At the close of her book, Women Who Run With the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes offers an extensive and diverse bibliography. It’s from here, for instance, that I first found my way, several years ago now, to Elaine Pagels’ work, and Judy Chicago’s work, and James Hillman’s.
I like the way Estes introduces her bibliography:
A bibliography is not meant to be a tiresome list. It is not intended to teach a person what to think, but strives to give a body rich things to think about, to expose a person to as many ideas, therefore choices and chances as possible.
I like what she says about poets:
There are many poets represented here [in the bibliography], for they are the visionaries and historians of psychic life. In many cases their observations and insights cut so close to the bone that they supersede the suppositions of academic psychology in both accuracy and depth.
And I especially like an idea she suggests for reading, one that I remembered from some years ago and went looking for, and found, in a footnote at the end of her bibliography:
Usually I proceed something like this; asking my students to choose three books at a time from this list and to consider them as a puzzle or riddle. . . How do they go together? What can one lend the other? Compare, see what happens. Some combinations are bomb materials. Some create seed stock.
Reading and healing as a riddle then? Looking for threads of connection?
Reading as seed stock?
