Women Who Run With the Wolves; Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype

New York: Ballantine Books, 1992. First edition (stated), 6th printing (number line). Hardcover. Fine in fine jacket. Housed in an archival mylar sleeve. A very crisp copy.. Large octavo in black DJ, xiii, 520 pages, 25 cm. "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. Contents: 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. Wild women -- Folklore.