The Trickster and the Paranormal

by George P. Hansen

  The trickster is central to Blaeser’s exposition, and she quotes Vizenor describing the trickster: “It’s Life, It’s Juice, It’s Energy!” An entire chapter, “Trickster Signatures,” draws heavily on the work of Barbara Babcock, and Blaeser states that “Many of Babcock’s claims about the trickster dynamic seem very much like those of Vizenor.” Blaeser’s is one of the best applications of Babcock’s ideas that I have seen. By itself that is a high recommendation, but I would also recommend it to anyone still hypnotized by the Western rationalistic worldview. Those who do not comprehend the alternatives could benefit by reading Blaeser.

  Although the trickster is a focus of her book, Blaeser has little explicitly dealing with magic or the supernatural. She did, though, briefly discuss the magical power of words.

  Karl Kroeber, a professor of English at Columbia University, raised related matters in his article entitled “Deconstructionist Criticism and American Indian Literature” (1979). He discussed deconstructionism, focusing on ambiguity and transformation. He stated: “it has been argued that transformative processes are crucial to the language of all literature. This is the central tenet of deconstructionist critics, who perceive no fixed meaning to words constituting a text.”

  In our rationalized world, the signifier and signified are clearly separate, but in primitive worldviews, this distinction is not so strong. They recognize a connection between the two, particularly in the magical power of words. Kroeber notes that American “Indians’ respect for this efficacy was profound, appearing, for example, in the belief that one’s personal name is so potent that it must be scrupulously concealed. If someone knows my name, he has power over my life.”35

  The trickster lives in the liminal area betwixt and between the signifier and the signified, and Kroeber pointed out that it was difficult for natives to explain him to ethnologists. Kroeber noted that American “Indians saw European ‘philosophy’ as defective because [it was] unable to recognize meaning in the world.”36

  Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the chairman of the Afro-American Studies Department at Harvard University, produced an extended treatment of the trickster, deconstructionist ideas, and literary criticism. Gates did his undergraduate work in the early 1970s at Yale, then the center of deconstructionist thought in the U.S. His book The Signifying Monkey (1988) is subtitled “A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism,” and at the heart of his theory lie the Yoruba trickster god Eshu-Elegba and the If a divination system. Here we have a most instructive confluence: a theoretician from a minority (marginal) culture, a trickster god, a magical divination system, the topics of ambiguity and chance, and a deconstructionist influence.

  Gates focuses on Eshu Elegba’s intricate ties with language, but in no sense does he reduce him to that. Fully recognizing his multiplicity, Gates explains: “Esu is the sole messenger of the gods … he who interprets the will of the gods to man; he who carries the desires of man to the gods. Esu is the guardian of the crossroads, master of style and of stylus, the phallic god of generation and fecundity, master of that elusive, mystical barrier that separates the divine world from the profane. Frequently characterized as an inveterate copulator possessed by his enormous penis, linguistically Esu is the ultimate copula, connecting truth with understanding, the sacred with the profane, text with interpretation … He connects the grammar of divination with its rhetorical structures.”39

  In the If a divination system, a diviner manipulates 16 palm nuts, and their resulting configuration designates verses to be chanted. There are thousands of these enigmatic, riddle-like lyrical poems, and because they are ambiguous, they need interpretation. Gates points out: “If a is the god of determinate meaning, but his meaning must be rendered by analogy. Esu, god of indeterminacy, rules this interpretive process; he is the god of interpretation because he embodies the ambiguity of figurative language,” and “Legba, like Esu, is the divine reader, whose interpretation of the Book of Fate determines precisely what this book says.” This divination system is explicitly recognized as ambiguous, but Gates sees that all communication systems have the same property. Like the If a divination, all texts are open to interpretation.

  As have many others, both Kroeber and Gates remarked on the pervasiveness and centrality of trickster tales in earlier cultures. That tells us something very profound about the societies from which they come. Likewise, the little attention the tales receive in our own deserves notice. The primitives understood things that we do not. Minority scholars recognize the trickster’s importance, but establishment minions have no glimmer of it.

  Magic and Meaning

  A moderate size literature deals with the trickster and magic, and some addresses the trickster and meaning, but relatively little explains the conjunction. Nicholas Royal’s and Jacques Derrida’s writings on telepathy make some vague allusions. Henry Louis Gates’ exposition makes the connection explicit for Eshu-Elegba, though he gives meaning far more attention than magic.

  Both magic and meaning can be understood in terms of binary oppositions. Magical and supernatural phenomena occur with the blurring and mediation of binary oppositions, as described in earlier chapters. Meaning can also be cast in oppositional terms. Saussure postulated that meaning was found in the union of the signifier and signified.

  Both magic and meaning have a betwixt and between aspect, and both engage ambiguity. In science, meaning is assumed to be entirely unproblematic, and magic is simply denied. Both magic and meaning fall outside formal logical systems. Both pose profound challenges to rationality, and deep consideration of them exposes the limits of our way of thought.

  Both magic and meaning are unstable. Psi occurs more in conditions of uncertainty, instability, and transition than in stasis. Meaning must be continually reinforced if ambiguity is to be kept at bay.

  Levi-Strauss addressed some of these ideas in his Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss (1950). He discussed the concept of mana, which roughly means magical power. Speaking of it he said “always and everywhere, those types of notions, somewhat like algebraic symbols, occur to represent an indeterminate value of signification, in itself devoid of meaning and thus susceptible of receiving any meaning at all; their sole function is to fill a gap between the signifier and the signified” (emphasis added). He expanded on the idea, though in quite abstract fashion, but he recognized that magic works in the gap between the signifier and signified.

  The connection between magic and meaning is also illustrated by parapsychology experiments.

  In psychometry experiments a psychic makes statements about owners of concealed objects. The owners then are given a list of all the statements and asked to pick which ones pertain to themselves (i.e., select the ones that have meaning for them). If the psychic was successful the owners select the statements made when the psychic was focussed on their own objects. The “magical process” (the psychic’s reading) is interpreted by the objects’ owners, who impart meaning to them. This parallels the If a divination described by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

  Synchronicity is a type of psi. It is defined as meaningful coincidence. Two unrelated events occur that an observer sees as meaningful. The occurrence of psi is inferred because of the meaning.

  In abstract form, psi experiments (with the exception of macro-PK studies) can be represented as two strings of numbers (e.g., binary numbers, strings of binary oppositions). One of the strings is randomly determined (e.g., shuffled cards, tumbled dice, electronically generated random numbers). The other string may be selected in a variety of ways (e.g., guesses made in an ESP test). When an above-chance correlation is found between the two strings, psi is inferred (i.e., magic happened). There is a meaningful relationship between them.

  In psi experiments, divination practices, and synchronistic events, humans ascribe meaning to the relationship between a random process in the outer world and a mental image, impression, or intent inside a person. The person perceives the relationship, but there is no known physical cause for it. Magic (psi) i
s inferred when meaning is found.

  Jacques Lacan

  Before finishing with structuralism and literary theory, French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901—1981) should be introduced. He was an anti-structural, trickster character who was prominent among structuralists and among the literati. He came to greater public attention during the 1968 student and worker uprisings in France. His work can serve as something of a transition from this section on literary and anthropological issues, to the more psychologically oriented work covered in the next Part.

  Lacan’s writings are some of the most difficult I’ve encountered. To his credit, Lacan recognized that many of his statements were obscure. He meant them to be that way! Sociology professor Edith Kurzweil explains in The Age of Structuralism (1980) that “Lacan makes much of the fact that he cannot be systematized, that he cannot be ‘understood,’ that to understand him is to reify and misconstrue him, because ‘misunderstanding’ is an inherent part of ‘understanding.’” One of the tenets of deconstructionism is that there is no single meaning to a text, and Lacan’s style amplifies that principle.

  Because of this situation, it is imperative to find informed interpreters who are familiar with Lacan’s intellectual culture, and who can at least partly translate his message. MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle provides a useful interpretation in her Psychoanalytic Politics (1978), and I have found Stuart Schneiderman’s Jacques Lacan: The Death of an Intellectual Hero (1983) especially helpful. Schneiderman was an American professor of English who became a psychoanalyst, and during his training he was analyzed by Lacan. Schneiderman’s broad background in the humanities allowed him to effectively convey the wider implications of Lacanian thought, more so than commentators grounded in the sciences or medicine. This is valuable because like Freud, Lacan’s ideas attract cultural theorists, who apply them to many contexts beyond the clinic. Schneiderman did so himself with his An Angel Passes: How the Sexes Became Undivided (1988). The Introduction to that book has a number of intriguing insights on literary issues, the problem of meaning, and angels.

  Lacan personified trickster and an anti-structural qualities in his private and professional lives. Turkle and Schneiderman both compared him to a bricoleur, with Schneiderman saying that Lacan’s work had “the quality of being fragmented and somewhat disjointed, even fictional at times.” Lacan did not restrict himself to psychiatry or the sciences, and early in his career he wrote for surrealist publications. His

  sex life was unconventional, and it is rumored that “his mistresses were almost as legion as his followers.” Lacan considered himself a hysteric, and the boundary between his conscious and unconscious was perhaps rather thin, as reflected in his unrestrained behavior. He shocked people with his antics. For instance he once arrived unexpectedly at a dinner party and ate the food remaining on the guests’ plates. More respectable analysts accused him of being narcissistic and having unresolved oedipal conflicts. He precipitated schisms in the psychoanalytic community, and in the 1960s the International Psychoanalytic Association expelled him and his followers. He went on to establish the Freudian School in Paris, but during his final illness he tried to dissolve that institution. That action too provoked bitter feuding, which generated enormous publicity and some notoriety for psychoanalysis. Lacan’s anti-structural nature was apparent to his end.

  Trickster figures usually have some connection with the paranormal, but I am not aware of any with Lacan. However, his biographer Elizabeth Roudinesco, in the first paragraph of her Preface, said that Lacan’s is the story of “a doctrine that, following on from Freud’s, tried to rescue humanity from the universe of religion, dreams, and the occult, even if this meant revealing the inability of reason, knowledge, and truth to bring about such a deliverance.” I have found no indication that Lacan had anything like Freud’s understanding of the occult; he seems to have been oblivious to it. There were some early religious influences, and Roudinesco referred to the “stifling religiosity” of his childhood.50 His younger brother entered a monastery and became a theologian.51 Lacan’s doctrines may have been, in part, a reaction to all that. In any event, if the paranormal had been mixed into his volatile personality, it might have been too much for him. French intellectual-ism is strongly rationalistic and that may serve a protective, limiting function.

  Psychoanalysis perhaps has more affinity with the trickster than do other types of psychotherapy. Through free association, unconscious material is brought to consciousness; this boundary crossing operation is somewhat reflexive with the mind examining the products of the mind. Lacan’s practice and philosophy had additional reflexive and anti-structural features. To the chagrin of many other analysts, he advocated that an analyzand should analyze the psychoanalyst, thus turning the tables. The inversion of roles puts the two on an equal footing, leveling their status. Lacan had other controversial ideas; for instance, Schneiderman reports that he “did not think that psychoanalysis was a respectable profession; he judged it to be a subversive and revolutionary occupation”52 and that “Lacan as an analyst was not trying to establish any sort of communication with his patients; nor did he think it a good idea that they understand each other.”53 More orthodox analysts desired respectability; they wanted to understand their patients so they could help them to adjust to society. Lacan rejected that.

  Lacan was antagonistic to institutions, including one he founded. He viewed institutionalization, codification, and hierarchy as inimical to psychoanalysis. Turkle notes that according to Lacan “No institution … but only the analyst can authorize him-or herself in the analytic vocation.” This caused rifts. Many analysts had spent years in training; they had an allegiance to their institutions and a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. If anyone could become an analyst, professionalism, and accompanying financial rewards, would be threatened.

  Scientific psychologists generally view psychoanalysis as a marginal endeavor. Lacan probably understood this better than other analysts who coveted the imprimatur of the scientific establishment. He wanted no rapprochement, but rather “tended to dismiss scientific psychology as alien to his enterprise, as a product of what he saw as the worst tendencies of American life.”55

  Psychoanalysis served as a mythology to some extent; it invented a jargon that brought issues to consciousness but also obscured them. Freudianism focused primarily on sexuality and symbolized many of its ideas in those terms (the sexual tension of the male-female binary opposition being central). For instance, a variety of conflicts could be interpreted in terms of unresolved oedipal complexes, whether or not there was anything like a father figure involved.

  Binary opposition is a common theme in the structuralist lineage, and it is used to explore a variety of concepts. Schneiderman mentioned that psychoanalysts need not restrict themselves to the malefemale opposition and that the life-death opposition can serve as an axis for another system of symbolization. He and Lacan didn‘t really understand the implications of that, but that makes their comments all the more interesting. The literary and psychoanalytic practitioners did not grasp binary oppositions as clearly as say Edmund Leach or Rodney Needham, who understood the primitive roots.

  The life-death binary opposition is a major one for all cultures. The demarcation between the two is always surrounded by rituals, taboos, and is associated with the supernatural. Lacan and his followers, like Freud and his, believe that the supernatural is nothing more than symbolic. They are wrong of course, and it is amusing to see how they avoid the issue with their naive rationalism. Nevertheless, some of their concepts are useful, and just because the psychoanalysts fail to comprehend the full implications of their own ideas doesn‘t mean that they should be neglected by theorists of the paranormal. However, the relevant writings of Lacan and Schneiderman are obscure, but it can be stimulating to briefly dip into them as a source for ideas. They are only direction markers, and it would be a mistake to anchor anything to them.

  Schneiderman concludes that „analysis has as its maj
or task the repairing of the relationships people have, not with other people, but with the dead.“56 This provocative statement opens many possibilities, and he has more to say. He comments that “Unfortunately our passion for science and rationality has prevented us from appreciating the role the dead play for the living … We usually think of the dead as phantoms and ghosts, to which no mature adult would give credence. They become relegated to the world of children, infidels, and savages, these ghosts. But as the affair of children, they come to inhabit the unconscious, and Freud identified the unconscious with the infantile.”57 As discussed in the chapter on totemism, this passage is itself an instance of taboo enforcement. Challenging the life-death demarcation is greeted with hostility and derision in science. Even in parapsychology, research on survival of bodily death is a relatively marginal area. Spiritualism and mediumship directly defy the idea of a clear boundary between life and death, and they are even more anathema to respectable academics. Schneiderman unwittingly displays the force of the taboo, for despite his insight, when he writes of ghosts he must add the protective incantation: “to which no mature adult would give credence.”

  Lacan’s ideas about therapy and death raise other intriguing connections. Schneiderman notes that “Relations between the living and the dead never take place in an atmosphere of communication leading to interpersonal and mutual understanding. In place of this humanistic model for therapy, Lacan proposed one based on the elements of theft and sacrifice. Prometheus is the most striking example of this.”58 I am unable to follow him here, but Schneiderman recognizes the potential of a trickster figure (Prometheus). Schneiderman later discussed Norman O. Brown’s Hermes the Thief.5 Although the ideas are not fully developed, the point is that trickster figures are relevant to psychoanalysis, therapy, and exploring the unconscious. This signals a nexus of religious issues, life and death, sacrifice, and supernatural beings. To express their ideas these psychoanalysts chose not the language of modern science but rather that of ancient mythology.