Clarissa Pinkola Estés
American psychoanalyst and writer

Clarissa Pinkola Estés Ph.D. (née Reyes; born January 27, 1945) is a Mexican-American writer and Jungian psychoanalyst. She is the author of Women Who Run with the Wolves (1992), a New York Times bestseller that remained on the list for 145 weeks and has sold more than 2.7 million copies according to the publisher. The book was reissued in a 30th Anniversary Edition by Rider & Co (Ebury Publishing) in 2022.
Life and career
Dr. Estés was born in Gary, Indiana, to Emilio Maria Reyés and Cepción Ixtiz, who were from Mexico. She was later adopted by Hungarian immigrants. Dr. Estés earned her doctorate in ethno-clinical psychology from Union Institute & University in 1981, with a focus on social and psychological patterns in cultural and indigenous groups. She completed a post-doctoral diploma as a certified Jungian analyst in 1984 through the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Psychoanalysts, under the charter of Zurich, Switzerland. As of 2020, she has maintained a clinical practice for 50 years, working with war veterans, survivors of massacres, and disaster-affected communities.
The public source identifies “Clarissa Pinkola Estés” as american psychoanalyst and writer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Clarissa, Pinkola and Estés.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2565830. VIAF identifies the subject as 84024617. The Library of Congress control number is n92036825. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1945, 1992, 2022 and 1981.
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This entry incorporates text from “Clarissa Pinkola Estés” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.