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Clarissa Pinkola Estés Quotes (1945-)
Author, Writer
About Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Clarissa Pinkola Estés (born January 27, 1945) is a first-generation American writer and Jungian psychoanalyst. She is the author of Women Who Run with the Wolves (1992), which remained on the New York Times bestseller list for 145 weeks and has sold over two million copies.
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“The pathologizing of variation in women's bodies is a deep bias endorsed by many psychological theorists, most certainly by Freud.”
“I have to say that a man can never know who he is, or a woman cannot know who she is, until she has poured herself through the sieve that is her mother and poured herself through the sieve that is her father and come to understand through both.”
“I feel that men are as much of a mystery as women. Once we get past a certain amount of self-consciousness and protection of certain sacred cows by each gender, we could have a real conversation, maybe, for the first time ever in the universe, in this century.”
“I understand mythology. I understand stories. I understand poetry. I understand that they cut close to the bone. I am a poet who became a psychoanalyst. That is my background. I am a cantadora. I am a storyteller. It comes from my feet, upward, not from my brain, downward.”
“It is said that the grand storytellers of your generation and my generation is the cinema. Teenagers and young adults aren’t going to grandmother and grandfather anymore to sit in the kitchen and listen to their stories. We go to the cinema to see the cliffhangers on Saturdays.”
“We are all filled with a longing for the wild. There are few culturally sanctioned antidotes for this yearning. We were taught to feel shame for such a desire. We grew our hair long and used it to hide our feelings. But the shadow of Wild Woman still lurks behind us during our days and in our nights. No matter where we are, the shadow that trots behind us is definitely four-footed.”
“I interviewed Robert Bly in 1990. I can remember saying to him, “Now, what about the men’s movement?” And he said, “No, it’s not men’s movement.” And I said, “Well, what will you call it?” “Men’s work, just work with men, that’s all.” And, I really like that. I like that he called it work with men. Mythopoetic is too big a word. It is better to have simpler words.”
“The mother, if she commits herself to life and builds a vast storehouse of knowing inside of her, is her children’s bastion. She has a relationship with her children forever as mother. And she has the wisdom, hopefully, to know when to let go and let them lead their lives on their own. But she also is there when they come back and need something. There has to be a prototype for the mother who remains mother forever.”
“the Life/Death/Life forces are part of our own nature, an inner authority that knows the steps, knows the dance of Life and Death. It is composed of the parts of ourselves who know when something can, should, and must be born and when it must die. It is a deep teacher if we can only learn its tempo. Rosario Castellanos, the Mexican mystic and ecstatic poet, writes about surrender to the forces that govern life and death: “... dadme la muerte que me falta .../give me the death I need . . .” Poets understand that there is nothing of value without death”
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What Clarissa Pinkola Estés Said About Others
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Clarissa Pinkola Estés on Carl Jung 2 quotes
“If you read Jung’s works you will see him constantly contradict himself because he is developing as he goes along.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estés on Robert W. Bly 2 quotes
“Sometimes the only way we learn to hold on to our deeper knowing is because a stranger jumps out. Then we are forced to fight for what we find dear-fight to be serious about what we are about, fight to get past our superficial spiritual motives, which Robert Bly calls "the desire to feel groovy," fight to hold on to the deeper knowledge, fight to finish what we have begun.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estés on Sigmund Freud
“The pathologizing of variation in women's bodies is a deep bias endorsed by many psychological theorists, most certainly by Freud.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estés on Ntozake Shange
“There is a line in Ntozake Shange's for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enough. In the play, the woman in purple speaks after having struggled to deal with all the psychic and physical aspects of herself that the culture ignores or demeans. She sums herself up in these wise and peaceful words: “here is what i have . . ./poems/big thighs/lil tits/&/so much love”. This is the power of the body, our power, the power of the wildish woman.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estés on Sylvia Plath
“back in those times, even though women were all infected with a yearning for a wild freedom, they continued outwardly to rub SOS on porcelain, using caustic cleansers, staying, as Sylvia Plath put it, "tied to their Bendix washing machines." There they washed and rinsed their clothes in water too hot for human touch and dreamed of a different world. When the instincts are injured, humans will "normalize" assault after assault, acts of injustice and destruction toward themselves, their offspring, their loved ones, their land, and even their Gods.”
Quotes About Clarissa Pinkola Estés
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Ana Castillo on Clarissa Pinkola Estés
“a world-class psychologist and writer known for her themes on women...Since Women Who Run with the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola-Éstes has become known for her empowerment of women through the use of the very mythology that has been long used to dismiss women in society.”
Kathleen Gasperini on Clarissa Pinkola Estés
“I think the best camp for women is the Wild Women’s Snowboard Camp, launched by women’s 1992 World Extreme Champ, Greta Gaines, and co-directed by Mary Seibert. It follows a philosophy by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author of Women Who Run with the Wolves, in that women need to break free; that there is a need and obligation for each woman to reach this level and let go. Snowboarding’s a fluid sport that allows you to do just this. Like rock climbing, it’s more about balance and grace than strength and ego. Therefore, women excel.”
About Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Clarissa Pinkola Estés (born January 27, 1945) is a first-generation American writer and Jungian psychoanalyst. She is the author of Women Who Run with the Wolves (1992), which remained on the New York Times bestseller list for 145 weeks and has sold over two million copies.
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