Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘Women’ is not a demographic category but a site of contested psychological, archetypal, and cultural meaning. The treatment ranges across several distinct registers. Clarissa Pinkola Estés constructs women as bearers of a suppressed ‘Wild Woman’ archetype whose recovery is simultaneously a psychological and civilizational imperative — creativity, instinct, relational depth, and cyclical vitality are constitutive of feminine selfhood rather than incidental to it. Esther Harding, writing from classical Jungian premises, charts the tensions between women’s Eros-oriented consciousness and the Logos-dominated professional world, arguing that feminine development requires integrating both without sacrificing the distinctively relational mode of knowing. Karen Armstrong’s historical readings expose how institutional religion — Buddhist, Christian, Islamic — has systematically circumscribed women’s spiritual authority, often encoding misogyny as doctrine. Richard Tarnas links the political emancipation of women to astrological-archetypal cycles, framing feminism as cosmically punctuated rather than merely sociological. Across clinical literature, women appear as subjects whose neurobiological specificity — hormonal cycles, stress responses, ADHD phenomenology — has been systematically undertheorized by male-dominated science. The convergent tension in the corpus is between women as the bearers of an autonomous, instinct-grounded interiority and women as subjects whose access to that interiority has been structurally, institutionally, and psychologically impeded.
Once women have lost her and then found her again, they will contend to keep her for good. Once they have regained her, they will fight and fight hard to keep her, for with her their creative lives blossom
Estés argues that the recovery of the Wild Woman archetype restores women’s creative vitality, relational depth, and instinctual cycles — making its reclamation not optional but existentially necessary.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017thesis
women were infantilized and treated as property. They were kept as fallow gardens… but thankfully there was always wild seed which arrived on the wind.
Estés historicizes the suppression of women’s creative and instinctual life in post-war patriarchal culture, arguing that wild feminine energy survived nonetheless as irreducible underground force.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017thesis
For women this searching and finding is based on the mysterious passion that women have for what is wild, what is innately themselves. We have been calling the object of this yearning Wild Woman
Estés identifies the Wild Woman as the psychic telos of women’s longing — an innate self that women strain toward even when they cannot name it.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017thesis
A good deal of literature on the subject of women’s power states that men are afraid of women’s power. I always want to exclaim, ‘Mother of God! So many women themselves are afraid of women’s power.’
Estés challenges the externalization of women’s subjugation, insisting that internalized fear of the wild feminine is as significant an obstacle as patriarchal suppression.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017thesis
for the all-around development of her capacities for growth, a woman must live on both the Eros side and the Logos side of life.
Harding argues that women’s psychological individuation requires integration of both relational Eros and rational Logos, refusing any single-sided developmental path.
, the way of all women, 1970thesis
Women, through their mutual relationships, are beginning to evolve a new consciousness along these lines, comparable perhaps to the evolution of thinking which men have brought to pass through their concentrated attention to facts and truth.
Harding posits that women’s relational work constitutes a distinct and evolving form of consciousness centred on Eros, parallel to but not reducible to masculine Logos-consciousness.
, the way of all women, 1970thesis
While he was living in the Nigrodha arama, the Buddha was visited by his father’s widow, Pajapati Gotami… she told her nephew, she wanted to be ordained in the Sangha. The Buddha adamantly refused.
Armstrong documents the Buddha’s initial institutional exclusion of women from the Sangha as a historically significant religious act reflecting the broader Axial Age’s ambivalence toward female spiritual agency.
, Buddha, 2000thesis
In the Buddha’s mind, women may well have been inseparable from the ‘lust’ that made enlightenment an impossibility… it is possible that these words reflect a residual unease that he could not overcome.
Armstrong critically examines the doctrinal association between women and spiritual obstruction in early Buddhism, attributing it partly to the Buddha’s own psychological ambivalence rather than solely to later monastic interpolation.
, Buddha, 2000supporting
Historians of feminism and women’s movements will immediately recognize the pivotal importance of the four specific eras that coincided with the sequence of consecutive Uranus-Pluto axial alignments
Tarnas frames the historical emancipation of women as a cosmically patterned phenomenon, correlating decisive surges in feminist consciousness with specific Uranus-Pluto planetary alignments.
, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, 2006supporting
if women are to progress further in the man’s world of work, they must recognize it is a case of ‘This ought ye to have done and not to have left the other undone.’
Harding argues that professionally ambitious women must retain feminine relational values alongside competitive achievement, rather than simply mimicking masculine modes of self-presentation.
, the way of all women, 1970supporting
For most women, to let die is not against their natures, it is only against their training. This can be reversed. We all know in los ovarios when it is time for life, when it is time for death.
Estés distinguishes between women’s innate instinctual wisdom regarding life-and-death cycles and the culturally imposed conditioning that suppresses this knowledge.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting
women were essentially venerated for the symbolic value attached to their created image and for the particular benefits they provided due to their exceptional gifts of communicating with the divine and attaining the Dao.
Kohn examines how Daoist tradition simultaneously constrained and elevated women, valuing them for spiritual gifts while instrumentalising their sacred status within a patriarchal social order.
, Daoism Handbook, 2000supporting
When a woman speaks her truth, fires up her intention and feeling, stays tight with the instinctive nature, she is singing, she is living in the wild breath-stream of the soul.
Estés figures authentic feminine self-expression as psycho-spiritual alignment with the wild soul, describing truth-telling as participation in a sacred animating breath.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting
Women’s monthly cycle, with its natural rhythm of emotions, helps us stay in touch with unconscious feelings we might not otherwise know.
Signell argues that the menstrual cycle functions as a psychic barometer for women, giving rhythmic access to unconscious emotional and instinctual life.
, Wisdom of the Heart: Working with Womens Dreams, 1991supporting
Codependency is maladaptive and is not to be confused with women’s natural and biological need to tend and befriend.
Dayton distinguishes between pathological codependency and women’s biologically grounded relational orientation, arguing that the latter is a legitimate stress response rather than a disorder.
, Emotional Sobriety: From Relationship Trauma to Resilience and Lasting Fulfillment, 2007supporting
Theories of the female body are preponderantly based on the observations and fantasies of men… We know next to nothing about how feminine consciousness regards the same data.
Hillman critiques the epistemic colonisation of feminine experience by masculine theoretical frameworks in psychology and anatomy, identifying this as a foundational distortion requiring correction.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972supporting
women are not found filling the biggest and most responsible positions, either in industry or in the professions. Over and over again one hears the complaint that an efficient and well-trained woman has been passed over in favor of a younger and less well-trained man
Harding documents structural professional discrimination against women while probing whether psychological as well as social factors account for women’s exclusion from positions of highest responsibility.
, the way of all women, 1970supporting
These little figures represent sensibilities and expressions unique in all the world; the breasts, and what is felt within those sensitive creatures, the lips of the vulva, wherein a woman feels sensations that others might imagine but only she knows.
Estés celebrates an embodied, somatic epistemology specific to women, locating in goddess figurines and communal belly-talk a tradition of feminine self-knowledge irreducible to masculine frameworks.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting
The woman’s relation to her offspring, and to herself as mother are the predetermining factors whose influence on subsequent events cannot be overestimated.
Harding frames maternal psychology as the primary shaping force in the mother-child relational field, insisting that the mother’s own individuation is the precondition of healthy development for both parties.
, the way of all women, 1970supporting
A woman newly free from famine just wants to enjoy life for a change. Her dulled perceptions about the emotional, rational, physical, spiritual, and financial boundaries required for survival endanger her instead.
Estés analyses the post-deprivation vulnerability of women who, having recovered from psychic famine, remain susceptible to new predatory capture precisely because their instinctive discernment has been damaged.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting
This large wild forest that the maiden finds is the archetypal sacred initiatory ground… It is here that the handless maiden finds peace for seven years.
Estés reads the forest sanctuary in the Handless Maiden tale as the archetypal site of feminine psychic restoration, where the instinctual psyche — figured as old Wild Mother — guides and shelters the injured woman.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting
the woman who lost control at the hands of another person now loses control at the hands of her addiction. Ironically, the woman becomes the cause of her ongoing trauma. She is her own victim.
Brown examines how trauma history intersects with addiction in women, arguing that the loss of control through addiction replicates and compounds earlier experiences of victimisation.
, A Place Called Self: Women, Sobriety, and Radical Transformation, 2004supporting
the older woman will find that the body demands more and more care and attention if she is to keep well… These facts to be properly met need an inner adjustment as well as an outer one.
Harding addresses the psychological individuation tasks specific to older women, framing the body’s declining vitality as a messenger requiring not merely physical management but deep inner reorientation.
, the way of all women, 1970supporting
When a woman understands that she has been prey, both in the outer and inner worlds, she can hardly bear it. It strikes at the root of who she is at center
Estés describes the critical psychic crisis that occurs when a woman recognises her own predation — the moment of maximum danger and maximum potential for initiatory transformation.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting
Women’s Innate Ecology In the tale it is said that many try to hunt the soul to capture and kill h
Estés frames women’s relationship to solitude and intentional self-inquiry as an ecological rhythm — a natural respiratory cycle of the psyche requiring deliberate cultivation.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017aside
ADHD symptom severity during the luteal phase has been linked to low oestrogen and high progesterone, especially in women with high baseline impulsivity.
Wynchank documents the neurobiological specificity of women with ADHD, showing that hormonal fluctuations during the menstrual cycle produce measurable worsening of attentional and impulsivity symptoms.
, Menstrual Cycle-Related Hormonal Fluctuations in ADHD: Effect on Cognitive Functioning—A Narrative Review, 2025aside
Women with PMDD and women with ADHD both experience symptoms of inattention and impulsivity. Whether women with ADHD are more likely to have comorbid PMDD… remains undetermined.
Lin identifies the underexplored clinical overlap between PMDD and ADHD in women, pointing to sex hormones as a likely mediating mechanism requiring further investigation.
, Comorbid Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in Women with Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, 2024aside
the going home is many different things to many different women… going home does not necessarily cost money. It costs time. It costs a strong act of will
Estés articulates the concept of psychic homecoming — return to the soul’s nourishing ground — as a practice available to all women regardless of circumstance, requiring will over resources.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017aside