The Trickster and the Paranormal

by George P. Hansen

  Clowns have many striking trickster characteristics as well as links with shamanism. In earlier cultures clowns were frequently associated with obscene and scatological practices. Ethnographer Adolf Bandelier studied the Pueblo of New Mexico, and he described celebrations where the clowns performed sodomy, coitus and masturbated in front of the entire tribe. His novel The Delight Makers (1890) had some influence. Carl Jung began his essay “On the Psychology of the Trickster Figure” mentioning that work. Barbara Babcock, the leading interpreter of the trickster, spent considerable time studying Bandelier’s work. John Bourke’s 1891 Scatological Rites of All Nations, a book of

  over 500 pages, describes other disgusting practices. The subtitle of that book informs us that excrementitiously agents were used in religion, divination, witchcraft, and love-philters. The connection between the scatological and the magical should not be overlooked.

  The pervasive scatological aspects of clowns, tricksters, and magic cry out for explanation. They evoke a sense of wonder, but also of unease. In our cleaner, more rational world it is easy to ignore these aspects of primitive culture. They challenge our notions not only of propriety, but even of what it means to be human. Extremes tell us far more about ourselves than long lists of average human characteristics. I find it great fun to playfully recount these examples and observe the reactions to them. It is remarkable how few people want to seriously ponder such things, especially professional, academic psychologists and social scientists whose job it is to understand the human condition.

  In times past, and in other cultures, clowns, buffoons, and other tricksters were recognized and given their due, sometimes even places of honor. In the modern world, they are mere shadows of their former selves. They are now forced to be more socially respectable, more restrained; today many of their activities are suppressed. We no longer comprehend their messages. This trend has important parallels. Religious mystery and mysticism are likewise largely alien to the elite culture of the present. These all have crucial implications for the paranormal, and they are a direct consequence of rationalization (in Max Weber’s sense of the term).

  Summary

  The above discussion barely skims the literature on the trickster. The body of material is massive, and little more could be attempted. This chapter tries only to point the directions of coming discussions. This is a formidable task because the topics range from the most problematic issues of theology, to fundamental bases of communication, to psychic phenomena, to what it means to be human. Any coverage must be more circumscribed if it is to be manageable and comprehensible. Unifying themes must be found. Fortunately, some basic ideas can be distilled.

  The trickster can be thought of as a personification of a constellation of characteristics. The qualities of greatest interest are summarized in the following paragraphs. Many tricksters do not display the complete set (a few are not even known for overt trickery), yet when several of the characteristics appear together, in any context, we should be alert for the others.

  Per their name, tricksters typically engage in deceit.

  Tricksters often disrupt things. They don’t fit in well with the established order. They violate taboos, sometimes so severely that they are forced to live apart from others.

  Sexuality is prominent in their lives. They are uninhibited creatures.

  Nearly all the tricksters of myth are involved with magical practices or have direct contact with supernatural beings. Ritual clowns, court jesters, and fools have also been associated with supernatural power.

  Many trickster qualities can be understood in terms of boundaries, structures, and transitions. Tricksters are boundary crossers; they destabilize structures; they govern transitions. They also embody paradox, contradiction, and ambiguity.

  The topic of marginality can be included here. Tricksters are marginal characters; they live at boundaries, with uncertain, ambiguous statuses. Minority groups often have an affinity for tricksters, and women, American Indians, and African Americans have made particularly valuable contributions to trickster theory. Marginality also characterizes paranormal practitioners and phenomena.

  Tricksters are not firmly situated within establishment structures. They typically are not leaders of large groups. They are often unmarried (Hermes is a bachelor god, and in some cults, it is said that “Eshu has no wives.” ); even the rudimentary institutional structure of marriage is uncongenial. Animals personifying the trickster often have solitary habits. In a multitude of ways, the trickster doesn’t quite “fit in.”

  By his nature, he resists complete and precise definition, and Barbara Babcock and Jay Cox comment that he “eludes and disrupts all orders of things, including the analytic categories of academics.” 5 The trickster informs literary criticism, psychic phenomena, and clowns who eat excrement. There are tools to approach such bizarre mixtures, but they are not widely known or understood. In fact they deal with the very notion of category itself. Much later in the book, there is an extended discussion of classification and abstraction, and these are central to understanding the trickster as well as structuralism and deconstructionism.

  To reiterate, the trickster characteristics of particular importance include: deception, disruption, reduced sexual inhibitions, and magical (psi, supernatural) practices. In addition, the concept of marginality is significant (i.e., being at the edge or boundary). These qualities seem

  organically bound together, and in the pages that follow I will address this with recourse to the abstract concepts of “boundary” and “structure.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Ernest Hartmann’s Mental Boundaries

  The first two chapters have been expansive and diverse in their coverage. It may be helpful to view the trickster in a more restricted context, and psychology is a good place to start. The issue of boundaries is central to understanding the trickster, and psychologists have used the concept in their own research. Ernest Hartmann, a psychiatrist at Tufts University School of Medicine presented an innovative approach in his book Boundaries in the Mind (1991). Hartmann’s thinking about boundaries has some remarkable parallels with Jean Shinoda Bolen’s interpretation of the Greek trickster, Hermes.

  Hartmann had a long interest in sleep disorders, particularly nightmares, and during his research, he noticed that nightmare sufferers shared some personality characteristics. They seemed unguarded, and willing to reveal themselves, even their dark secrets; they often had jobs that required creativity. In order to integrate a number of diverse observations, Hartmann utilized the idea of boundaries. The concept covers a wide domain, and thus it escapes a short, concise definition. Briefly, his theory differentiates between “thick” and “thin” boundary types, and it seems easiest to explain the theory by comparing and contrasting the two kinds of personalities. Thick-boundary people strike one as solid, well organized, well defended, and even rigid and armored. Thin-boundary types tend to be open, unguarded, and undefended in several psychological senses. Women tend to have thinner boundaries than men, and children thinner than adults. People with thin boundaries tend to have higher hypnotic ability, greater dream recall, and are more likely to have lucid dreams. People with thick boundaries stay with one thought until its completion; whereas those with thin boundaries show greater fluidity, and their thoughts branch from one to another. People with very thin boundaries report more symptoms of illness; however, compared with thick-boundary types, they are able to exert more control over the autonomic nervous system and can produce greater changes in skin temperature when thinking of hot or cold situations. Thin-boundary persons are more prone to synesthesia, blending of the senses (e.g., seeing colors when certain sounds are heard). Differences are found in occupations as well. Middle managers in large corporations tend to have thick boundaries, and artists, writers and musicians tend to have thinner ones. People with thick boundaries tend to be in stable, long-term marriages; whereas thin types are more likely to be, or have been, divorced or separated.

  Hartmann developed the
Boundary Questionnaire of 146 items in order to formally define and test the concept. The questionnaire is geared for normal people rather than patients with mental disturbances. It is easy to use, and it is included in the book, along with the scoring method. By the way, the book is very readable and it does not sacrifice scientific sophistication, a rare combination among academic works.

  Hartmann separated the questions into 12 categories, with each measuring a different aspect of boundaries. One of the categories, based on 19 items, is “unusual experiences,” and thin-boundary people tend to report more of these. After Hartmann collected more than 800 questionnaires, he conducted a factor analysis. This is a common procedure in psychological research that assesses which questions correlate with others. He discovered a number of factors, and nearly all were easily interpreted in terms of thick and thin boundaries. One was labeled “Percipience/Clairvoyance,” which included questions about psychic experiences. People who scored high on that factor tended to have thin boundaries; thus the connection between thin boundaries and the paranormal is well supported.

  Thin-boundary personality characteristics have much in common with those found in psychological interpretations of the Greek trickster, Hermes, who is also a god of boundaries.

  Jean Shinoda Bolen is one of the most accessible writers on Hermes. She is Japanese-American, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and is familiar with parapsychology. In the 1970s she wrote for Psychic magazine, which her husband edited and published. Her interest in psychic matters is further seen in her book The Tao of Psychology (1979), which is subtitled “Synchronicity and the Self.”

  Hermes’ characteristics were discussed in the previous chapter, and I will not cover them in detail here. Instead, I have summarized them in Table 1 along with descriptors of thin-boundary types. Table

  1 lists direct quotes from Hartmann and Bolen that demonstrate the clear congruence of their concepts. The similarities are gratifying because the two psychiatrists apparently derived their ideas completely independently, and that makes their convergence of greater significance.

  Hartmann

  Bolen

  Thin boundaries involve easy merging

  The Hermes boy “can move from real

  into fantasy or vivid memory, at times

  ity to imagination readily, not examin

  not being quite clear what state one is

  ing the boundaries”(p. 173)

  in. (p. 27)

  Followed over time, the people with

  He finds new grass always greener,

  thin boundaries appeared to have in-

  which invites him to flit from one situa

  tense but often short-lived relation-

  tion or person to another (p. 187)

  ships (p. 139)

  the person with very thin boundaries is

  he is more likely to have tried (or at

  often bisexual, at least potentially.

  least fantasized) sex with a man or men

  Such a person has fantasies, dreams,

  if he is heterosexual, or with women if

  and daydreams of having sex with

  he is homosexual, than any other type

  members of both sexes and is willing to

  of man. (p. 181)

  consider the possibility of bisexual

  behavior (p. 42)

  childhood trauma can be one envi-

  I have felt the saving presence of Her-

  ronmental factor responsible for thin

  mes when my adult patients have spo-

  boundaries (p. 119)

  ken of their abusive childhoods (p. 170)

  middle managers in large organiza-

  A Hermes man is not likely to be a

  tions, also tended to be people with

  narrow specialist or a happy cog in a

  thick boundaries (p. 217)

  large corporation (p. 177)

  The person with thin boundaries will

  Hermes can be “unreliable and inconsis

  often be seen as a bit unreliable (p. 143)

  tent” (p. 188)

  Those with thin boundaries are often

  The Hermes man does not “like sched-

  drawn to occupations that do not re-

  ules” (p. 183)

  quire strict schedules and detailed

  organization (p. 218)

  counselors, and therapists also scored

  The Hermes archetype provides quali-

  quite thin (p. 218)

  ties that contribute to being a good

  psychotherapist (p. 178)

  Table 1 Thin Boundary Qualities Compared with Hermes’ Characteristics

  Note: Quotations are from Hartmann’s Boundaries in the Mind (1991) and Bolen’s Gods in Everyman (1989).

  Hartmann recognized the relationship between paranormal experience and thin boundaries. A few others have understood the significance of that. Martin Kottmeyer, a most perceptive commentator on the UFO phenomena, was one of the first to do so. In a 1988 article in the British magazine Magonia, he drew upon Hartmann’s earlier book The Nightmare (1984) and convincingly showed that persons who had UFO abduction experiences had many similarities to nightmare sufferers, i.e., people with thin boundaries. Kottmeyer has continued to draw upon Hartmann’s ideas.

  People with thin boundaries are sometimes perceived as less reliable than average, and when they report paranormal experiences, it is easy to dismiss them. For instance, UFO abduction experiences appear to be largely subjective. The experiencers can be viewed as marginal, or worse. However, thin boundaries likely predispose one to experience objective psychic phenomena. Douglas Richards published a paper in the Journal of Parapsychology in 1996 reporting a study he had conducted using Hartmann’s questionnaire. He confirmed that thin boundaries were related to subjective psychic experiences, but he also reviewed a number of studies on personality factors related to success in psi tasks in the laboratory. Richards noted that characteristics associated with thin boundaries were correlated with objective success. Several examples can be cited. For instance, persons with low perceptual defensiveness tend to score above average on ESP tests,2 and children seem to be above average ESP subjects.3 People who have high hypnotic ability seem to do well in ESP performance in the labora-tory,4 and several other psychologists have provided rationales for additional research on the matter.5

  The concept of boundaries provides a useful framework for understanding personality and its relationship to psychic phenomena. It also helps explain why people who report paranormal experiences are often dismissed as fantasizing even though the events have a basis in reality.

  This chapter has been devoted to psychological issues, but I want to caution the reader that the trickster cannot be reduced to the psychology of individuals. That is, personality characteristics of individuals only partly explain trickster manifestations. The issue of boundaries (and psychic phenomena) involves vastly more than that. In the next chapter a more expansive view of boundaries considers theories from anthropology.

  CHAPTER 4

  Victor Turner’s

  Concept of Anti-Structure

  This book is about paranormal phenomena and the conditions surrounding their occurrence. The theories of anthropologists Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner are especially useful because they address change, transition, and instability—issues central to this book. Their theories have proven their value for understanding religion, literature, folklore, and psychology, but they have rarely been applied to the paranormal.1

  Van Gennep’s book The Rites of Passage is a classic; it was first

  2

  published in 1909 but was not translated into English until 1960. Turner’s The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (1969) substantially extended van Gennep’s ideas. As those titles indicate, their primary emphasis was on rites and ritual, but the theories have much wider applicability.

  Because I draw so hea
vily on their work, some biographical material is in order. Van Gennep (1873-1957) was a French scholar who contributed to anthropology, ethnography, and particularly folklore. He was something of an outsider to academe, and he was often at odds with the Durkheim school of sociology. It did not accord him due recognition, and that probably delayed the acceptance of his ideas. Van Gennep never held a university appointment in France, though he did occupy a chair of ethnography for three years in Switzerland. Victor Turner (1920-1983) was a British anthropologist known for his study of ritual. He spent time in Africa studying the Ndembu of Zambia, along with his wife, Edith, who has achieved some note in her own right. Turner taught at several American universities including Cornell, the University of Chicago, and the University of Virginia.4

  Van Gennep’s and Turner’s theories diffused into a variety of disciplines, but only limited portions of their work have been effectively integrated. I have encountered a number of people who misapprehended the concepts because of other writers’ all-too-brief descriptions, and many have failed to appreciate their generality, diversity, and applicability. As such I will quote both van Gennep and Turner extensively so the readers gain a fuller appreciation of them.