The Red Shoes is a dramatic excursion into the realm of the soul with analyst Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés. Using an ancient tale deeply rooted in our collective psyches, Dr. Estés illuminates how people fall prey to destructive impulses while seeking to balance their inner lives.
In our culture, she begins, we may travel life's path in one of two ways: in handmade shoes, crafted with love and care according to the unique needs of the individual soul; or in Red Shoes, which promise instant fulfillment, but ultimately lead to a painful, hollow, and split existence.
Drawing from real-world examples such as the tragic death of Janis Joplin, Dr. Estés analyzes the deeply seated needs that lead to addiction. By listening to your instinctive forces, she says, you can free yourself of the exterior traps that torment and destroy the soul. This is the way to construct a life that is uniquely your own; a life made by hand.
The Red Shoes is a treasury of ideas and counsel, threaded with magical storytelling, about the complete life each one of us deserves to lead.
Additional contents: The Internal Predator; how instincts are injured; learning to say no; the exile; vulnerability and seduction; feral women; and more.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, PhD, is an internationally recognized scholar, award-winning poet, diplomate senior Jungian psychoanalyst, and cantadora (keeper of the old stories in the Latina tradition). In addition to her international bestseller Women Who Run With the Wolves, Dr. Estés is a managing editor and columnist writing on politics, spirituality, and culture at the newsblog TheModerateVoice.com, and she is a columnist at The National Catholic Reporter online.
