Jung on the psychology of the trickster
“Wow, that’s typical Trickster behavior!” I thought when I saw Trump’s brazen lie, “Did I say that? I don’t remember,” hidden behind a sly smile.
That’s why I want to share a bit more about this archetype, which is one of the faces of the Shadow—when this Shadow materializes in the form of a person whose decisions and actions resonate so powerfully throughout the rest of the world, it is a sign that we are dealing not with his personal shadow, but with the collective shadow, which is the sum of all individual psychic shadows. It probably means much more to Americans than it does to us, but that doesn’t change the fact that we also have to deal with the energy of the Trickster.
He “jumps out” onto the political stage, acting outside established norms and carrying the energy of unpredictability, moral unscrupulousness, cunning, and deceit. His hidden goal is to renew the existing order by breaking down the status quo and overly rigid structures, but while this is happening, we are meanwhile dealing with “evil” and suffering from what he does.
This is the difference between condemnation and understanding. Understanding helps us remain true to our values in the same way Job remained true to his own before the Old Testament God, Yahweh. Job realized that the injustice and evils that rained upon him were expressions of Yahweh’s lack of consciousness about Himself. This is the main idea in Jung’s book Answer to Job, namely, that the knowledge of the dark face of God is the essence of Job’s understanding of God. For the One who tests his moral endurance is none other than the supreme Creator Himself, and more precisely, His first son, Satan—“the father of all tricksters” .
As a true trickster, he “loves to confuse plans and cause unpleasant incidents,” but since he is an intrinsic part of the totality of creation, he cannot be removed from it.
The story of Job is an archetypal motif, which we can see in the fact that injustices continue to repeat because “nothing has passed, not even the blood pact with the devil”. However, there is consolation, and it is that the dark side of the Creator can be redeemed if we turn it into consciousness.
The fate of Job and his unjust suffering prompted Yahweh to desire “to be born as a human” through His second son, Christ, and thus to come to know Himself (i.e., His inner contradiction).
“God acts out of the unconscious of man and forces him to harmonize and unite the opposing influences to which his mind is exposed from the unconscious.”
(C.G. Jung, Psychology and Religion: West and East, para. 740)
Times like ours are times when the activation of the dark face of God and the surfacing of the collective Shadow provide the impetus for the development of consciousness. In essence, this is a unification of opposites in a new way, knowing that these two brothers walk together on the path of Creation as two sides of the Whole. The wisdom Jung advocates for in his Answer to Job means to see these two sides simultaneously and through them to understand the hidden dynamics behind one’s own experiences or external social phenomena. For behind the diversity of concrete material forms stands their archetypal origin—the collective energy that breathes life into them. When we see this archetypal origin, we not only begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but we also learn how we ourselves can participate in approaching it.
“If we consider, for example, the daemonic features exhibited by Yahweh in the Old Testament, we shall find in them not a few reminders of the unpredictable behaviour of the trickster, of his senseless orgies of destruction and his self-imposed sufferings, together with the same gradual development into a saviour and his simultaneous humanization. It is just this transformation of the meaningless into the meaningful that reveals the trickster’s compensatory relation to the ‘saint.’ In the early Middle Ages, this led to some strange ecclesiastical customs based on memories of the ancient saturnalia.”
(Collected Works, Volume 9, Part 1: Four Archetypes, para. 458)
When the face of the trickster appears at such a high state position in such an important country, it is a sign that too much ‘civilization’ has accumulated in our conscious attitude, hence the need for a compensatory movement in the opposite direction. I am reminded of Jung’s words that Hitler was not a person, but an archetype; his voice was like ‘a megaphone that amplifies the obscure whisper of the German soul, so it can be heard by the ear of its subconscious.’ Therefore, instead of being angry at the lack of morality of the ‘megaphone’ now speaking across the ocean, it is better to try to hear (and see) which rejected parts of our common soul are waiting to be redeemed.
To this end, I will recall below Jung’s famous essay on ‘The Psychology of the Trickster’ from his book The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, where he outlines the main characteristics of this dark figure—amorality, cunning, primitivity, foolishness, lustfulness. The lack of reflexivity about his own contradictions makes him unpredictable and uncontrollable, so of all his traits, the most distinct is his unconsciousness—the trickster is an expression ‘of a human consciousness undifferentiated in every respect, corresponding to the level of a psyche that has not yet transcended the animal state.’
This undifferentiated consciousness is part of our psychic past as humanity, and as such, it is also part of the deeper layers of our psyche. The problem here, as Jung writes, is that ‘the so-called civilized man has forgotten the trickster.’ Forgetting means that we have repressed this unpleasant figure into our shadow—’outwardly, man is supposedly civilized, but inwardly he is still a primitive.’
It is understandable that the manifestations of this primitive element repel and even fill more sensitive souls with disgust. Therefore, it is precisely they who should know more about him.
“From this point of view we can see why the myth of the trickster was preserved and developed: like many other myths, it was supposed to have a therapeutic effect. It holds the earlier low intellectual and moral level before the eyes of the more highly developed individual, so that he shall not forget how things looked yesterday.” (Collected Works, Volume 9, Part 1: Four Archetypes, para. 480)
I know how difficult it is for a sensitive consciousness to fully inhabit its body because it is through our body that we are connected to the world of animals and their instincts. Nevertheless, we are linked to this world, and it is the Trickster archetype that reminds us of it. If we become too ‘politically correct,’ hypocrisy accumulates in the shadow, and then the Joker emerges on the surface, playing his cards by other rules, thwarting our good intentions. This rule is valid both on a collective and an individual level:
“The motif of the trickster does not only appear in the form of myth but emerges as naively as it is authentically in the unsuspecting ordinary man, and wherever he feels exposed to contingencies that seem malevolently to block his desires and actions.”
We understand why the Trickster’s main purpose is to destroy the established social order and turn everything upside down—life is something different from our ideas about it; chaos has as much of a place as order. Also, the jokes and tricks of the Clown help us not to take either ourselves or life on Earth too seriously. Although his foolishness may provoke condescending smiles, the irony is that it sometimes leads to solutions that are not accessible when we are too clever:
“These are those figures of the ‘fool,’ ‘Stupid Hans,’ or ‘jester,’ who is clearly a negative character and through his foolishness achieves what others cannot, even with their best qualities.”
Thus, understanding the Trickster archetype helps us to explore the extent to which we identify only with the ‘wise,’ the ‘righteous,’ the ‘saint.’ And then to validate that within us, there is just as much of the opposite—if only we are honest enough with ourselves. Knowing that the emergence of consciousness inevitably passes through the phase of inner conflicts, which the Trickster lacks and is the true reason why he is inconsistent and unpredictable. And, finally, after seeing what is in the shadow, we seek appropriate ways to express it outwardly, but consciously. If we persist in our intention, something within the collective shadow will also begin to change.
“The trickster is a collective shadow figure, a summation of all the inferior traits of character in individuals.”
(C.G. Jung, Collected Works Vol. 9, Part 1: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, para. 468)”
With enough patience and trust in the hidden intelligence of the process, a change will occur in the manifestation of this archetype, and it will begin to manifest itself in a positive way.
“At any rate the marks of deepest unconsciousness fall away from him; instead of acting in a brutal, savage, stupid, and senseless fashion, the trickster’s behaviour towards the end of the cycle becomes quite useful and sensible. The devaluation of his earlier unconsciousness is apparent even in the myth, and one wonders what has happened to his evil qualities. The naïve reader may imagine that when the dark aspects disappear they are no longer there in reality. But that is not the case at all, as experience shows. What actually happens is that the conscious mind is then able to free itself from the fascination of evil and is no longer obliged to live it compulsively. The darkness and the evil have not gone up in smoke, they have merely withdrawn into the unconscious owing to loss of energy, where they remain unconscious so long as all is well with the conscious. But if the conscious should find itself in a critical or doubtful situation, then it soon becomes apparent that the shadow has not dissolved into nothing but is only waiting for a favourable opportunity to reappear as a projection upon one’s neighbour. If this trick is successful, there is immediately created between them that world of primordial darkness where everything that is characteristic of the trickster can happen—even on the highest plane of civilization. The best examples of these “monkey tricks,” as popular speech aptly and truthfully sums up this state of affairs in which everything goes wrong and nothing intelligent happens except by mistake at the last moment, are naturally to be found in politics.”
(Collected Works, Volume 9, Part 1: Four Archetypes, para. 477)
The above quote contains the most important reason why I wanted to recall Jung’s ideas about this archetype—it helps us understand the time we live in when our rejected parts have led to a critical accumulation of energy in the unconscious. A time when we are shaken by “critical and uncertain situations,” and “projections onto the neighbor” have sharply increased because it is easier to blame others, feeling morally/intellectually superior, than to be depressed by confronting our own inferiority and limitations.
And here comes another form of shadow manifestation—the “desire for greatness,” which we are also witnessing. Greatness is part of a duality and, as such, is opposed to depression. Therefore, people attracted to ideas of national greatness are those who are closest to this “lady in black.”
These are my observations of the processes I am witnessing. Some people, perhaps the largest group, are not aware of the scale of what is happening during the transition between aeons. Another group is excited by the destruction of the old because of the accumulated anger over the injustices in the world. For them, the energy of destruction is experienced as an uplift and enthusiasm for the coming change, but since there is a one-sidedness in it, i.e., unconsciousness, the actions it leads to, in turn, become a source of injustice. A third group consists of people who are aware of what is happening, look directly at ‘evil,’ and are rightly filled with fear and moral indignation at what they see. A fourth group are people who also see evil, but along with it, they possess the knowledge of Job about the dark face of the Creator standing behind it. They, too, do everything necessary to oppose it, but this action arises from a different place—of wisdom. This is Sophia, “the mother of noble love, of fear, of knowledge, and of holy hope,” “the protector of men against the unconsciousness of God,” about whom Jung writes:
“This Wisdom, personified to the highest degree and thus attesting to her autonomy, reveals herself to them as a merciful helper and protector against Yahweh, showing them the bright, good, just, and loving aspect of their God.”
And so, the path to redemption inevitably passes through the acceptance of the inferior and despised. After that comes salvation.
“If, at the end of the trickster myth, the saviour is hinted at, this comforting premonition or hope means that some calamity or other has happened and been consciously understood. Only out of disaster can the longing for the saviour arise—in other words, the recognition and unavoidable integration of the shadow create such a harrowing situation that nobody but a saviour can undo the tangled web of fate. In the case of the individual, the problem constellated by the shadow is answered on the plane of the anima, that is, through relatedness. In the history of the collective as in the history of the individual, everything depends on the development of consciousness. This gradually brings liberation from imprisonment in ‘unconsciousness,’ and is therefore a bringer of light as well as of healing.”
(Collected Works, Volume 9, Part 1: Four Archetypes, para. 487)
Much can be said about what it means that, on an individual level (the only level we can influence), the problem of the shadow can only be answered through ‘relatedness.’ The short answer is probably ‘to withdraw projections from the neighbor,’ while the longer one is to walk the long path of spiritual transformation that Jung calls individuation, which in essence is the transformation of our desiring nature. This means becoming aware of our internal conflicts and being able to endure them, to bear them, until a third thing is born that transcends them. This third is love, born from wisdom.
At first glance, it seems that history repeats itself, but what repeats is the archetypal motif. If someday in the future humanity manages to unite the opposites (which means it has achieved consciousness), the same archetypal motif that drives us into conflicts and wars will likely begin to change. Until that moment comes, we have nothing else to do but to understand how their interaction takes place and not to lose hope that sooner or later things will turn around and the Trickster archetype will reveal its other side.
Because, “just as the collective, mythological form, so too the individual shadow carries within itself the seed of enantiodromia, of reversal.”
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
