Chapter 13, Battle Scars: Membership in the Scar Clan Summary and Analysis

This chapter presents something that on the surface is unrelated but at a closer look, it is connected with the more overt forms of aggression—it is the delicate and sometimes vicious art of secrecy.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes tells readers about secrets and how they can affect peoples' lives in general. She associates them with tears. She explains how it is that somehow secrets often have a structure to them. She writes that while there are heroic tales, there are other tales that run more to the tragic. Either way, she shows that in real life, many travails follow the pattern of drama as found in the theatre, possibly because art imitates life as much or more than life imitates art. As a psychologist, Estes expresses...