"How the Trickster Sabotages Us." Lecture by Caolr Shumate, Ph.D.

The trickster is a kind of psychological poltergeist, the loose cannon on the deck of the psyche. At the precise moment when we think we have got things under control, the trickster overturns them. The trickster can be a hilarious jokester—except when we are the butt of its joke.
Jung identified the mechanism for trickster-related mishaps with the Greek term enantiodromia, which we could call a trickster reversal. A trickster reversal is an occurrence that arrives with no warning and produces the opposite result from that intended.
Hitler’s chief trickster event was the defeat of his highly trained, combat-ready sixth army at Stalingrad by the ill-equipped, poorly trained Russian army. After Hitler’s defeat, Germany became an exemplar of the democracy that Hitler expressed hatred for, and a magnet for those whom he viewed as untermenschen (subhumans)—immigrants from less developed countries seeking refuge from authoritarian regimes. Whereas Hitler strove for racial purification, postwar Germany became a melting pot of migrant races. Although a trickster reversal may be triggered by a narcissistic inflation as in Hitler’s case, altruists are also subject to trickster reversals. Professor Shumate will provide examples of trickster reversals and will analyze the psychological conditions that trigger them.

Carol is the founding editor of Personality Type in Depth, a journal that bridges the fields of psychological type and depth psychology. Her doctoral thesis in comparative literature focused on enantiodromia in medieval texts, and she has taught writing and literature at Eastern Connecticut State University, Yale University, and Duke University’s division of continuing studies. She is a partner in Type Resources, Inc., where she co-developed the Function-Archetype Decoder, a software tool that reports how the sixteen MBTI® types have reported experiencing the eight Jungian functions. A frequent contributor to the Bulletin for Psychological Type, she also served on the board of the Association for Psychological Type International. She is currently working on a book on the trickster archetype in leadership, showing how leaders are pushed to acknowledge and grapple with this paradoxical aspect of the psyche. Courses taught in the Jungian and Archetypal Studies Specialization: Psychological Types.

$10 can be paid at the door, or register at JUNGNC.ORG
You will be greeted by members of the Society, in the absence of TulipLover.