Women Who Run With the Wolves focuses on the Wild Woman archetype and is based on the concept that the Wild Woman and the wolf share a primordial bond. Humans have been destroying wolves for millennia. The same is true of the wayward woman in human society. The author says, “My own post-World War II generation grew up in a time when women were infantilized and treated as property” (3).

In her practice, Estés attempts to realign the psyche of her female patients with the creative, instinctual, passionate, and fierce aspects of their own natures embodied in the Wild Woman archetype. The loss of this archetype has resulted in damage to female identity, resulting in anxiety, depression, neuroses, boredom, physical malaise, and a host of other problems.

Estés believes that the most effective way to reach the deeper layers of a patient’s consciousness is through the use of stories. “Stories set the inner life into motion, and this is particularly important where the inner life is frightened, wedged, or cornered” (18-19). Women Who Run With the Wolves consists of a series of ancient folk tales, legends, and stories intended to open a door in the female psyche that will reconnect the reader with her primal self.