Clarissa Pinkola

Estés
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Clarissa Pinkola Estés (born January 27,

1945) is an American poet, Jungian
psychoanalyst, post-trauma recovery
specialist, author and spoken word artist.

Life and career

Estés is a certified senior Jungian
analyst. Her doctorate, from the Union
Institute & University [1981], is in ethno-
clinical psychology on the study of social
and psychological patterns in cultural
and tribal groups. She often speaks as
"distinguished visiting scholar" and
"diversity scholar" at universities. She is
the author of many books on the journey
of the soul. Beginning in 1992 and
onward, her work has been published in
37 languages. 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 well as other best seller lists, including
USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and Library
Journal.

Post-trauma specialist
As a post-trauma specialist, Estés began
her work in the 1960s at the Edward
Hines Jr. Veterans Administration
Hospital in Hines, Illinois. There she
worked with World War I, World War II,
Korean and Vietnam War soldiers who
were living with quadraplegia,
incapacitated by loss of arms and legs.
She has worked at other facilities caring
for severely injured "cast-away" children
as well as "shell-shocked" (now called
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) war
veterans and their families. Her teaching
of writing, storytelling and traditional
medicine practices continued in prisons,
beginning in the early 1970s at the Men's
Penitentiary in Colorado; the Federal
Women's Prison at Dublin, California, the
Montview Facility for Youth in Colorado,
and other "locked institutions"
throughout the western United States.

Estés also 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 a now widely
translated "Post-trauma Recovery
Protocol", first translated for 1988
earthquake survivors in Armenia. The
protocol was designed for citizens to do
post-trauma work recovery work in their
own communities after the first
responders have left. She served
Columbine High School and its local
community for three years after the 1999
massacre there. She continues to work
with 9-11 survivor families on both East
and West coasts.

As a practitioner and trainer in cross-

cultural traditional medicine and
practices, Estés served with Maya
Angelou and Coretta Scott King as a
board member of the Maya Angelou
Minority Health Foundation (now called
the Maya Angelou Center for Health
Equity as of 2014) at Wake Forest
School of Medicine. One of the
foundation projects was to teach
patients with challenging illnesses to
document their days, storytelling about
their lives with a camera. The techniques
were taught by Estés as a storyteller and
traditional medicine practitioner along
with photographer Michael Cunningham,
the author of the book Crowns, Portraits
of Black Women in Church Hats. The
Minority Health Foundation project was
called Voca-voice, and culminated in a
photographic exhibition in Winston-
Salem, North Carolina, and dissemination
to other helping professionals of the
methodologies needed to carry out their
own Voca-voice projects in their
communities.
Estés served as appointee by Colorado
governors Romer and Owens to the
Colorado State Grievance Board of the
Department of Regulatory Agencies
(D.O.R.A.) from 1993 to 2006. She was
elected as chair and for thirteen years
worked with the state of Colorado
Attorney General's lawyers, as well as a
board of legal experts and helping
professionals, to focus on public safety
regarding mental health practitioners.
She was a speaker at the national
D.O.R.A. convention on the topic of
training board members in parity,
assessment, and regard for all, in
regulatory oversight. She has been an
advisory board member for the National
Writers Union, New York; and an advisory
board member of the National Coalition
Against Censorship, New York. She is an
advisor to El Museo de las Americas,
Denver, Colorado, and a contributing
editor and storyteller-in-residence for The
Bloomsbury Review, a four decades' old
literary culture and book review
publication.

Awards

Estés 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 books and many spoken word
series; the Gradiva Award from the
National Association for the
Advancement of Psychoanalysis ; and
Catholic Press Association award for her
writing. She is a 1992 Book of the Year
Honor Award, American Booksellers
Association; 1993; Colorado Authors
League Award, 1993. She received the
Las Primeras Award, "The First of Her
Kind", from the Mexican American
Women's Foundation, Washington D.C.
She is a 2006 inductee into the Colorado
Women's Hall of Fame which recognizes
women "change agents" who are of
international influence, including
Madeleine Albright and Golda Meir. Estés
is the recipient of the President's Medal
for Social Justice, from the Union
Institute, 1994; and the 1996 awardee of
the Fay Lecture Series at Texas A&M
University for her work La Curandera:
Healing in Two Worlds.

Spoken word performance

Estés debuted in spoken word

performance at Carnegie Hall, New York,
March 22, 2000, along with Maya
Angelou and Toni Morrison. Together the
author-poets wrote lyrical song-poems
for a libretto called woman.life.song.. The
concept was created by Jessye Norman
and invited by Judith Aron, the Executive
Director of Carnegie Hall, to present a
premiere about the archetypal and down
to earth passages of women from youth
to old age. The music was composed by
Judith Weir, the work was sung by the
opera soprano Jessye Norman with the
Orchestra of St. Luke's conducted by
David Robertson. The libretto is
published by Chester Music Ltd for
soloists and large ensemble.[1]

Social justice
Estés is managing editor for
TheModeratevoice.com, a news and
political website 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 archived as "El Rio Debajo del
Rio" ("The River Underneath the River")
archived on the National Catholic
Reporter website. She has written for the
Huffington Post, the Washington Post,
Publishers' Weekly and The Denver Post.

Estés 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 has funded

literacy projects, including 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, traditional
medicine in public health, open records,
and other quality of life and soul issues.
She was invited by Senators of The Ways
and Means Committee to testify at the
Federal Legislature on welfare reform,
speaking about "The Three M's:
Management, Money, and Mercy."

Books
Untie the Strong Woman: Blessed
Mother's Immaculate Love for the Wild
Soul (Sounds True Books, USA, 2011)
Women Who Run With the Wolves:
Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman
Archetype (Ballantine, 1992/ 1996,
USA)
 The Faithful Gardener: A Wise Tale
About that Which Can Never Die
(Harper, 1996, USA)
The Gift of Story: A Wise Tale About
What is Enough (Ballantine, 1993, 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,
100th anniversary edition 2004, USA)

Audio works
Estés is a spoken word artist using her
original lyric and family stories, poems,
blessings, mythos and psychoanalytic
commentary. Her 22 audio works,
published by Sounds True, 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 (2011)
(mp3s/CDs)
How To Be An Elder: Myths and Stories
of The Dangerous Old Woman, Volume
5 (2012) (mp3s/CDs)
The Late Bloomer: Myths and Stories of
The Dangerous Old Woman, Volume 4
(2011) (mp3s/CDs)
The Joyous Body: Myths and Stories of
The Dangerous Old Woman and the
Consort Body, Volume 3 (2011)
(mp3s/CDs)
The Power of the Crone: Myths and
Stories of The Dangerous Old Woman
and Her Special Wisdom, Volume 2
(2010) (mp3s/CDs)
The Dangerous Old Woman: Myths and
Stories of the Wise Woman Archetype,
Volume 1 (2010) (mp3s/CDs)
Mother Night: Myths, Stories and
Teachings for Learning to See in the
Dark (2010) (mp3s/CDs)
Seeing in the Dark: Myths and Stories to
Reclaim the Buried, Knowing Woman
(2010) (mp3s/CDs)
Warming the Stone Child: Myths &
Stories About Abandonment and the
Unmothered Child (1997) (mp3s/CDs)
The Radiant Coat: Myths & Stories
About the Crossing Between Life and
Death (1993) (mp3s/CDs)
The Creative Fire: Myths and Stories
About the Cycles of Creativity (1993)
(mp3s/CDs)
In the House of the Riddle Mother: The
Most Common Archetypal Motifs in
Women's Dreams (1997, 2005)
(mp3s/CDs)
Theatre of the Imagination: Volume I
(1999, 2005) (mp3s/CDs)
Theatre of the Imagination: Volume II
(1999, 2005) (mp3s/CDs)
The Red Shoes: On Torment and the
Recovery of Soul Life (1997, 2005)
(mp3s/CDs)
Bedtime Stories: For Crossing the
Threshold Between Waking and Sleep
(2002) (mp3s/CDs)
Beginner's Guide to Dream Analysis
(2000) (mp3s/CDs)
How To Love A Woman: Myths and
Stories about Intimacy and The Erotic
Lives of Women (1996) (mp3s/CDs)
 The Faithful Gardener: A Wise Tale
About that Which Can Never Die (1996)
(mp3s/CDs)
The Boy Who Married An Eagle: Myths
and Stories About Men's Interior Lives
(1995) (audio cassette)
The Gift of Story: A Wise Tale About
What is Enough (1993) (mp3s/CDs)
Women Who Run With the Wolves:
Myths and Stories about the Wild
Woman Archetype (1989 audio
bestseller, released before the
completed manuscript was in book
form ) (mp3s/CDs)

See also
Mythopoeic thought
 Analytical psychology
Archetypal psychology

References
1. Carnegie Hall website. Archived
December 28, 2014, at the Wayback
Machine.

External links
Estés is the Managing Editor and a
columnist at The Moderate Voice
political-newsblog
mavenproductions.com - Calendar of
Estés' keynotes, seminars,
professional trainings
Her columns are archived at The
National Catholic Reporter online
"Do Not Lose Heart, We Were Made for
These Times: Letter to a Young Activist
During Troubled Times" 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.
performance/ production at Carnegie
Hall featuring Clarissa Pinkola Estés,
 Jessye Norman, Judith Weir and Toni
Morrison.

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