Women who run with wolves

[reasonvemotion]

I have finished reading this book and am wondering if anyone else has also read it and would like to comment on it.

Briefly, women are likened to wolves. Cunning and untrustworthy. A wild woman is free, it is the indestructible aspect of herself, the self that is connected to freedom, we are human females with only a remnant of our sexuality, but we retain the idea of the instinctual nature. Some are born into familites like deserts and a wild woman archetype will have a difficult life as she has been trained to remain forever contained, taught not to spit, not to sweat, leave out the instinctual earthy aspect of her womanhood.

As a teenager they are exposed to art cinema, poetry or even lovers who ask them to be a full person. Their religious fate is damaged because the sensuality of those women was calling to them, where "thou shalt not" is calling and they want to throw over the old order and be free.

There are problems of individuation in order to retrieve instincts. In all women there is a gypsy, a wild woman and there is a part of us that can never be happy until the gypsy can dance.

Wild, means natural, being connected to one's deepest soul. The domesticated woman becomes submissive, loses her wild woman lust for life, turning it into something less. A woman, pampered, has whatever she wants, until she opens the room where the feminine instinct is, until she can see her psychic life is at stake, she can do nothing, then her wild woman is squashed.

The feminine spirit is guided by intuition and it tells her exactly where to go and what to do. A woman has a need to express herself in ways it means something to her, to reconnect with her instinctual self. You dont have to get three ph.D's to prove your worth to your family, the way to connect is not to rely on family, but your own intuition.

I can relate to all of this and recognise the difficulties that a woman can experience when she fights internally with how she has been taught, especially "thou shalt not", to turn your back on this can be a life struggle.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

I have finished reading this book and am wondering if anyone else has also read it and would like to comment on it.

Briefly, women are likened to wolves. Cunning and untrustworthy. A wild woman is free, it is the indestructible aspect of herself, the self that is connected to freedom, we are human females with only a remnant of our sexuality, but we retain the idea of the instinctual nature. Some are born into familites like deserts and a wild woman archetype will have a difficult life as she has been trained to remain forever contained, taught not to spit, not to sweat, leave out the instinctual earthy aspect of her womanhood.

As a teenager they are exposed to art cinema, poetry or even lovers who ask them to be a full person. Their religious fate is damaged because the sensuality of those women was calling to them, where "thou shalt not" is calling and they want to throw over the old order and be free.

There are problems of individuation in order to retrieve instincts. In all women there is a gypsy, a wild woman and there is a part of us that can never be happy until the gypsy can dance.

Wild, means natural, being connected to one's deepest soul. The domesticated woman becomes submissive, loses her wild woman lust for life, turning it into something less. A woman, pampered, has whatever she wants, until she opens the room where the feminine instinct is, until she can see her psychic life is at stake, she can do nothing, then her wild woman is squashed.

The feminine spirit is guided by intuition and it tells her exactly where to go and what to do. A woman has a need to express herself in ways it means something to her, to reconnect with her instinctual self. You dont have to get three ph.D's to prove your worth to your family, the way to connect is not to rely on family, but your own intuition.

I can relate to all of this and recognise the difficulties that a woman can experience when she fights internally with how she has been taught, especially "thou shalt not", to turn your back on this can be a life struggle.

There are all kinds of women, just as there are all kinds of men. Most people are pretty average.

[chaz wyman]

I have finished reading this book and am wondering if anyone else has also read it and would like to comment on it.

Briefly, women are likened to wolves. Cunning and untrustworthy. A wild woman is free, it is the indestructible aspect of herself, the self that is connected to freedom, we are human females with only a remnant of our sexuality, but we retain the idea of the instinctual nature. Some are born into familites like deserts and a wild woman archetype will have a difficult life as she has been trained to remain forever contained, taught not to spit, not to sweat, leave out the instinctual earthy aspect of her womanhood.

As a teenager they are exposed to art cinema, poetry or even lovers who ask them to be a full person. Their religious fate is damaged because the sensuality of those women was calling to them, where "thou shalt not" is calling and they want to throw over the old order and be free.

There are problems of individuation in order to retrieve instincts. In all women there is a gypsy, a wild woman and there is a part of us that can never be happy until the gypsy can dance.

Wild, means natural, being connected to one's deepest soul. The domesticated woman becomes submissive, loses her wild woman lust for life, turning it into something less. A woman, pampered, has whatever she wants, until she opens the room where the feminine instinct is, until she can see her psychic life is at stake, she can do nothing, then her wild woman is squashed.

The feminine spirit is guided by intuition and it tells her exactly where to go and what to do. A woman has a need to express herself in ways it means something to her, to reconnect with her instinctual self. You dont have to get three ph.D's to prove your worth to your family, the way to connect is not to rely on family, but your own intuition.

I can relate to all of this and recognise the difficulties that a woman can experience when she fights internally with how she has been taught, especially "thou shalt not", to turn your back on this can be a life struggle.

As you have not named the book I will assume that the title is eponymous to the thread.
No - I have not read it.
From your description the author seems to have misunderstood two things; 1) What women are like, 2) what wolves are like.
Does she differentiate between make and female wolves?

What form does the book take? Is it like a sort of women are from venus thing, or is it in a novel?

[reasonvemotion]

My apologies CW.

Just a short insight into who the author is

Biography
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D. is an award-winning poet, diplomate senior jungian psychoanalyst, and a cantadora (keeper of the old stories) in the Hispanic tradition. She has been in private practice for twenty-five years and is former executive director of the C. G. Jung Center for Research and Education in the United States. Estes, who is both a Jungian analyst/psychologist and professional storyteller, vividly recounts the visceral details of often violent folklore. In the book Women who run with wolves, Dr. Estés has created a new lexicon for describing the female psyche. Fertile and life-giving, it is a psychology of women in the truest sense"

My description does not cover all the content of the book, because I was hoping someone else may have read it. Maybe this will enlighten further. What is interesting is she combines ancient folk lore and stories to give examples of her psychological descriptions of women showing that we are nature for all our sophistication.

[The Voice of Time]

naturalist women (in the broad and not the nudist-like meaning) are pretty cool women. I've met a couple or more so, and contrary to women sophistication you really get to relax with these women, it's like the man-woman dichotomy of civilization just vaporize to some extent when you meet them, sex- and societal-roles vanish into a human-to-human kind-of communication, and life seems happier, though not necessarily brighter, just by letting oneself be drawn into their sphere of influence.

[chaz wyman]

My apologies CW.

Just a short insight into who the author is

Biography
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D. is an award-winning poet, diplomate senior jungian psychoanalyst, and a cantadora (keeper of the old stories) in the Hispanic tradition. She has been in private practice for twenty-five years and is former executive director of the C. G. Jung Center for Research and Education in the United States. Estes, who is both a Jungian analyst/psychologist and professional storyteller, vividly recounts the visceral details of often violent folklore. In the book Women who run with wolves, Dr. Estés has created a new lexicon for describing the female psyche. Fertile and life-giving, it is a psychology of women in the truest sense"

My description does not cover all the content of the book, because I was hoping someone else may have read it. Maybe this will enlighten further. What is interesting is she combines ancient folk lore and stories to give examples of her psychological descriptions of women showing that we are nature for all our sophistication.

So not a novel, but a mythological analogy.

[reasonvemotion]

Yes and with these stories she exposes mistakes a woman can make. Women can think their relationship will be their completion. If a woman is truly a wild woman then she is not consumed with mating, there are times to be with and without. She needs room and space. For a woman her true mate is within not without. Emphasis with others should not overtake the relationship with herself, because then you become capitve or a dead woman.

Where will you find a wild woman. That nature is quite far away in the well bred woman, she sees it in dreams, her way of retaining her soul. A wild woman is inventing, creative and eccentric, which should be embraced. She is the late bloomer, the classical goddess, the truth teller. She is not dumb. She works on passion but she is like an endangered species.

"All I know is, I am friendly, but not quite tame".

[The Voice of Time]

What you write there RE poses me a question, a compelling question, to some extent obsessive, about how we really make freedom of oneself work when there clearly also exists needs for being social. Even the most lonely of kinds of people on Earth seem to reach out to others at occasions because of a need for themselves to be with other, intrinsic if you'd like, instead of extrinsic.

The question at its heart is: what is the ultimate balance between the life in solitude and the life in the social, specifically between self and friends, self and sexual partners, self and origin (family, community, nation)? This also seems to be on different levels, as I may want to write to someone, connect with them in my imagination, but may not want to face them, other times I may want to face them, or touch them, or otherwise be in different forms of contact, and all these forms has their degree of need.

How do one person make certain of maintaining a mutually satisfactory relationship which isn't absolute?

[reasonvemotion]

what is the ultimate balance between the life in solitude and the life in the social

It is what you choose it to be.

You have that freedom and that does not necessarily mean to be free you must live in solitude.

I look upon freedom as being NOT contained within.

[chaz wyman]

Yes and with these stories she exposes mistakes a woman can make. Women can think their relationship will be their completion. If a woman is truly a wild woman then she is not consumed with mating, there are times to be with and without. She needs room and space. For a woman her true mate is within not without. Emphasis with others should not overtake the relationship with herself, because then you become capitve or a dead woman.

Where will you find a wild woman. That nature is quite far away in the well bred woman, she sees it in dreams, her way of retaining her soul. A wild woman is inventing, creative and eccentric, which should be embraced. She is the late bloomer, the classical goddess, the truth teller. She is not dumb. She works on passion but she is like an endangered species.

"All I know is, I am friendly, but not quite tame".

I think the same lessons can be learned by men also. I've made the mistake of thinking that a relationship is a kind of completion, as I have experienced that, in more than one case in my life -but not will all women with whom I have shared a relationship.

Completion is possible, as long as you remind yourself from time to time that everything is temporary.

[chaz wyman]

What you write there RE poses me a question, a compelling question, to some extent obsessive, about how we really make freedom of oneself work when there clearly also exists needs for being social. Even the most lonely of kinds of people on Earth seem to reach out to others at occasions because of a need for themselves to be with other, intrinsic if you'd like, instead of extrinsic.

The question at its heart is: what is the ultimate balance between the life in solitude and the life in the social, specifically between self and friends, self and sexual partners, self and origin (family, community, nation)? This also seems to be on different levels, as I may want to write to someone, connect with them in my imagination, but may not want to face them, other times I may want to face them, or touch them, or otherwise be in different forms of contact, and all these forms has their degree of need.

How do one person make certain of maintaining a mutually satisfactory relationship which isn't absolute?

By absolute do you mean fidelity?
And what is 'mutual satisfaction"? It sounds a bit utilitarian to me. Have you ever loved - and I don't mean just in the passionate way?

[reasonvemotion]

How do one person make certain of maintaining a mutually satisfactory relationship which isn't absolute?

Yes, this is the sentence that I too, picked up on.

I was hesitant to try to answer this, because I was uncertain of its meaning.

I translated it thus.

A person wishes to ensure a relationship remains strong, even though one party cannot commit beyond a certain point, yet still desires fullfilment for both of them, despite the missing element.

VOT, can you enlighten myself and CW please.

CW, your question to VOT about love, was interesting. I have thought about this myself, just recently, and came to the conclusion that up to this point in my life, I have not had the experience of loving a man "absolutely" as VOT puts it.
I have loved a man, for his intellect, his creativeness, (he is a writer), I have loved a man for his fine business acumen (he is jewish, I married him and divorced him 9 years later) and I have loved a man as my brother. I have never had the feeling of all encompassing and I always knew it was "temporary".

[The Voice of Time]

The better word here than "absolute" should perhaps have been "certain", as the dichotomy I'm looking for is "certain"/"uncertain".

In principle, there is no problem in temporary/uncertain relationships, except one: how do we make a smooth landing, including the entire transition period? How do we ensure that I and those I am in relationship with do not come out losing because of the uncertainty inherent in uncertainty-based relationships. And not logical certainty, as we, a man and woman for instance, could set a date, a time of departure. But how often, how really does this departure come out perfect for both, or is it just brute force upon the emotions of both parties to avoid escalation or partly unwanted prolongment? It doesn't, and that seems problematic to me although the amor fati folk would just tell you to live with it.

I don't want that bad feeling, and telling myself otherwise doesn't help as, may I say, the reasons for the bad feelings you get when a person beloved to you departs from you is, at least to me, the shattering of the certainty that you may see further satisfaction in the different forms of love.

To Chaz on whether or not I have loved in others than the passionate way: I can't answer general questions, give me an example. In passion I've felt ready to sacrifice my life, in passion I've wanted to touch and control the body of women, in passion I've wanted to shelter, protect, to make others happy. What have I naught in love done for passion? I do not know.

[johngalthasspoken]

I've always thought marriage & romantic relationships are a waste of a man's potential.I've always kept my relationships with women casual.in my observation, the romantic guys are the ones that need to compensate for things like looks or money.But I would love to have kids but have absolutely no desire to get married.i do think once i have kids,i would feel 'complete'. do you have any kids,reasonvemotion(whatever your real name is) or planning to have in the future?


"If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company”.- Jean-Paul Sartre

Being alone is not so bad if you become aware of the fact that all are alone, and it's only that some are more distracted from the fact than others.Learning to be alone is learning to love yourself. It is powerful. But i don't think women are capable of this partly because women experience reality through men,where as men act upon reality directly.As Satyr eloquently puts it "Women are not a sex they ARE sex.Their entire body is a sex organ; their entire mind is obsessed with sex and with its tetrameters: family, relationships, children, love, psychology etc. They have little interest in anything more abstract or detached form their personal ambitions and inter-relationships."


"Who have you always lived with, and whom will you eventually die with? And who will be the only person to accompany you on that ultimate adventure (just think of death as a theme park with a high admission cost). And, who has been there every time you’ve had sex. Yes, from time to time others may have been nearby doing what they could to help, but whatever pleasure you felt was inside yourself, experienced in those inner electrochemical, physiological pleasure places that are entirely your own." .- Peter McWilliams

[vegetariantaxidermy]

I've always thought marriage & romantic relationships are a waste of a man's potential.I've always kept my relationships with women casual.in my observation, the romantic guys are the ones that need to compensate for things like looks or money.But I would love to have kids but have absolutely no desire to get married.i do think once i have kids,i would feel 'complete'. do you have any kids,reasonvemotion(whatever your real name is) or planning to have in the future?


"If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company”.- Jean-Paul Sartre

Being alone is not so bad if you become aware of the fact that all are alone, and it's only that some are more distracted from the fact than others.Learning to be alone is learning to love yourself. It is powerful. But i don't think women are capable of this partly because women experience reality through men,where as men act upon reality directly.As Satyr eloquently puts it "Women are not a sex they ARE sex.Their entire body is a sex organ; their entire mind is obsessed with sex and with its tetrameters: family, relationships, children, love, psychology etc. They have little interest in anything more abstract or detached form their personal ambitions and inter-relationships."


"Who have you always lived with, and whom will you eventually die with? And who will be the only person to accompany you on that ultimate adventure (just think of death as a theme park with a high admission cost). And, who has been there every time you’ve had sex. Yes, from time to time others may have been nearby doing what they could to help, but whatever pleasure you felt was inside yourself, experienced in those inner electrochemical, physiological pleasure places that are entirely your own." .- Peter McWilliams

Who cares what you 'think' basement boy? Troll-speak doesn't count for squat.