logo
episode-header-image
Sep 2022
31m 24s

The Psychology of The Trickster

ETERNALISED
About this episode

There is perhaps no figure in literature more fascinating than the trickster, appearing in various forms in the folklore of many cultures. Trickster is witty and deceitful. He is the timeless root of all the picaresque creations of world literature, and is not reducible to one single literary entity. Trickster tales have existed since ancient times, and has been said to be at the very foundation of civilisation and culture. They belong to the oldest expressions of mankind.   

Tricksters are the breakers of rules, agents of mischief, masters of deceit, and boundary crossers. He is an agent of change, and is amoral, not immoral.  

Trickster is at one and the same time creator and destroyer, giver and negator, he who dupes and who is always duped himself.   

Psychologically, the trickster is an archetype, part of the collective unconscious. Trickster is everywhere, he is an eternal state of mind.   

The integration of the trickster archetype allows us to go from being ruled by our own self-centred ego to a new way of living, in which one has integrity and relatedness. It allows us to become aware of our true emotions, behaviours, and thoughts, that our unconscious persona is hiding, and without which there is no individuation at all.


📨 ⁠Subscribe to newsletter⁠

Donate a coffee

Support on Patreon


Send me anything you like to my mailing address:


Eternalised

P.O. Box 10.011

28080 Madrid, Spain


━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⌛ Timestamps (0:00) Introduction (0:45) What is The Trickster? (2:35) Primitive Form of The Trickster (3:48) Trickster and Laughter (5:50) Trickster as Agent of Change (7:35) Trickster as Creator and Destroyer (9:40) Trickster as Amoral (10:50) Trickster Figures (17:32) The Psychology of The Trickster (22:10) Trickster and Shadow (24:04) Trickster and Ego Inflation (26:15) The Trickster in Alchemy (29:08) Conclusion

Up next
Jun 18
The Psychology of Sin
“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” These profound words by St. Paul express the struggle between the desire to do good and the inability to carry it out, due to the power of sin within human nature. The misalignment between o ... Show More
50m 59s
May 2
The Psychology of God's Dark Side
In 1952, at the age of seventy-six, Carl Jung wrote Answer to Job in a single burst of energy and with strong emotion. He completed it while ill, following a high fever, and upon finishing, he felt well again. The book explores the nature of God, particularly what Jung perceived ... Show More
55m 9s
Feb 2025
The Psychology of Knowing Yourself
Carl Jung published his book Psychological Types in 1921, introducing four functions of consciousness: thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition, and the two attitudes through which these four functions are deployed: introversion and extraversion. Jung’s functions follow a fourf ... Show More
51m 24s
Recommended Episodes
Jan 2024
Doppelgängers
GET‌ ‌EVERY‌ ‌EPISODE‌ ‌AD FREE PLUS BONUS‌ ‌CONTENT‌ ‌AT:‌ ‌‌www.patreon.com/crackpotpodcast‌ The doppelganger, a mysterious twin from another plane of existence, has haunted legends and folklore for centuries. In this episode, we delve into the captivating world of these uncann ... Show More
47m 38s
Jul 2021
The Cult of Fraternities & Sororities
“Why does it feel like everything that has to do with tradition is actually a cult?” Such is one of our many musings from this week’s episode on the “cult” of Greek life. We call it “hazing” and “pledges” rather than “brainwashing” and “cult members,” but aren’t these highly excl ... Show More
31m 46s
Oct 2022
Magic, Archetypes, and the Mysteries of the Unconscious
There are two parts of the mind: the conscious and the unconscious. While the former dominates your attention, the latter actually occupies far more of the brain, influencing your mood, generating inspiration, and making you who you are, all behind the scenes.My guest would argue ... Show More
50m 13s
Nov 2019
The Rogue Dressed as a Captain
One crisp morning in Berlin, in 1906, a small group of soldiers were led on an extraordinary heist by a man they believed to be a Captain. So how did an ageing nobody in a fake uniform trick them into aiding him in the crime of the century? Some say we humans will obey orders fro ... Show More
33m 16s
Jan 2019
Episode 156: Notes From Underground (Pt. 1)
We’re sick men. We’re spiteful men. We’re unpleasant men. We think our livers are diseased (especially Tamler’s). So we talk about Dostoevsky’s wild, complex, stream of consciousness masterpiece Notes From Underground. For this episode we focus on part 1 of the novella, and the p ... Show More
1h 43m
Apr 2023
The Wisdom of Psychopaths
When most people think of psychopaths, they think of uniformly monstrous characters who lack empathy and conscience.But my guest says that those characteristics are just one part of the spectrum of traits that make up psychopathy, and while always having these traits turned up hi ... Show More
57m 53s
Jun 2023
Three Black Men
We know that we’re living in a critical time in human history. We know that we can no longer say, “It’s not my responsibility.” What is it that this time begs us to see? In this podcast, Tami Simon joins visionary leaders Bayo Akomolafe, Orland Bishop, and Resmaa Menakem for a co ... Show More
1h 18m
Jun 2017
The Culture Inside
Is there a part of ourselves that we don't acknowledge, that we don't even have access to and that might make us ashamed if we encountered it? We begin with a woman whose left hand takes instructions from a different part of her brain. It hits her, and knocks cigarettes out of he ... Show More
54m 44s
May 2021
Sneak Peak!
This is Sounds Like A Cult, a podcast about the zeitgeisty cults that have inducted us all—from SoulCycle and Peloton to spiritual influencers to fraternities and sororities to flat earth conspiracy theorists, and beyond. Each episode, your co-hosts Isa and Amanda discuss a diffe ... Show More
3m 28s
Feb 2024
Gentle Souls: Esther Friedman on ‘School’
Today’s episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.  If you’re not already familiar with the culty cluster known as ‘School’,  it was an ultra-secret Manhattan organization run by late actress and forever eccentric Sharon Gans. The shadowy group did its dark magic in the form of secret s ... Show More
55m 54s