Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Encyclopedia
Clarissa Pinkola Estés is an American poet, post-trauma specialist and Jungian psychoanalyst.
and other poets who also worked in the health or other professions in tandem, Estés is a poet who uses her poems throughout her psychoanalytic books, spokenword audios, and stage performances as expressive therapy for others. She is also a post-trauma recovery specialist and psychoanalsyst who has practiced clinically for 41 years. Her doctorate, from the Union Institute & University, is in ethno-clinical psychology, the study of social and psychological patterns of cultural and tribal groups. She often speaks as "distinguished visiting scholar" and "diversity scholar" at universities, most recently to young engineers at Colorado School of Mines. She is the author of many books on the life of the soul, and her work is published in 30 languages, most recently Persian
, Turkish, Chinese, and Serbian. Her book Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of The Wild Woman Archetype was on the New York Times Best Seller list for 145 weeks.
As a post-trauma specialist, Estés began her work in the 1960s at Edward Hines Jr. Veterans Hospital in Hines, Illinois. There she worked with WWI, WWII, Korean and Vietnam war soldiers who were living with quadraplegia, incapacitated by loss of, either/or, both arms and legs. She has worked at other facilities caring for severely injured 'cast-away' children, 'shell-shocked' war veterans (now called Post Trauma Distress Syndrome), and their families. Her teaching of writing in prisons began in the early 1970s at the Men's Penitentiary in Colorado; the Federal Women's Prison at Dublin, California, and in other 'locked institutions' throughout the Southwest.
Estés ministers in the fields of childbearing loss, surviving families of murder victims, as well as critical incident work. She served at natural disaster sites, developing post-trauma recovery protocol for earthquake survivors in Armenia. Since then, her protocol is used to deputize citizen helpers to do post-trauma work on site and for the months and years yet to come. She served Columbine High School and community after the massacre, 1999-2003. She continues to work with 9-11 survivors and survivor families on both east and west coasts.
Estés served as appointee by two Governors to the Colorado State Grievance Board (1993–2006) where she was elected Chair. She is a board member of the Authors Guild, New York; an advisory board member for National Writers Union
, New York; an advisory board member of National Coalition Against Censorship
, New York; and a board member of the Maya Angelou Minority Health Foundation at Wake Forest Medical School. She is an advisor to El Museo de las Americas, Colorado; a contributing editor to The Bloomsbury Review; and a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
Estés, "a former "hard-scrabble" welfare mother" is the recipient of numerous awards for her life's work, including the first Joseph Campbell
Keeper of the Lore Award for her work as La cantadora; and for her written work, the Gradiva Award from the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis; and Catholic Press Association
award for her writing. She received the Las Primeras Award, "The First of Her Kind" from the Mexican American
Women's Foundation, District of Columbia. She is a 2006 inductee into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame which celebrates women "change agents" who have had international influence.
website.
She is controversial for proposing that both assimilation and holding to ethnic traditions are the ways to contribute to a creative culture and to a soul-based civility. She successfully helped to petition the Library of Congress, as well as worldwide psychoanalytic institutes, to rename their studies and categorizations formerly called, among other things, "psychology of the primitives", to respectful and descriptive names, according to ethnic group, religion, culture, etc.
Estés' Guadalupe Foundation currently funds literacy
projects in Queens, New York City, in Madagascar
- providing printed local folktales, healthcare and hygiene information for people in their own language. These texts are then used for learning to read and write. Estés testifies before state and federal legislatures on welfare reform, education and school violence, child protection, mental health, environment, licensing of professionals, immigration, and other quality of life and soul issues.
"We are all los inmigrantes, the Soul is The First Immigrant: The Soul cannot be held back by any imaginary boundary drawn against it; not by mountain ranges, not by rivers, nor by human scorn. The Soul, goes everywhere, like an old woman in her right mind, going anywhere she wishes, saying whatever she wants, bending to mend whatever is within her reach. Wherever she goes, the Soul brings new life." - from The Dangerous Old Woman audiobook
"There is no ethnic group on the face of this earth that has not been slaughtered; viz Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Britons. When, after a conflict, the best balanced leaders who have a stake in the future of all persons, are bypassed, and instead power is seized by the angriest and most grudge-holding, whose greatest stake is in the past… without new consciousness, and without strong reconciling actions... thus erupts a horrible recycling of living out the least of what is human in this world." from "Letter To The Prince on the Anniversary of Kristallnacht"
""As artist-in-residence in schools, I find whereas children used to dream bear, wolf, tiger as both friends and foes, and often… now, so so many children are dreaming Machine; gigantic stomping splints and walking piers of glittering mutant metal.... " - from essay "Wild Wolf/ Wild Soul" in Comeback Wolves, eds G. Wockner, L. Prichett
"There are not two 'Ms to governing, as many PolySci courses have taught: 'Money and Management.' There are three M's. The third one is Mercy. The third "M" constitutes the difference between a country and a corporation." from testimony before Federal Ways and Means Committee on Social Programs, Washington, 1996 Congressional Record.
""Nature and human beings are not separate. You can be sure that when the land and creatures are wounded by humans, that those humans are copying their own psychic wounds into the earth and animals as well; what is wounded and without thought, wounds others..." from essay "Massacre of the Dreamers, in Untie The Strong Woman book"
"The wounding of land and creatures reaches to the dream world... and beyond it to impoverish the dreamers as well. Yet there is still time to intervene... but the time is right this instant..." ibid
""All strong souls first go to hell before they do the healing of the world they came here for. If we are lucky, we return to help those still trapped below." from the poem Abre La Puerta in Theatre of the Imagination (Sounds True
), also for Kol Nidre at shul
"Do not lose heart, we were made for these times..." from Letter To A Young Activist During Troubled Times
""The craft of questions, the craft of stories, the craft of the hands - all these are the making of something, and that something is soul. Anytime we feed soul, it guarantees increase." from Women Who Run With the Wolves (Ballantine/ Bertelsmann 1992, 1996) (p. 14)
"Just because a woman is silent does not mean she agrees…" - from The Dangerous Old Woman audiobook
""If logic were everything, all men would ride sidesaddle…" - from Women Who Run With The Wolves
"Some people mistake being loving for being a sap. Quite the contrary, the most loving people are often the most fierce and the most acutely armed for battle... for they care about preserving and protecting poetry, symphonic song, ideas, the elements, creatures, inventions, hopes and dreams, dances and holiness... those goodly endeavors that cannot be allowed to perish from this earth, else humanity itself would perish..." - from The Dangerous Old Woman audiobook
'If you have never been called a defiant, incorrigible, impossible woman… have faith… there is yet time." - from Women Who Run with the Wolves
, are available as CDs and mp3s and have been broadcast over numerous National Public Radio and community public radio stations throughout Canada and the United States.
Biography
Similar to William Carlos WilliamsWilliam Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...
and other poets who also worked in the health or other professions in tandem, Estés is a poet who uses her poems throughout her psychoanalytic books, spokenword audios, and stage performances as expressive therapy for others. She is also a post-trauma recovery specialist and psychoanalsyst who has practiced clinically for 41 years. Her doctorate, from the Union Institute & University, is in ethno-clinical psychology, the study of social and psychological patterns of cultural and tribal groups. She often speaks as "distinguished visiting scholar" and "diversity scholar" at universities, most recently to young engineers at Colorado School of Mines. She is the author of many books on the life of the soul, and her work is published in 30 languages, most recently Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, Turkish, Chinese, and Serbian. Her book Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of The Wild Woman Archetype was on the New York Times Best Seller list for 145 weeks.
As a post-trauma specialist, Estés began her work in the 1960s at Edward Hines Jr. Veterans Hospital in Hines, Illinois. There she worked with WWI, WWII, Korean and Vietnam war soldiers who were living with quadraplegia, incapacitated by loss of, either/or, both arms and legs. She has worked at other facilities caring for severely injured 'cast-away' children, 'shell-shocked' war veterans (now called Post Trauma Distress Syndrome), and their families. Her teaching of writing in prisons began in the early 1970s at the Men's Penitentiary in Colorado; the Federal Women's Prison at Dublin, California, and in other 'locked institutions' throughout the Southwest.
Estés ministers in the fields of childbearing loss, surviving families of murder victims, as well as critical incident work. She served at natural disaster sites, developing post-trauma recovery protocol for earthquake survivors in Armenia. Since then, her protocol is used to deputize citizen helpers to do post-trauma work on site and for the months and years yet to come. She served Columbine High School and community after the massacre, 1999-2003. She continues to work with 9-11 survivors and survivor families on both east and west coasts.
Estés served as appointee by two Governors to the Colorado State Grievance Board (1993–2006) where she was elected Chair. She is a board member of the Authors Guild, New York; an advisory board member for National Writers Union
National Writers Union
National Writers Union , founded on November 19, 1981, is the trade union in the United States for freelance and contract writers: journalists, book and short fiction authors, business and technical writers, web content providers, and poets...
, New York; an advisory board member of National Coalition Against Censorship
National Coalition Against Censorship
The National Coalition Against Censorship , founded in 1974, is an alliance of 50 national non-profit organizations, including literary, artistic, religious, educational, professional, labor, and civil liberties groups...
, New York; and a board member of the Maya Angelou Minority Health Foundation at Wake Forest Medical School. She is an advisor to El Museo de las Americas, Colorado; a contributing editor to The Bloomsbury Review; and a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
Estés, "a former "hard-scrabble" welfare mother" is the recipient of numerous awards for her life's work, including the first Joseph Campbell
Joseph Campbell
Joseph John Campbell was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience...
Keeper of the Lore Award for her work as La cantadora; and for her written work, the Gradiva Award from the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis; and Catholic Press Association
Catholic Press Association
The Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada is an association of newspaper and media specialists specialized on reporting on the Roman Catholic Church. Founded in 1911, it has over 600 member organizations...
award for her writing. She received the Las Primeras Award, "The First of Her Kind" from the Mexican American
Mexican American
Mexican Americans are Americans of Mexican descent. As of July 2009, Mexican Americans make up 10.3% of the United States' population with over 31,689,000 Americans listed as of Mexican ancestry. Mexican Americans comprise 66% of all Hispanics and Latinos in the United States...
Women's Foundation, District of Columbia. She is a 2006 inductee into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame which celebrates women "change agents" who have had international influence.
Social justice
Estés is Managing Editor for TheModeratevoice.com, a news and political blog where she also writes on issues of culture, soul, and politics. She is also a columnist on issues of social justice, spirituality and culture in her column entitled El Rio Debajo del Rio ("The River Underneath the River") on the National Catholic ReporterNational Catholic Reporter
The National Catholic Reporter is the second largest Catholic newspaper in the United States; its circulation reaches ninety-seven countries on six continents. Based in midtown Kansas City, Missouri, NCR was founded by Robert Hoyt in 1964 as an independent newspaper focusing on the Catholic Church...
website.
She is controversial for proposing that both assimilation and holding to ethnic traditions are the ways to contribute to a creative culture and to a soul-based civility. She successfully helped to petition the Library of Congress, as well as worldwide psychoanalytic institutes, to rename their studies and categorizations formerly called, among other things, "psychology of the primitives", to respectful and descriptive names, according to ethnic group, religion, culture, etc.
Estés' Guadalupe Foundation currently funds literacy
Literacy
Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...
projects in Queens, New York City, in Madagascar
Madagascar
The Republic of Madagascar is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa...
- providing printed local folktales, healthcare and hygiene information for people in their own language. These texts are then used for learning to read and write. Estés testifies before state and federal legislatures on welfare reform, education and school violence, child protection, mental health, environment, licensing of professionals, immigration, and other quality of life and soul issues.
Quotations
"I was raised in the now nearly vanished oral and ethnic traditions of my families. I am a first-generation American who grew up in a rural village, population 600, near the Great Lakes. Of Mexican mestiza and majority Magyar and minority Swabian tribal heritages, I come from immigrant and refugee families who could not read or write, or who did so haltingly. Much of my writing is influenced by my family people who were farmers, shepherds, hopsmeisters, wheelwrights, weavers, orchardists, tailors, cabinet makers, lacemakers, knitters, and horsemen and horsewomen from the Old Countries." (excerpt from Forte è la Donna: dalla Grande Madre Bennedetta, insegnamenti per i nostri tempi (Sperling & Kupfer/ Frassinelli, May 2011, Milano, Italy)"We are all los inmigrantes, the Soul is The First Immigrant: The Soul cannot be held back by any imaginary boundary drawn against it; not by mountain ranges, not by rivers, nor by human scorn. The Soul, goes everywhere, like an old woman in her right mind, going anywhere she wishes, saying whatever she wants, bending to mend whatever is within her reach. Wherever she goes, the Soul brings new life." - from The Dangerous Old Woman audiobook
"There is no ethnic group on the face of this earth that has not been slaughtered; viz Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Britons. When, after a conflict, the best balanced leaders who have a stake in the future of all persons, are bypassed, and instead power is seized by the angriest and most grudge-holding, whose greatest stake is in the past… without new consciousness, and without strong reconciling actions... thus erupts a horrible recycling of living out the least of what is human in this world." from "Letter To The Prince on the Anniversary of Kristallnacht"
""As artist-in-residence in schools, I find whereas children used to dream bear, wolf, tiger as both friends and foes, and often… now, so so many children are dreaming Machine; gigantic stomping splints and walking piers of glittering mutant metal.... " - from essay "Wild Wolf/ Wild Soul" in Comeback Wolves, eds G. Wockner, L. Prichett
"There are not two 'Ms to governing, as many PolySci courses have taught: 'Money and Management.' There are three M's. The third one is Mercy. The third "M" constitutes the difference between a country and a corporation." from testimony before Federal Ways and Means Committee on Social Programs, Washington, 1996 Congressional Record.
""Nature and human beings are not separate. You can be sure that when the land and creatures are wounded by humans, that those humans are copying their own psychic wounds into the earth and animals as well; what is wounded and without thought, wounds others..." from essay "Massacre of the Dreamers, in Untie The Strong Woman book"
"The wounding of land and creatures reaches to the dream world... and beyond it to impoverish the dreamers as well. Yet there is still time to intervene... but the time is right this instant..." ibid
""All strong souls first go to hell before they do the healing of the world they came here for. If we are lucky, we return to help those still trapped below." from the poem Abre La Puerta in Theatre of the Imagination (Sounds True
Sounds True
Sounds True is a multimedia publishing company based near Boulder, Colorado. It was created in 1985 by Tami Simon. The company has published approximately 1,000 titles, including spoken-word audio recordings, books, music, filmed events, multimedia packages and online educational programs from...
), also for Kol Nidre at shul
"Do not lose heart, we were made for these times..." from Letter To A Young Activist During Troubled Times
""The craft of questions, the craft of stories, the craft of the hands - all these are the making of something, and that something is soul. Anytime we feed soul, it guarantees increase." from Women Who Run With the Wolves (Ballantine/ Bertelsmann 1992, 1996) (p. 14)
"Just because a woman is silent does not mean she agrees…" - from The Dangerous Old Woman audiobook
""If logic were everything, all men would ride sidesaddle…" - from Women Who Run With The Wolves
"Some people mistake being loving for being a sap. Quite the contrary, the most loving people are often the most fierce and the most acutely armed for battle... for they care about preserving and protecting poetry, symphonic song, ideas, the elements, creatures, inventions, hopes and dreams, dances and holiness... those goodly endeavors that cannot be allowed to perish from this earth, else humanity itself would perish..." - from The Dangerous Old Woman audiobook
'If you have never been called a defiant, incorrigible, impossible woman… have faith… there is yet time." - from Women Who Run with the Wolves
Notable books
- Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, (Ballantine 1992/ 1996, USA)
- The Gift of Story: A Wise Tale About What is Enough (Ballantine 1993, USA)
- The Faithful Gardener: A Wise Tale About that Which Can Never Die (Harper SanFrancisco 1996 USA)
- Tales of the Brothers' Grimm; 50 page introduction by Estés (BMOC/QPB special edition USA)
- Hero With A Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell. 50 page introduction by Estés (Princeton University Press, Joseph CampbellJoseph CampbellJoseph John Campbell was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience...
100th anniversary edition 2004, USA) - La danza delle grandi madri: The Dance of the Grand Madri (Sperling & Kupfer/ Frassinelli, 2007, Milano, Italy)
- Donne che corrono coi lupi (Sperling & Kupfer/ Frassinelli, 1993, Milano, Italy)
- Forte è la Donna: dalla Grande Madre Bennedetta, insegnamenti per i nostri tempi (Sperling & Kupfer/ Frassinelli, May 2011, Milano, Italy)
Audio works
Estés is a spoken word artist in poetry, stories, blessings and psychoanalytic commentary. Her many audio works, published by Sounds TrueSounds True
Sounds True is a multimedia publishing company based near Boulder, Colorado. It was created in 1985 by Tami Simon. The company has published approximately 1,000 titles, including spoken-word audio recordings, books, music, filmed events, multimedia packages and online educational programs from...
, are available as CDs and mp3s and have been broadcast over numerous National Public Radio and community public radio stations throughout Canada and the United States.
- Untie the Strong Woman: To Know and Honor Holy Mother & La Nuestra Señora, Our Lady of Guadalupe (currently in mp3)
- The Joyous Body, Myths and Stories of The Dangerous Old Woman and the Consort Body (currently in mp3)
- The Power of the Crone: Myths and Stories of The Dangerous Old Woman and Her Special Wisdom, Part Two (2010)
- The Dangerous Old Woman: Myths and Stories of the Wise Woman Archetype, Part One (2010)
- Mother Night: Myths, Stories and Teachings for Learning to See in the Dark (2010)
- Seeing in the Dark: Myths and Stories to Reclaim the Buried, Knowing Woman (2010)
- Warming the Stone Child: Myths & Stories About Abandonment and the Unmothered Child (1997)
- The Radiant Coat: Myths & Stories About the Crossing Between Life and Death (1993)
- The Creative Fire: Myths and Stories About the Cycles of Creativity (1993)
- In the House of the Riddle Mother: The Most Common Archetypal Motifs in Women's Dreams (1997, 2005)
- Theatre of the Imagination (1999, 2005)
- How To Love A Woman: Myths and Stories about Intimacy and The Erotic Lives of Women (1996)
- Bedtime Stories; For Crossing the Threshold Between Waking and Sleep (2002)
- Beginner's Guide to Dream Analysis (2000)
- The Gift of Story: A Wise Tale About What is Enough (1993)
- The Faithful Gardener: A Wise Tale About that Which Can Never Die (1996)
- The Boy Who Married An Eagle: Myths and Stories About Men's Interior Lives (1995)
- The Red Shoes: On Torment and the Recovery of Soul Life (1997, 2005)
- Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories about the Wild Woman Archetype (1989 audio bestseller released before the completed manuscript)
See also
- MythopoiesisMythopoiesisThe mythopoetic men's movement refers to a loose collection of organizations active in men's work since the early 1980s. While in the public eye in the early 1990s, the movement carries on more quietly in The ManKind Project and independent psychologico-spiritual practitioners...
- Analytical psychologyAnalytical psychologyAnalytical psychology is the school of psychology originating from the ideas of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. His theoretical orientation has been advanced by his students and other thinkers who followed in his tradition. Though they share similarities, analytical psychology is distinct from...
- Archetypal psychologyArchetypal psychologyArchetypal psychology is a vein of inquiry into the psyche inaugurated in the early 1900s by Carl Gustav Jung. Jung and his followers, as well as Mircea Eliade, imagined the psychology of the archetypes from studying anthropology and archeology reports of their times and weaving it into their...
External links
- Estés is the Managing Editor and a columnist at The Moderate Voice political-newsblog
- mavenproductions.com - Calendar of Estés' keynotes, seminars, retreats and classes
- She is a weekly columnist filing stories on Mondays, for The National Catholic Reporter
- "Do Not Lose Heart, We Were Made for These Times: Letter to a Young Activist During Troubled Times" by Estés
- "The Church Beneath The Church" by Estés
- "Baptism: The Good Fathers" and "Internship: The Bad Fathers (poetry by Estés)
- "Slaughter of Innocence" by Estés in U.S. Catholic magazine.
- Blog Entry: "Don Imus And Bernard McGuirk re “Nappy-Headed Hos”" by Estés'
- Archived Google Video of 2000 Charlie Rose show about Woman.Life.Song production at Carnegie Hall featuring Estés along with Jessye Norman, Toni Morrison, composer Judith Weir