The Bad Fathers

Internship: The Bad Fathers

by Dr. C.P. Estés

…I can hardly write on this page the words these two fathers said…

I
The first worst thing
I ever heard a man say,
came from a father who
had raped his little six year old son.
The father said the boy had
“…asked to be raped,”
because the child “…was acting
so seductive,
running around in his underwear,
showing his legs
and everything.”
This was the worst,
the very worst.
I have never come closer
to giving a death screech
and asking for the world
to be destroyed,
and for Creator
to seriously consider
never recreating the world,
or us,
ever again.

II
The second worst thing,

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TO THE DESCENDANTS OF THE GREAT EUROPEAN TRIBES

In remembrance of the collective unconscious

TO  THE DESCENDANTS OF  THE GREAT EUROPEAN TRIBES

If you would look into the last room of the starry night,
there are powers there with names:
Tannenbow, Valdar, Yaga, and others.
They are your ancestors,
they sneeze with all the  waiting for you.

They want to give you sword-making,
show you hidden ore amongst earth’s gasses.
They, like you, are a dust of glitter and light.
The names,  the names. . .
call them by name,
for they have gone shadowy
from lack of your remembering,
from lack of your love.

Your Deep Earth Drum still lives,
though more  more faint now.
Down there they have a theater waiting,
one that is lit by storms;
it takes only a name to start it.

Some firesides,  the good princes show up;
the blind one who steals earrings
during the night shows up;

Introversion and Extroversion Are Not “Symptoms.” They Are Gifts.

Recently, the DSM (Diagnostic Statistical Manual) is in the midst of being updated. This occurs every few years. The DSM is used by clinicians in the Western world, to diagnose by traits and symptoms what pathology or mental, psychological, emotional, organic or characterological disorders might be present in an individual.

Curently, some on a working committee, have put forth the idea of calling ‘introversion’ a symptom of a larger disorder. The words introversion and extroversion are, according to nearly 100 years of analytical psychology, not in any way pathological, but rather, ways of perception and ways of processing what one experiences in life.

I wrote the following letter as President of a human rights Institute: La Sociedad de Guadalupe Heritage Institute which I founded in the early 1990s and which has as its mission literacy at all levels–spiritual, written, political, economic, cultural — for the souls of the world.

Here is the letter to the DSM working committee asking them to consider the gifts of introversion rather than tagging it pathological symptom.

La Sociedad de Guadalupe Heritage Institute:

Analyzing and Creating Solutions for Issues

of Immigrants, Refugees, Deportees and Victims of Torture