Women Who Run with the Wolves  |
| Two women running on the beach, by Pablo Picasso (1922). |
The Jungian analyst Clarissa Pinkola Estes worked for more than two decades to give birth to this book, Women Who Run with the Wolves. Is a collection of myths and folk tales that recreate the myth of the Wild Woman, the force-female that lives in all women when they no longer fear their power. Wherever we are, the shadow that trots behind us is undoubtedly fours fires Clarissa Pinkola Estes from the preface of this book that took more than twenty years to write, because it is not a trial but a detailed and Acute collection and interpretation of folk tales from different backgrounds, in the service of the figure of the Wild Woman. Doctorate in psychology etnoclínica-crosses of clinical psychology and ethnology, and Jungian psychoanalyst, Pinkola Estes is also cantadora or mesemondó, ie, heir to the old Hungarian traditions transmitted orally in the form of stories, that tell their stories absorbed sitting on wooden chairs with crushed plastic purses in their hands.
Pinkola Estes used his patients to cure them, stories. And the account of Jungian-style, from analysis in which each character in the story is a part of the same psyche, on the basis that in mind and the soul of one person, in this case a woman, constantly waging battles between opposing forces storm.
The work of the analyst is in the service of rescue, those stories, performances to help their patients or their readers to identify themselves to the Wild Woman, and let it work in themselves, to allow other archetypes triumph over that away from his own nature. Who is Wild Woman? What is strength? Women who run with Wolves was selected here to equate the feminine with certain species of wolves, Canis lupus and canis rufus: namely, an acute perception, a playful spirit and a high capacity for affection.
Pinkola Estes was born into a family of Mexican-English and was later adopted by a Hungarian family. He grew up near the border of Michigan, in a wooded area where the lightning is not common but people were fearful of the night.
Later, when it was as an analyst, noted that traditional psychology often lack answers to the most important issues for women: the archetypal intuitive, the sexual and the cyclical, ages, innate and acquired knowledge, the creative fire. After spending years studying fairy tales, myths and stories from multiple sources, brought together two words, "woman" and "wild" to open, say, a door that every woman understands just hear them. It is a culturally closed doors, sometimes forgotten, but remains there as a woman, any woman, stay there. It is intuitive, passionate, untamed, is, above all, a force that gives women the certainty of doing the right thing, whatever that may be, when left guided by it. It is therefore a dangerous force for the status quo, because, when a woman smells that strength within himself, is capable of anything: to leave a marriage, of leaving a job, suddenly you go traveling, to cry out that left alone, to break, if necessary, any or all of the rules taught. This female force, warns Pinkola Estes, transcends any name and weaves many otrasfuerzas vital, but has been called here by that name only intelligible way to make their presence in ancient folk tales that the analyst has constructed diving, often to recover "bones lost "links sexual or scatological sordid morality that wiped them over time. Is the wolf who fiercely fight for what deserves to live, and released what must die.
Wolf and female
The stories chosen by Pinkola Estes, in his office, recreate the psychological drama of his patient. Those who have chosen to discuss in this book are those which it considers more power summary of the redemptive role of the Wild Woman, who never emerge easily: there are always obstacles to overcome and ignore the voices of other archetypes that women tend to display sweetest, most loving, most selfish, most calculators or weaker than they are.
paleomitológico analysis that the analyst has made and transmitted in a beautiful prose connects these stories with recurring dreams sometimes female, sometimes with views that are generally taken into non-ordinary states of consciousness. Almost everyone agrees on one point: at some point in the women's individual events, you must have the courage to see what the guardians of conscience advise not to see. You need to run the place and give credence to that charge I of a different order from that psychoanalysis Traditional has accustomed us. Pinkola Estes speaks of the soul. And he says that "when we work the soul, her Wild Woman, creates more of itself." You only need make room, she, that force does the rest of the work for us, because then we already are it. That education, culture and fear have clogged the entry of this archetype in the mind of a woman does not mean she is not waiting, like a warrior, his new opportunity. Pinkola Estes argues that "if a woman is able to retain the gift of being old when you are young and be young when old, you always know what have to wait. But if you lost, you can retrieve a strong mental effort. "
Other names of the Wild Woman, different traditions, are the Wolf, the bone-setters, the mop or the one who knows. Always, in all cultures, these archetypes represent femininity file, its power sometimes magnanimous and giver of life, and sometimes fierce and repulsive, the curator of the power of the female.
With respect to men, some, of course, prefer a cat to a wolf, not to mention those that prefer a trained monkey. But only those willing to make contact with the wild one will be right. Is not scare of our screaming or pejoratively tell us that suddenly we are thinking with their ovaries. By contrast, the right is what will be proud of having next to that woman. Bluebeard
Throughout the book, Pinkola Estes narrates several stories and doing further analysis of each of the characters, which are parts of a single psyche. They are beneficent fairy, naive virgins, sisters wise, indifferent parents, pets, perceptive, skilled healers, witches, creepy. All these things live in us, play games, make bets. "But what we do with all these things inside that are crazy and sow destruction without realizing it? We must leave room even for them, but a place where they can be monitored. One in particular, the most false and most powerful fugitive from the psyche, it requires our immediate attention and action: it is the natural predator, "dicePinkola're on the introduction of one of the stories:" Bluebeard. " The story is known, but the analyst highlighted in their nature destructive central character (or self) and highlights the solutions the same story offers to destroy the evil.
In short, a giant known as Bluebeard courting three sisters. Is eccentric, and the two major distrust him. But captive to the child, the most naive, who marries him. Already in his castle, the husband treats her well and one day tells you to go and if you will, the young wife can invite your sisters to keep her. It gives all the keys to the castle and tells him he can go wherever you want, but with one restriction: there is a small key that you should refrain from use. In his absence, sisters, barely aware that there is a key that can not be used, proposed to play find out which door it belongs. And of course, once discovered the door, open it. There, the young wife discovers a pile of bloodied bodies of women and also warns that the key starts to bleed: It is a trap that left him Bluebeard to know whether it was obeyed. The young wife tries to clear the blood of the key, rubbed with horsehair, the lava, but everything is useless. The sisters are hiding when he arrives. Key Watch bleeding and angry. He tells the young that the dead are his previous wives, all disobeyed him and opened the door. And the push there to kill her. In her fright, the girl says, "Okay, okay, but give me time to prepare for death." He is awarded. Meanwhile, the sisters call their brothers to come to rescue her. "Do you see coming?" She asks, terrified. "No, not yet," answered the sisters. "Do not come yet?" He insists. "They're coming!", Answered at last. The brothers eventually kill Bluebeard and free the girl, who is no longer naive. It is a woman.
In the psyche of a woman, there is always an innocent party who is fascinated even know in advance what that is not suitable. There is always a cautious hand (the sisters) who choose to miss the appearance of good match. There is also, above all, a natural predator, a self-destructive force that has no limits, is seductive and sadistic snares. As the drama unfolds and the young will be killed, initiation occurs: it grows and becomes shrewd: asks for time to develop a strategy. The time is awarded and is used to summon the brothers, the guardians, the warriors that also exist in the psyche to go to danger. The crux of the story takes dramatic but a little earlier, when the young woman opened the door and go. In life-or in the psyche of every woman there is something you prefer not to see. Monstrous, painful, something on the order of evil. The young wife would not have grown and would not have succeeded if it had not been able to overcome what is behind that door, that naive and curious women who do not develop their craft have no chance. "The ability to resist what you learn will allow a woman to return to their basic nature, in which all their thoughts, feelings and actions receive the support they need," says Pinkola Estes, who also examines the curious relationship between predator and prey, "who dance to a mysterious mental dance. They say that when the prey with the predator establishes a kind of servile eye contact and experience an earthquake that causes a slight ripple on the skin over the muscles, recognizes its own weakness and agrees to become a victim. " The final vigilante tale is that the young wife, at that moment, not connected with the role of prey but the Wild Woman: requested time to counterattack.
Throughout the book Pinkola Estes, other stories tell of other characters. The inner woman, the woman skeleton function anger, forgiveness steps, the wild soul, the ugly duckling, the power of the name, the wolf tab ... are just some of the elements that live in the oral tales of this woman gets deep teachings. In elcapítulo talking about anger, the analyst slips a key to go in search of his own Wild Woman. "There comes a time in our lives, usually upon reaching middle age, a woman has to make a decision, possibly the most important decision of his psychic afterlife, and is to feel bitter or not." Have to leave, then, hunting, fishing and conquest of the interior of the same: the desire to sniff, rolls of laughter, remove hooves, howling at night and moves the tail is in here.
Sandra Russo .- Page12. Women's Perspectives. - January 7, 2000
