Jung likuciai

According to Jung, all mythical figures are created in direct correspondence to inner psychic
experiences of the individual.
He reasoned that it is because of this process that the trickster phenomenon is not as much
a phenomenon as it comes across as; rather, it is logical that our inner experiences would lead to the
creation of such an individual that allows us to reflect on inner experiences and thoughts. (Jung,
1970: 136)
Jung (1969) explains that archetypes are idealized figures and that there can be no perfect
representation of an archetype, much the same way that dreams cannot be perfectly recalled after the
dreamer has awoken. The archetype is essentially an unconscious content that is altered by
becoming conscious and by being perceived, and it takes its color from the individual consciousness
in which it happens to appear (p. 5). This has implications at both societal and individual levels.
Jung explains that individual consciousness rests upon a deeper collective unconsciousness which
does not derive from personal experience and is not a personal acquisition but is inborn (p. 3). It is
questionable whether or not the collective unconscious is really inborn. To insist on that point marks
a kind of essentialism that contemporary advancements in critical theory would deny. Therefore, it
may be more accurate to say that archetypes are socially programmed by the culture, the collective,
in which the individual begins to gain its consciousness.
C. Jung together with K. Kerenyi examine the process of the human psyche and how the
conscious and unconscious influence the mind. Jungs analysis of the unconscious psyche is divided
into two areas, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. Jung insists that the
trickster figure is evident in both areas of human evolution. According to Jung, the collective
unconscious calls upon the psyche to conjure up the symbols of archetypes like the trickster.
Jungs archetypal trickster is comparable to Radins representation of trickster as primal
purity. Radin insists that the trickster represents a primitive state of mind;
as Carl Jung once stated about Coyote, he was
[] in his earliest manifestations, a faithful copy of an
absolutely undifferentiated human consciousness,
corresponding to a psyche that has hardly left the animal level.
He is a forerunner of the savior, and like him, God, man, and
animal at once. He is both subhuman and superhuman, a bestial
and divine being. (Lopez, 1977: xvii-xviii)
Psychologists Carl Jung and Karl Kerenyis research was the most influential on Radins
investigations of the trickster as a figure representative of primitive development, and as a construct
of the human psyche. Radin includes Jungs essay in the final chapter of his book to support his own
theories of development. In Jungs essay he examines the process of the human psyche and how the
conscious and unconscious influence the mind. Jungs analysis of the unconscious psyche is divided

into two areas, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. Jung insists that the
trickster figure is evident in both areas of human evolution. According to Jung, the collective
unconscious calls upon the psyche to conjure up the symbols of archetypes like the trickster. Jungs
archetypal trickster is comparable to Radins representation of trickster as primal purity. Radin insists
that the trickster represents a primitive state of mind;

However, trickster researcher Barbara Babcock-Abrahams essay disagrees with both Radin
and Jungs shared opinion of the trickster as a symbol of an evolutionary model. For Babcock
Abrahams preserves the thought that the trickster does not symbolize primitivism, but rather insists;
No generation understands him fully but no generation can do with out him. Each had to
include him in all its theologies, in all its cosmologies, despite the fact that it realized that he did not
fit properly into any of them, for he represents not only the undifferentiated and the distant past, but
likewise the undifferentiated present within every individual. This constitutes his universal and
persistent attraction (Babcock-Abrahams 1975:163).
Babcock-Abrahams rather sees the trickster as being a contradictory being and insists that
dualities attached to the trickster are due to the particular social-cultural function and paradox within
the trickster character, which are within the margins. Babcock-Abrahams concludes that the trickster
has a position of power within this marginal space, which many feminists have also found voice
within these peripheral locations.

The trickster dances at the margins of both personal consciousness, the floodlit, accessible
world of the individual psyche, and social consciousness, the given, immediate surface of social
constructions.

But using that typology alone as an archetypal standard would overlook the importance of
crossing borders as well as the twin roles of culture-hero and stumbling buffoon.
It also lacks the elements of humor, constant desire, hunger.

Every distinction made by Babcock-Abrahams speaks of the anomalous nature of the

trickster, and how all of the battling dualisms of his persona are extremely interconnected and
interrelated. According to Babcock-Abrahams, The most important characteristic of these related
dualisms, however, is their expression of ambiguity and paradox, of a confusion of all customary
categories. (Babcock- Abrahams, 1975, 160) These characteristics not only speak of the nature of
the trickster based upon his actions, but also address his ultimate residency in society itself.

The fact that so many different

terms and characteristics are used to attempt to define the trickster only emphasizes its
indefinable nature.

Tannen writes: Trickster energy is the archetypal energy of individuation for a culture as
well as an individual nuo mito prie archetipo.
This short review of anthropological theories and concepts gives