Clarissa Explains it All

Rush Limbaugh lasted 54 weeks, Katharine Hepburn made it for 30 weeks and Charles Kuralt, 23. But Clarissa Pinkola Estés, an unknown Latina psychologist with a passion for fairy tales, beat them all. Her book Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype is in its 87th week on the New York Times best-seller list and is still going strong.

Beyond outperforming virtually every other nonfiction work of the decade, Estés has accomplished something even more remarkable: She has started a new and divergent women's movement. For years, the traditional feminist viewpoint focused on issues of politics, the workplace and the home--and left many women feeling dissatisfied. Estés takes a different tack: She addresses the soul, arguing that American women are ignoring their inner life. Without that fulfillment, she says, a woman's success in her job or her relationships is unimportant. While many feminists downplay any perceived differences between men and women, Estés maintains that there's an essential feminine nature (though she is careful to point out that feminine nature doesn't necessarily exist only in women). It is a woman's truest task, she says, to find and glorify that essential nature.

To explain this, Estés--who calls herself a cantadora, a teller of tales--spent more than 20 years writing Wolves, in which she recounts 19 fairy tales and analyzes them from a Jungian point of view. Her approach is not unlike that of men's movement leader Robert Bly, whose Iron John defines the male dilemma through myths and stories. While the use of fairy tales and myths may sound arcane, Wolves' popularity has already spawned thousands of networking groups, and there's talk of a PBS miniseries.

Estés is ferociously protective of her private life, loath to grant extensive interviews and then providing warnings about what she will and will not divulge. But here are the basics: Clarissa Pinkola was born in 1944 to a working-class Mexican family in Michiana, near the Michigan-Indiana border. Five years later she was adopted by an immigrant Hungarian couple--she still keeps in touch with both families. As far back as Estés can remember, she heard people tell stories. These tales became embedded in her consciousness and eventually attracted her to the idea of storytelling as a means of explicating life.

Today, Estés lives with her second husband, an Air Force master sergeant, in a quiet but funky Denver neighborhood. Her three daughters are now in their 20s and on their own.

Physically, Estés resembles her own hardcover book--thick and dark with metallic trim (she wears a variety of silver jewelry along with a gold-colored plastic Guadalupe around her neck). She has a rowdy mass of curly hair and lucid brown eyes. But her most startling asset is her voice, a sweet but uncloying soprano that has helped propel the sales of her audiotapes to more than 200,000 copies. Between those tapes and the book, it's likely that from 5 million to 10 million people have already been introduced to her philosophy. One of those is Hillary Rodham Clinton, in whose copy of Wolves Estés inscribed: "I pass on to you three rules for life. Be friendly but never tame. Misbehave with integrity. Illegitimati non carborundum--don't let the bastards get you down."

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Your book was written for women. Why should men read it?

You mean, should we take seriously the one question men have asked for eons: What is it women really want? Yes. If a man truly desires to know about women he would be ahead of the pack if he knew not only about her outer attributes but also her inner life. Women aren't impenetrable mysteries. Perhaps you remember the first time you looked under the hood of a fully loaded eight cylinder with dual carbs, overhead cams, A/C compressor and computerized electrical system and thought, Oh man, how will I ever understand this? But through study one learns a great deal. One of my uncles, a cabinetmaker, says many things that have fewer than ten parts can take a lifetime to master. Certainly men and women are made of many parts--many thoughts, feelings and ideas.

What is a wild woman who runs with wolves?

It's a metaphor that refers to women's instinctual nature, or the part of the feminine psyche that deals with the creative life. The word wild derives from one of its oldest senses--to be natural, with passion, to be of oneself. The center of the psyche is wild--it grows according to its own nature rather than to the will of any one segment of the collective culture. To close off this wild aspect of the psyche is to die.

Does that central core exist in women today?

Let me just say that the core needs to be refurbished from time to time. Among women who try to live without an inner life, this aspect of the psyche can be weakened by lack of attention. The spark fades. So does a woman's vitality.

Why did you pick wolves?

That's from my interest in wildlife biology. I think wolves and women share certain psychic characteristics--they're relational by nature, they're inquiring, fierce, courageous, and they have great endurance and strength. They're also intuitive and can adapt to constantly changing circumstances.

Why did you choose fairy tales to describe this idea of the inner psyche?

Because people have always told tales to penetrate past the ego to the spirit. My grandmother used to say tales have the ability to travel deep into a person, which is why we called them medicine, or curanderisma--healing not only through the body but also through the mind. The stories were felt to be medicine.

How does someone turn a story into medicine?

One of my aunts told me this version of the fairy tale about Bluebeard, a sorcerer who woos three sisters. The two older sisters look at him and say, "Oh, no, something's not right about him and his blue beard." But the youngest, most naive sister says, "His beard really isn't that blue, he's not so bad," and she marries him and goes to his castle in the woods. Soon Bluebeard has to leave on a trip. He gives his wife a hundred keys, saying she may use them all except the smallest. He also lets her invite her sisters to visit. When they arrive the sisters persuade her to use the smallest key to open the cellar door, and beyond it they find the decapitated bodies of Bluebeard's previous wives. Then the little key they've used to open the door starts to bleed bright red blood, drop after drop. No matter what the women do, the key won't stop bleeding. So the wife hides it, but when Bluebeard returns he asks for all the keys and notices the smallest is missing. He knows she's found his secret, so he drags her to the cellar to kill her. She pleads for just a half hour to find peace with God. After he agrees she has her sisters run to the castle's ramparts, where they call for their brothers, who race to the castle and defeat Bluebeard and leave his body out for carrion, saving their youngest sister's life.

But what would someone today learn from that?

How insight and intuition can be killed off when a person believes that some promise of pleasure will be fulfilled if she hurts herself. You could apply this story to someone who's struggling with having made poor choices in work, family or relationships. Or someone who has been taken in either by themselves or something outside themselves.

Can people really apply these stories to their day-to-day lives?

Yes. Stories strengthen and help turn around situations. Telling fairy tales in therapeutic sessions can have the effect of awakening a forgotten aspect of the psyche that acts in the person's behalf. I'm looking for someone to listen and say, "Aha! That's me!"

And that actually happens?

My clients say so. So do the clients of many other psychoanalysts I know. There are many ways to mend people. This one won't work if a person isn't inclined toward stories, or if he's like what my grandmother used to say: He is so lonely he doesn't even have any stories to tell. But if a person has a feel for stories, the "aha!" is likely to happen. Otherwise, I'd recommend therapies such as rational emotive, which works for those for whom creating A-to-B sequential steps is a stronger skill than mapping the psyche.

Why do you think fairy tales had such a powerful and lasting influence on you?

Children are attracted to different things, such as the boy down the road who took apart a 1948 Case tractor and put it together--before he was 14 years old. But why these things happen I don't know, and why I love stories is a mystery I don't want to solve.

When did you start telling stories?

I can't remember a time when I didn't.

Where did you hear all these stories?

I grew up in a part of the forest with Poles, Serbs, Croats, Latinos, blacks and others. We'd walk through the woods and hear guitars, harmonicas and fiddles, and people singing and (continued on page 84)Clarissa Explains it All(continued from page 72) telling stories. There was no TV and few telephones, so we were outside as much as possible.

But most people no longer tell kids stories. Can television serve the same function?

No, TV can't do that, not as it stands now. I always advise parents to treat the TV as though it were someone you'd invited to your home. If it says things or creates images that are compatible with your worldview, leave it on. If it becomes like a rude guest who says destructive things, show it the door--that is, turn it off.

Did you watch much TV when you were growing up?

We didn't have one until I was older. But sometimes we watched it on Saturdays because a kind neighbor had one. Our mothers used to dress us up as though we were visiting church instead of a TV. We'd sit with our clean socks falling down and our wilted handkerchiefs and put our legs straight out and stare. But I couldn't see what was so compelling because in the woods where I lived people were more interesting. Yet TV changed my life in a profound way.

How?

When I was about nine we went to watch This Is Your Life, and the subject was psychology, about Karl Menninger. They brought on many of his former patients, who testified about receiving their inner and outer lives back. My heart leapt--it was such a momentous occasion that I did the unheard of. I sneaked into the kitchen to use the phone while my parents were still asleep and asked the operator, "Can you get me Chicago?" It was the biggest city I knew. And then I asked, "Can you get me the number of a psychologist?" The operator asked me which one, and I said, "Oh, any would be fine." So she gave me the name of a man--I would love to know if he's still alive. I called him and said, "Hello, my name is Clarissa Pinkola and I live in Michiana. I want to be a psychologist and I want to know how much money it takes and how long you have to go to school." The man said nine years and $10,000. After I thanked him I hung up. Then I cried. I couldn't even imagine where to get that much money. The nine years I could grasp, because I had already lived nine years. But $10,000? I was very disheartened. I didn't give up, but I'll tell you, my schooling ended up costing a lot more than $10,000.

If TV doesn't offer much, what about movies?

The saddest film I've ever seen is Thelma & Louise, because of what those women have to do at the end. For years I've taught in prisons across the nation, and I've heard Thelma and Louise's story hundreds of times. Many people thought the film was about rape and vengeance, but I also saw in it that the women were psychically collared. Then, like chained dogs, they slipped the collar for a try at a little fun before going back into the harness. There's no doubt that a captured woman is like a creature taken from its natural territory--put her into mean quarters and she'll lose her instincts about many things. Such a woman too often thinks she's being adventuresome when actually she's just endangering herself.

The recent movie I liked most was The Nightmare Before Christmas, about how the land of the living and the land of the dead become confused with each other. Tim Burton has a unique way of seeing things from an archetypal perspective. I'm attracted to people whose creative force is strong. Sometimes I'm more interested in the process that guided them than in the actual content of their work. These are people to pay attention to.

Who are good role models today? For men, for instance?

Oh, the Energizer battery bunny.

Excuse me?

You know--he just keeps going and going. [Laughs] OK, seriously? Well, Charles Kuralt for one, because he brings nourishing stories to the world. Or Bill Moyers. I think his worldview is unique. His wife, Judith, is his co-producer, and as a couple they're excellent role models for the creative life well-lived. Or Norman Lear. And Muhammad Ali, Edward James Olmos, Cesar Chavez, Bill Clinton. There are many more, especially the unknowns--our fathers and uncles. These are the people who use everything they have. That's what we're here for. In my family we tell a story called The Radiant Coat. It says we're all born with a coat, and the more you wear it, the thinner it becomes. As it wears out you cut it up and make it into a little jacket, then a vest, then a sash and finally a loincloth. When the last threads burst, the soul leaves the bodyand you die. The point is to use it up, to live so much there's nothing left at the end.

Can't you put all that energy to bad use? Wasn't Hitler born with a coat, too?

That's different. I'm talking about using oneself up in a constructive way. Bluebeard himself is very much a Hitler figure. In fact, Bluebeard is called a failed sorcerer in some versions of the story. But it's important to live life to the end. If life were a glove, you would live it to the fingertips. And, by the way, death as well.

Is there also an appropriate way to die?

Well, we've all heard the jokes about Jack Kevorkian being the low-cost insurance alternative. But he raises important issues, though he may not be die best spokesperson. He brings to consciousness the notion that the archetype of the physician has split. Originally, the physician was the one who brought and assisted life--not only at birth but throughout life. The physician's other role was to assist people into death and through it. This sensibility has almost entirely disappeared in our culture. When I was a child and someone was dying, the doctor would ask, Can this person live or is this death's beginning? He then acted accordingly. Today some practitioners impose surgery after surgery instead of allowing a dying person who wishes to die to do so.

Your work is very popular with gay men and lesbians. Why?

Many lesbians have told me they like my work because it's fierce. In fact, women across the country have come to my book signings and given me "honorary lesbian" certificates. I'm honored. Lesbians can be very powerful people. Not because it's necessary--though there is that need--but because they are. It's their gift. My book's introduction says it's for "a woman-loving woman, a man-loving woman or a God-loving woman." Gays and lesbians have taken the time to teach me much about their inner and outer lives. I appreciate this and am still learning. For years I've worked on gay issues, trying to normalize the fact that gays are our brothers and sisters.

What kind of reaction have you received?

Much of it good. Although I've had some hate phone calls. One of my favorites was, "You fat commie lesbian slut!" I was outraged. I said, "I resent being called fat."

You're asking all women to become fierce. Won't some straight men fear the concept of fierce women?

Maybe. Maybe some women will, too. But I don't think men are going to hide under the sofa just because a woman's in her right mind.

Many women claim that if they live their life to the fullest, their male partner becomes (continued on page 146)Clarissa Explains it All(continued from page 84) angry. He may want to be more powerful.

Let them both be powerful. Although I do think that in many couples there's a dominant personality.

So fierce women should hunt for wimps?

I wouldn't put it quite that way. [Laughs] A woman should find a complement to her personality however she sees fit. If that means a man who's supportive of her rather than leading, or if that means a man who's a copartner, an equal, that's fine. A woman must decide her own capacities.

Do you think men are willing to be with a woman who is more powerful and dominant?

Absolutely. There are women who are willing to be with a man who is more powerful and dominant, yes? Psychologically, power and control are also linked to love and sexuality. Put simply, both men and women can feel anything from a sense of security to sexual arousal when someone else is in charge.

Let's get to the big question: What do women really want from men?

Let me paraphrase from Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Tale: One day a knight trespasses on someone's property and as a result his life is threatened. The knight pleads for mercy. So the owner says, "I will spare you if you can solve a riddle within a year. The riddle is, What do women really want?" The knight goes out and collects many answers, but none of them are right. Finally, on the last day, the discouraged knight sees an old hag at the side of the road who says, "I know the answer." The knight responds, "Please tell me. My life's at stake." "It's not that easy," the hag says. "You have to marry me." The knight looks at her--she's loathsome and covered with open sores. But she says, "What have you to lose?" So he marries her. That evening he goes to the wedding chamber, where the bed is swathed in veils. The woman says from inside the bed, "Come here and kiss me." The knight had thought maybe he could escape this part, but when he draws back the veil he sees a lovely woman. "A spell was placed on me," she says, "and I can be either beautiful by day and ugly at night, or the opposite--but only one. Which would you have me be?" So the knight thinks all the thoughts a man can think until he says, "I can't decide." "Ah," the woman says, "you've broken the spell." For he didn't say, I want you to be beautiful in the night so I can have you to myself. He didn't say, I want you to be beautiful in the day so I won't be ashamed to show you to others. He said, You decide. That's what a woman wants--to be allowed to be whomever she wants to be without anyone trying to make her anything else.

What do women want sexually?

The one way I know to answer that is from my clinical experience: A woman wants a lover who takes pleasure in her pleasure. And the more he's in his own body, the better he can feel the loving ministrations she gives to him. For most men and women the great lie is that all sex is good, that even bad sex is good sex. In truth, each person is seeking that interior person within the other.

My grandmother used to tell me that in order to meet and merge with the interior person, you should never have sex with someone you don't want to be. Because in that moment of merging you truly become the other person. And even after making love you retain the sensation of being that other person, as though some of their atoms are now yours, and yours are theirs.

You've made several tapes about the art of loving, including one called "How to Love a Woman." Is it a list of practical instructions?

No. But that wouldn't be a bad idea. [Laughs] I once wrote a poem about love and spirituality for my daughters because I wanted them to know some things that were difficult to say in everyday words. In the poem I talk about different forms of pleasure. I say that the cunt--I'm using the word not as an explicative, but as an endearment--is like a musical instrument; like a flute, it has stops that play different notes. And different parts of the vagina are sensitive in different ways. And I say that some lovers are like a cat walking on a piano. They play some right notes accidentally just because the instrument is so sensitive. I urged my daughters to hold out for a lover who aspires to be a virtuoso.

What else have you told your daughters?

I told them the old wives' tale that men who eat oysters and other juicy foods probably like cunnilingus a great deal. It's a joke, but we have a ritual in my family where the man who comes courting is given a test by the old men: whether he can eat hot peppers all day without stopping. He lurches from one relative's house to the next, from sunrise to sunset, eating peppers till he sweats. Also he has to drink several kinds of beer and green wine without becoming wretchedly sick.

And if he survives?

He is considered a bull. He can go all night long. [Laughs] It's been remarkable to watch young men go through that routine. My first husband took Pep-to-Bismol beforehand to try to protect himself. Didn't work. Either you have it or you don't.

Do parents take enough responsibility for teaching their children about sexuality?

No. There's a real failure today in teaching the sexual life. This always was, and should be, the role of the parent, not the school. As one of my aunts said, you strike the fire from the flint of your own sexuality and you light that of your child when you see the time is right. Your don't create their sexuality, but when your children are ready to blossom sexually you tell them how to tend this fire.

When I was young, girls were married at 1 7 and 18 years old--you were considered slow if you didn't have a husband and two children by the time you were 20. And the grandparents took the young people aside before the wedding and went over the details of lovemaking. The gist of what they said to the young man was: This woman you'll be with tonight will be in a way she'll never be again. Stay awake because you're going to see a miracle. She's going to open her arms and her legs to you in a way that she may never again. She'll be so in love with you and her heart will be so open that whatever you do tonight she'll remember the rest of her life. You have the opportunity to make her fall so deeply in love with you that she'll never leave you or be disloyal. She'll fight with you, but she will always forgive you.

And to the young woman they'd say: Tonight he is giving you himself in a way you will never see again. This is a glimpse into the divinity of this man. You'll see it in all the fullness of his love, so keep your eyes open and look into his and you'll see who lives inside. Because tonight he'll show you. He'll show you that soulful, spiritual person you'll never see again. And if you see this you'll understand that, no matter what he does, he'll be faithful to you. He will love you, never betray you and always forgive you, because you have truly seen him.

Then they exhort both the man and the woman: Don't injure your mate in this condition. Do nothing to hurt or ridicule or humiliate him or her, because these two beings without skin are going to merge and create a bond that will remain--but it will never be visible again. Only on this night.

When did you first use fairy tales in your work?

In 1971. That's the year I began practicing therapy and realized my training wasn't adequate to deal with the issues people were bringing to me.

What sorts of issues?

Those of women struggling with faith. Women who had been widowed. Lesbians who were coming out. Women who had had mastectomies. Women who chose not to marry. Women who had given up children for adoption. Women who had been bounced out of work because they had grown old or were considered ugly by someone's foolish sights. There was nothing about these women in the classical psychological literature. So it became clear to me that the theory of personality as laid out by Freud wasn't enough. That's when I began to write.

"Newsweek" said your book spawned a new movement. Was that part of your plan?

I'm not sure what movement the magazine meant. But I know for certain from the letters I've received that the book has been a strike for the inner life. Still, it's hard to say that anything I did was new. The teaching stories are ages old. There's a saying in my family: "God was so lonely he created stories. He was still lonely, so he created humans to tell them."

What do your readers write to tell you?

The most extraordinary letters come from women in their 70s and 80s who say, "This is the work I've been waiting for all my life." I've also gotten many from people with terminal diseases who've been strengthened by the book. I get letters from men who ask me why I don't write a book for them. So I write back and say, "I would if I were a man." They write again and say, "Well, do it anyway."

One of your more controversial themes is that feminine nature exists apart from masculine nature. But there's a powerful feminist doctrine that insists men and woman are alike and----

Let me cut through what you are asking. I come from the working class, and what feminism meant to us differs from what you're talking about. For us, growing up in deeply ethnic families, living and working in the rural Midwest--how can I put this?--our world was one of unions, lettuce workers, ironworkers, sheet-metal workers. We were just trying to create safe jobs for anyone. I think it's misleading when the media say, "feministsthink this or that." Within that group are many tribes, and each has different beliefs and goals. There are also independent thinkers and wild cards and lone wolves who belong to no one but themselves. To me, feminism means a commitment to issues that concern women, like health, community, education, relationships, men, children, parents, the elderly and so on. I don't understand feminism as being about women only. Mediawise, most of us Latinos--and the other immigrants I grew up with--never had much of a voice in these matters. We were struggling and fighting day-to-day battles, marching, demonstrating, rallying--but mostly in the church, the neighborhood and the workplace. The New York Times never asked us what we thought.

Why were you ignored?

It's hard to respond to that, because I want to give honor to Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem and the others who've worked so hard. But I also want to honor the fact that women from other classes haven't yet spoken.

Have you met any well-known feminist leaders?

I spoke with Gloria Steinem just recently. She was very gracious. One of the things I love about her is that, like myself, she used to be a gang member--she belonged to the Sluts of East Toledo. So I told her I wanted to be an honorary member of the Sluts. She said she'd do that only if I made her an honorary member of the gang I came from, Las Machismas--the State Line Fierce Ones.

Let's talk about another feminist thinker and writer, Camille Paglia.

I find her creativity dazzling. I agree when she says that beauty drives many things. I dovetail it with my theory that whenever there is beauty the predator shows up . You have to be prepared to deal with that.

Many feminists have branded Paglia a traitor for her more outrageous views.

Her mind works quickly, and sometimes people like that say things before they've completely thought them out. But thinking tends to evolve over time. What you think now isn't what you thought five years ago. So I don't know if you can hold people to everything they've written as though it were calcified.

Will the next book be similar to "Wolves"?

It's 20 tales that delineate the archetype of the wise old woman. She's the keeper of the culture, the one who tests the young and brings new life into life. The book is about the relationship women have with this wisdom and how it's a relationship women should start when they're young. Unfortunately, few do.

Why not?

The culture doesn't want us to. It doesn't want us to identify with what is older, in part because much of the culture eroticizes only one kind of woman.

Does something have to be eroticized for us to learn about it?

Apparently. As a culture we're a little frail in our attention, but we need to teach people to recognize the beauty of many things. Eros is not just the god of love in Greek mythology, he is also the god of acute and loving insight into all things. When we call something erotic we mean a loving awareness of its beauty. In this sense an artist is someone who's aware, aroused. You're aroused as a writer when you write something you really want to write about. So the issue isn't too much eroticization of our culture but too little.

You're about 50 yourself, approaching the age of the wise old woman. Do you consider yourself one? And what's your message?

So you would like me to sum up 2200 pages of work in a few sentences? All right, I will: I teach that the archetypal unconscious is a psychic fact for all humans and that it funds all of life--the personal unconscious as well as one's outer vitality. In secular terms this means the quality of one's inner life causes the outer life to be robust and strong. That is, one's power, strength, insight, endurance, creative life, sexuality--everything. Without this people become sombras, shadows ofthemselves. As we moderns live harder and faster, something in the psyche looks toward itself for solutions and strength. We look to the inner world to find things that don't grow above ground.

Your first book is a success and you're on your way to publishing another. Is there something you still want?

Oh, yes. I'd like one of those low-rider pickup trucks. They're so beautiful, chopped and channeled. Mine would have baby moons, blue-dot taillights, flame painting on the fenders and the hood, Guadalupe on the dashboard. Some low riders are slung in the front and raked in the back. They have glass-pack mufflers that never quit and they're sleek. Someone has loved them so much. They're an art form. I think it's just what my neighborhood needs, don't you? An author with a low rider.

"If life were a glove, you would live it to the fingertips. And, by the way, death as well."