The Trickster and the Development of The Ego

The Dance … Beyond Heroism The last Archetype of the Hero’s Journey is the Fool. It is included with the Archetypes on the Return Stage of the journey because it governs the expression of our selves in the world. In truth, the Fool can be found in other places along the journey. Before we receive the call, the Fool is aligned with the primitive parts of the psyche. We are literally acting the Fool until we begin the first iteration of our journey. Today we will go beyond heroism and explore the Fool’s Dance.

E25 The Trickster and the Development of The Ego

“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.”― Joseph Campbell

While we might laugh at the Trickster, Jester or Joker because we feel superior to its foolishness, we are all quite capable of letting ourselves get out of control and become destructive. If you ever had a hangover or cheated on a diet you have experienced what we are describing.

As children grow, they learn to distinguish their own emotions from their parents and as they grow older, they start to make connections between certain actions and their consequences.

Adults still have a difficult time differentiating between their genuine thoughts, values, feelings and opinions from those of their parents and friends or what they see and hear in the media.

Either we get caught up doing what someone else wants us to do because we can’t separate our desires from theirs, or we simply assume that others share our views, without checking to see if this is in fact true.

The Trickster part of us is activated anytime we need to find out what is “me” and what is “not me.” Stories of the Trickster teach us to connect parts of ourselves in order to become an integrated whole.

The Fool is never really bound by conventional society, but does learn the rules of that society and how to play the game effectively.

The Trickster in each of us needs some time to wander and explore the world, simply to respond to our hunger for sensations and experiences and to find out who we are, what we like and do not like, what we feel and do not feel, what we think and do not think. Without this we never have any true sense of identity.