the cycles of love and finding one’s true home.

Written in rich, poetic language drawn from her work as a cantadora, a keeper of old stories, the book is both a work of psychology and a celebration of storytelling.

Women Who Run With The Wolves became an enduring bestseller and has inspired many readers. It is a long and reflective book, best read slowly, and its interpretations reflect a Jungian rather than scientific perspective.