Blog Post #4

Carl Jung’s reading “On the Psychology of the Trickster figure” talks about a specific type of figure that came about in cultural and religious literature. These figures are called “archetypes” and there are many that exist, however, Jung focuses on the “trickster” in this particular writing. All the figures said to have existed were psychological and are called a product of the collective unconscious, which means they could not been seen with the human eye and were sort of that bridge between human beings and cultures around the world. With name like trickster that automatically makes me think there is some negative attachment to this character. A trickster is usually someone or something that is up to no good. They cause harm to other individuals and Jung explains that that was exactly what this character was like.

I think having archetypes was a pretty interesting foundational concept for culture and for people. I’m not entirely sure if these are still “used” in psychology because I have heard of them throughout my schooling so far. One of the things I found pretty interesting is how these archetypes were “universal”. They were able to be applied to all sorts of religions no matter what belief system that religion had. They existed in every religion and shared quite a bit of similar characteristics. One article I found online, mentions how a lot of the tricksters in religion were always a male figure and had both a human form and an animal form. In addition, tricksters were best viewed by their personality.