In my last post, I spoke about the power of archetypes and referenced some of the main ones that were identified by Carl Jung. But there’s a really important one, especially for women, that Jung did not explicitly name: the wild woman archetype.
The wild woman is perhaps the most important feminine archetype because she is the most whole. The core feminine archetypes are the maiden, the mother, and the crone, but the wild woman embodies all of these. She is not a stage that comes and goes, but a throughline that holds the full feminine life cycle at once. And for women who want to enjoy sex but struggle to do so, connecting with the wild woman archetype can be pivotal in healing learned inhibitions to pleasure.
The first encounter I had with this concept was during my undergrad as an English literature major while taking a comparative literature class in which we read Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit by Leslie Marmon Silko. While Silko does not explicitly name Yellow Woman as a wild woman archetype, I experience her as one of the clearest and most compelling expressions of this concept.
The title essay of the book, which is a collection of Silko’s essays, explores the Laguna Pueblo myth of Kochininako, the Yellow Woman. What I found fascinating about this essay and story was that, in contrast to so much of traditional Western mythology and literature, this was a story about a woman whose sexuality was portrayed in a profoundly positive light, to the point that it is her sexuality that saves her people. Silko gives us glimpses into multiple stories in which Yellow Woman’s vibrant sexuality quite literally saves the day.
When she meets the hunky Buffalo Man, who can transform in the wink of an eye between man and buffalo, they fall in love, and it results in the Buffalo People agreeing to give their bodies to feed the starving Pueblo. Or when she has a fling with “Whirlwind Man,” as Silko describes, and “returns to her husband ten months later with twin baby boys. The twin boys grow up to be great heroes of the people. Once again, Kochininako’s vibrant sexuality benefits her people.” Her erotic vitality is not framed as reckless or shameful, but as life-giving, relational, and sacred.
The truth is that our animal selves, our primal selves, have a deep body wisdom that we are often cut off from. It’s the primal aspect that knows how to live purely. I don’t mean “pure” in the moral sense that we often hear it; what I mean is that if you take away the anxious thoughts and the societal conditioning, what is left is the sensory aliveness of the primal self. The animal self that feels pleasure without shame. The wild self that lets go and allows the body to lead. This is where desire is instinctual rather than performative, and where pleasure arises organically rather than through effort. That’s where expansive sensual bliss resides.
Unfortunately, so many women are very cut off from this aspect of themselves. We know that girls, in particular, are often taught to be polite and nice. It’s seen as unfeminine and not ladylike to be messy or chaotic, whereas this is much more normalized for boys. The phrase “boys will be boys” comes to mind as a result. Girls learn to constrict themselves more and more. That psychic constriction and tightening is not just in the mind; it lives in the body.
It may feel weird to take up space, to move in strange or animalistic ways. That discomfort is often a sign that the body has learned to constrict itself. It can show up as vaginal tightness or chronic neck or back pain. Women who learn to overfunction and attune to the needs of others above their own often have trouble turning off the constant internal chatter: the running to-do list, the worries about whether they were perfect enough, and the fear that someone might be upset with them. All of this makes it incredibly difficult to drop into the body, where eroticism actually lives.
I’d like to end this post with the final paragraph from the Yellow Woman essay:
“Kochininako is beautiful because she has the courage to act in times of great peril, and her triumph is achieved by her sensuality, not through violence and destruction. For these qualities of the spirit, Yellow Woman, and all women, are beautiful.”
If this exploration of Yellow Woman and the wild woman archetype resonates with you, you’re not alone. Many women come to therapy feeling disconnected from their bodies, their pleasure, or their sense of aliveness. In sex therapy, mythic and archetypal work can be thoughtfully woven together with trauma-informed, evidence-based approaches, helping us understand how these patterns formed while also supporting nervous system safety and embodied healing. If you’re curious about exploring your own relationship to sexuality, pleasure, or embodiment, I invite you to reach out to schedule a consultation here.