Te Clown: An Archetypal Self-Journey ������� ����
What is a clown?1 According to the International Clown Hall o Fame, A Brie History o Clowning, “Clowns are comic perormers, characterized by colored wigs, makeup, outlandish costumes and usually oversized shoes whose purpose is to induce hearty laughter.” Tis definition may be fine as a statement about circus clowns. Yet it eels too narrow in ocus when we reflect on the Clown rom a psychological perspective, or the Clown can also be considered an a n expression o the rickster who provides orm or disruptive and integrative archetypal energies or the individual and the collective. As Jungg posits, “Te trickster is a collective shadow figure, a summation o Jun o all the inerior traits o character in individuals” (1954/1968, CW 9i, ¶484). Clowns have been traced as ar back as Egypt’s Old Kingdom Fih Dynasty, some 4,500 years ago. Nearly 4,000 years ago one o China’ China’s rulers filled fi lled his court with clowns. Many o his successors continued the tradition. YuSze YuSze was a jester in the Chinese Imperial Court in 300 BCE and is remembered as saving thousands o lives when he teased the Emperor out o having the “other” side o the Great Wall whitewashed, thus preventing the death o multitudes (International Clown Hall o Fame). In addition to these clown figures who served in ancient royal courts, organized clown societies have served socio-religious unctions or their communities. Lucille Hoerr Charles identifies our such societies known to have existed: “. . . the Mimes o early Greece; Greece ; the Joyous Societies o the fieenth and sixteenth centuries centuries in France and the Commedia dell’Arte dell’Arte o the same period in Italy; and the Pueblo Indian clown societies” (1945, 30). Tese clown societies were stable institutions institutions ulfilling a cultural psychological need (30). Te Navaho, Pueblo, Hopi, Hopi, and Zuni peoples all a ll had ritual clowns who served an an essential role in social and sacred ceremonies through both crossing and maintaining
Jungg Jou Jun Journ rnal: al: Cult Cultur uree & Ps Psych yche, e, Volu Volume me 4, Num umber ber 1, pp. 50– 50–71, 71, ISSN 193 1934-2 4-2039 039,, e-ISSN e-ISSN 193 1934-2 4-204 047. 7. © 2010 Virginia Allan Detloff Library, C.G. Jung Jung Institute Institute o San Francisco. All rights reserved. reser ved. Please direct all requests or permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through through the University o
Michael Bala, Te Clown
boundaries. In doing so, the clowns anchored the ceremonies in the immediate today experience o the people (30). Charles presents an example o a Zuni clown perormance observed in the early 1900s: Each man endeavors to excel his ellows in buffoonery and in eating repulsive things, such as bits o old blanket or splinters o wood. Tey bite off the heads o living mice and chew them, tear dogs rom limb to limb, eat the intestines and fight over the liver like hungry wolves. . . . Te one who swallows the largest amount o filth with the greatest gusto is most commended by the raternity and onlookers. A large bowl o urine is handed by a Koyemshi, who receives it rom a woman on the housetop, to a man in the raternity, who, aer drinking a portion, pours the remainder over himsel by turning the bowl over his head. Women run to the edge o the roo and empty urine over the Newekwe and Koyemshi. (30)
Across cultures, clowns have served their communities in various ways. Te Balinese puppet theater has a prominent clown figure (Charles 1945, 27), as do traditional Javanese Ja vanese puppet theater theater and cont contemporary emporary Javanese Javanese perormances perormances (Handelman 1987, 549). In Siberia, the Ostyak people have clowns who make un o the ruling authorities (Charles 1945, 27). Te Ashanti people o Arica tell stories with passages that poke un un at their gods, ancestors, ancestors, and and the commu community’ nity’ss sexual sexual taboos (Charl (Charles es 1945, 29; Windingg 2007, 3). Zen Maste Windin Masters rs use koans to invite reflection on absurdity (Hyers 1970, 3). In a more contemporary American vein, there are Howdy Doody, Clarabelle, and Ronald McDonald. wo recent television clown characters, Homey the Clown rom and Krusty the Klown rom Te Simpsons, have each uttered uncom In Living Color and ortable truths rom behind their clown veneers o mean-spiritedness (Heimann 2002, 12). Whether selling burgers, challenging religious truths, saving lives, or seemingly just entertaining us, the clown has perormed many unctions or his 2culture. My approach to the clown is a motley one. Befitting the clown, this word o unknown origin is defined as “diversified in colour; variegated; particoloured; chequered,” “a ool’s dress,” “composed o elements o diverse or varied character,” “ varying in character or mood; changeable in orm,” and “an incongruous mixture.” 3 Garbed in his motley, the clown signals that something out o the ordinary is at hand. Might we allow ourselves to take in—and be taken in—by in—by the clown? We We would also be wise also to keep an eye on the Clown: as a near relative to the Fool, the Jester, and the rickster, this motley character has light and dark aspects. As we keep an eye upon him, let us also keep our collective nose at the ready to sniff out what resides in and emanat emanates es rom the Clown’s realms—humor and play, order and disorder, the sacred and the proane.
Humor and Play as Carriers of ranscendence In his 1927 paper entitled “Humour,” Freud tells us there is dignity in humor. “Humor
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compulsion to suffer” (1927/1950, 163). Humor “. . . is a rare and precious gi . . .” (166). Freud views humor as a deense mechanism, in which the superego unctions in a “riendlier” manner, a process o gaining ga ining mastery o one’s imperections imperections through a lighter touch. O imperection, Jung Jung writes in Answer to Job, “ imperfectum carries with it the seeds o its own improvement” (1952/1958, CW 11, ¶620). In her Introduction to Jung on Active Imagination, Joan Chodorow explores the interaction interact ion between play and imagination: Te great joy o play, antasy and the imagination is that or a time we are utterly spontaneous, ree to imagine anything. In such a state o pure being, b eing, no thought is “unthink“unthinkable.” Nothing is “unimaginable.” Tat is why play and imagination tends to put us in touch with material that is ordinarily repressed. In the spontaneous dramatic play o childhood, upsetting lie experiences are enacted symbolically, but this time the child is in control. (1997, 5)
Chodorow tells the story o Jung’s Jung’s finding a way to cope with and survive the internal conusion and suffering he experienced aer his break rom Freud, not through humor but through a orm o play that he termed active imagination. Jung recalled his childhood play and began to translate his emotions into images and to give those images symbolic expression through dialogues with emergent figures, as well as through painting and other orms o artistic expression. Virtually all o Jun Jung’s g’s ideas and the concepts that comprise analytical psychology emerged rom these active imagination experiences. Perhaps Perh aps it was this experience that prompted Jung to write, fiy years beore Winnicott explored the essential nature o play, Every good idea and all creative work are the offspring o the imagination Every imagination,, and have their source in what one is pleased to call inantile antasy. Not the artist alone, but every creative individual whatsoever owes all that is greatest in his lie to antasy. Te dynamic principle o antasy antasy is play, a characteristic also o the child, and as such it appears inconsistent with the principle o serious work. But without this playing with antasy no creative work has ever come to birth. Te debt we owe to the play o imaginatio imag ination n is incalculable. (1921/1971, CW 6, ¶93)
I wonder why Jung wrote so little about humor. In contrast to Freud, was he drawn by a more serious orm o play, that o a psyche seeking wholeness, based on his own experiences o his soul’s soul’s deep suffering? suffering ? Jung notes the importance o humor or when “. . . people lack the necessary humour, or else it ails them . . . they are seized by a sort o pathos, everything seems pregnant with meaning and all effective sel-criticism is checked” (1928/1969, CW 7, ¶262). Jung highlights the importance o humor when he considers the effect o its absence. Howeve However, r, might the dearth dear th o attention to humor in Jungian scholarship suggest it has been undervalued, even suspect or shadowy, or
Michael Bala, Te Clown I am in the second-floor master bedroom suite suite of my solidly built home. I hear noises down stairs.. As I approach the open door to the hallway, I hear sounds of footsteps, of someone stairs bounding up the stairs. Standing there watching, I see a black figure, like someone in a fullbody stocking. Yet I can make out every one of his features. As he runs past the doorway, he looks in and our eyes meet for a split second. Smiling at me, he runs right out the sidewall of the house and is gone. I know in that instant who he is. He is Joyful Abandon!
While humor may unction deensively, deensively, it can also be a unction o the Sel that embraces suffering and transorms it. Where Freud saw humor in service o the ego, Jungians might view some orms orms o humor as expressions o an ego moved by the Sel: “. . . ego stands to the sel as moved to the mover” (Jung 1942/1954/1958, CW 11, ¶391). Whether moved or unmoved, we do well to remember not all humor is experienced as playful and and not all play can be called humorous. 4 How might the suffering ego use humor and play to ace and transorm suffering in service ser vice o individuation? Te Clown, by evoking laughter, can serve as a bridge uniting neglected, enshadowed, and unconscious elements elements with prevailing conscious attitudes through the vehicle o his antics, his dress, and his personality. In “Te Clown’s Function,” Lucile Hoerr Charles describes laughter as being “one o the purest and most spontaneous expressions o the sudden happiness o release, o rebirth into consciousness and acceptance o an element needed or personal balance and progress” (1945, 32). Ladson Hinton, in “Humor and the ranscendent Function,” relates humor “to the creative activity o the Sel, the transcendent unction . . .” (1978, 22). Humor as a vehicle or the transcendent unction seeks to hold conflict and tension long enough to allow the emergence o an unexpected resolution resolution—usually —usually accompanied by a release o locked up energies. Hinton also notes that “in the Jungian tradition, the Winnebago trickster myth is about the only context in which laughter and humor are prominent” (27). However, in Te rickster, Paul Radin maintains, “Laughter, humour and irony permeate everything trickster does. Te reaction o his audience in aboriginal societies to both him and his exploits is prevailingly one o laughter tempered by awe” (1956, x). Rather than toward the outright laughter o the Winnebagos’ to the trickster’s antics, Jung’s attention is drawn more to “the alchemical figure o Mercurius . . . [with] his ondness or sly jokes and malicious pranks . . .” (1954/1968, CW 9i ¶456; Radin 1956, 195). rickster energy is expansive enough to take many different orms and one orm is the Clown. Individuation ion and Narcissism: Te Psycho Psycholog logyy of Self Mario Jacoby, in his book Individuat in Jung and Kohut (1990), posits that humor and creativity, along with empathy and wisdom, are archetypal patterns that lie dormant in our psyches awaiting development. Jacoby Jacoby views the development o humor as an essential and necessar y quality or healthy human experience. Jacoby points to the figure o the Fool as a key image or
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o individuation. Extending Jacoby’s ideas, I suggest that conscious humor, as in conscious clowning, serves the individual’s and the the culture’s need to ace, survive, and to throw off what can eel like the deadening cloak o our existential eelings o humiliation because o our many human imperections. In Te Witch and the Clown: wo Archetypes of Human Sexuality (1987), Ann and Barry Ulanov ocus on a set o men who operate in unconsciously deensive, deensive, clownish ways. Nevertheless, their clowning may be b e redemptive by allowing an improved relationship with the anima—the eminine in man seeking expression, perhaps through the arts. Te Kleinian “good-breast,” the Winnicottian “good-enough holding environment,” or the Bionian “container/contained,” when not adequately experienced in lie, may be ound in what the Ulanovs call “the holding arts”—arts that encourage ambivalence and polyvalence. Multiple meanings emerging rom previously undeveloped aspects o one’s personality can then be discovered and integrated. Te Ulanovs explore this animating unction unction o the holding arts: ar ts: “. . . instead o being identified with all those parts in a persona compulsion, the clown-man clown-man knows in his own ego, however small, ree access to his great gallery o parts” (1987, 263). When the ego allows itsel to note this and to note that and in turn begins to feel this and then to feel that, a symbolic, enriching anima experience begins beg ins to develop de velop that mediates the clown-man’s rigrig idly avoidant behavior. For me, the holding art was clowning. Trough a conscious clowning, I played with my distress and allowed it movement, so that some transormation transormation in my psyche might occur. Te Ulanovs cite William Makepeace Tackeray, “. . . clowning is a part not an evasion o parts, pa rts, a thread o color that lights up and gives defining texture to the whole abric o identity” identity” (1987, 286). 286) . Donald Winnicott believes that “it is in in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the sel” sel ” (1971, 54). Without Without good-enough ego-relatedness developed through through play,, the inant/child may be unable to operate play operate rom a “true-sel.” “true-sel.” From a Jungian Jungian perspective, creative play may then be understood as a orm o Ego-Sel dialogue promoting individuation.
“Clowns Work as well as Aspirin, but wice as Fast”5 Our bodies and a nd our psyches respond positively to humor and play. Te ancients knew that humor healed; or instance, one proverb rom the Old estament is “A cheerul heart is good medicine” (Proverbs (Prov.) 17:226). Somewhat more recently, in 1979, Norman Cousins described in Anatomy of An Illness as Percei how Perceived ved by the Patient how he believed he cured himsel o a debilitating illness by laughing aloud while watching
Michael Bala, Te Clown
Even contemporary neuroscience has gotten in on the act! Even act ! Laughter decreases stress, and stress stimulates the production o cortisol, an adrenal hormone (Nauert 2008). o have a sense o what cortisol does, think o your body’s fight or flight response to either real or perceived danger. Also, in response to laughter, laughter, our bodies produce painrelieving endorphins, returning the body to a more relaxed state. A ull belly laugh increases the production o -cells and intere intereron, ron, a protein in the body b ody that may propro tect us rom viruses, parasites, and cancer (Purcell 2006). Even the anticipation o laughter raises betaendorphins and human growth hormone, as well as significantly decreases cortisol and epinephrine (adrenaline) (Nauert 2008). Recent research published in Te Journal of Neuroscience reports that laughter is contagious (Nauert 2006). Our brains respond by priming us to smile and to laugh by mirroring the behavior o others. From From a neuroscience perspective, we learn that humor and laughter promote a healthier body as well as enriched emotional unctioning. Maybe laughter is the best medicine aer all—or the individual and or the culture at large. In act, an Israeli university is taking the notion that laughter is the best Patch atch Adams, which told the story o a phymedicine seriously. Inspired Inspired by the movie P sician who believed humor needed to play p lay a greater role in patient care, the University University o Haia has set up a Bachelor o Arts degree in medical clowning (Malaysian Medical Resources)! Te capacity o trained clowns to communicate communicate emotion nonverbally has also been b een used to train nurses to better b etter understand the experience experience o children in pediatric ped iatric units. A cadre o “teaching” clowns rom the Big Apple Circus was brought in to New York University, Univ ersity, College o Nursing. What the clowns taught and the nurses sought s ought to learn was how to better read their audience, in a sense how to take the emotional emotional pulse o people who do not or cannot speak (Haberm (Haberman an 2008).
Te Fool and the Jester wo o the clown’s ancestors are the Fool and the Jester.. An early incarnat Jester incarnation ion o the Fool is as the Fool card in tarot. Te Fool card is unnumbered and as such holds an ambiguous place in tarot as either the lowest or the highest aspect (Little 1999)—the alpha or the omega (Kaminski). Te Fool is usually depicted as dressed in a colorul or clownish ashion, his possessions tied in a bag at the end o a walking stick he carries over
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He might be a traveler, an entertainer o children, a simple-minded or uncomplicated person without money, status, power, or intellect. Yet, the Fool can be the one who, being an outsider and having little power, presents presents the unseen possibility or expresses the unthinkable thoughts; the Fool “speaks” o proound truth sometimes clearly and plainly, sometimes in mythic or poetic ashion, and sometimes in language that at first seems to be nonsense. Te Fool represents “the “the every person” who is on a journey o sel-discovery (Kaminski). He is the innocent standing at a precipice either about to all in or ready to take a leap o aith a ith (Wikipedia contribu contributors). tors). He has within him an “inne “innerr sage, sag e,” with an intuition intuit ion he can ollow when he attunes to the inner workings o the world—to meaning (Kaminski). While other cards in tarot might represent aspects o the questioner or situationss in the world, the Fool card is said to always represent the questioner’s uation questioner’s core emergent sel, oen in a very ver y embodied or lived way (Aeclectic arot). arot). Enid Welsord in her o-cited 1935 book, Te Fool: His Social and Literary History, writes, Te Fool or clown is the Comic man, but his is not necessarily the hero o comedy, the central figure about whom the story is told, nor is he a mere figure o poetic imagination whom the final drop-curtain drop-curtain consigns consigns to oblivion . . . As a dram dramati aticc character character he usu usually ally stands apart rom the main action o the play, having a tendency not to ocus but to dissolve events, and so to act as an intermediary . . . As an historical figure he does not confine his activities to the theater but makes everyday lie comic on the spot. Te Fool, in act, is an amphibian, equally at home in the world o reality and the world o imagination. (3)
Shakespeare, in King Lear, provides us with a Fool who acts as an intermediary. According to James Kirsch, the “theme o King Lear is is transormation and redemption” (1961, 27). Te aged Lear abdicates his throne with a plan to divide his realm among his three daughters. One daughter, Cordelia, neither accepts this plan nor does d oes she flatter Lear as do her sisters. In turn, Lear breaks with Cordelia. Te Fool’s Fool’s role is to point out to Lear how unconscious unconscious he has been. Te Fool shows Lear aspects which the King has not considered or has overlooked altogether. altogether. Te King begins b egins to realize the unortunate situation he has created with his abdication. Te Fool, like a knie, opens up the Unconscious and starts the healing process in Lear—healing in the sense o making whole. (Kirsch 1961, 32)
In King Lear, Shakespeare employs the Fool judiciously as a speaker o proound truth. Te Fool exerts much authority by expressing the other side o things. In the ollowing bit o dramatic dialogue at the end o Act I, the Fool orceully challenges Lear’s lack o comprehension: Fool: Canst tell me how an oyster makes his shell? Lear: No . . .
Michael Bala, Te Clown Fool: Why, to put his head in; not to give it away to his daughters, and leave his horns without a case. case. ... Fool: I thou wert my Fool nuncle, I’d have thee beaten or being old beore thy time . . . Tou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise. (Scene V, lines 25–32, 42–43)
“In Shakespeare, the role o the ool is crucial as a countervailing orce against king or rich man, or against power or convention in almost any orm” (Ulanov and Ulanov 1980, 7). Tereore, Lear’ Lear ’s Fool provides the ruling orce or dominant personality with a redressing or not being wise, or being so unconscious. Te Fool is the enemy o boundaries. William Willeord cites Karl Kerenyi, who “describes the trickster, a special orm o the Fool (with attributes o the Promethean culture hero) as the spirit of disorder, the enemy of boundaries ”(1969, 185). According to Kerenyi, the trickster’s “unction in an archaic society, or rather the unction o his mythologyy . . . is to add disorder og d isorder to what is order and so make a whole, to render render possible, within the fixed bounds o what is permitted, an experience o what is not permitted” (132–133).
Clowns and the Sacred Te clown serves many unctions: the political as in King Lear, the psychological as Jungg and Radin note, and the cultural as expressed in contem Jun contemporary porary media. media . Te Clown also serves religious unctions. According to Andrew Samuels and his colleagues in A Critical Dictionary of Jun gian Analysis, Jung viewed religion as an attitude o the mind, a careul consideration and observation in relation to certain “powers”; spirits, demons, gods, laws ideals—or, indeed an attitude toward whatever impressed a person sufficiently sufficiently so that he is moved to worship, obedience, reverence and love. (1986, 130)
Edward Edinger traces Jung’s use o the words “religion” and “religious” back to two root words. Religare means to tie or bind back to some earlier state o being. Te other root word, religere, has a much older usage and means to take into careul account. I pose that the Clown archetype carries a religious unction in that it both relates back to an earlier chaotic state o being and takes into careul account the oibles o mankind (1996, 35). In “On the Psychology o the rickster-Figure,” Jung traces the development o the god o the Old estament—a tricksterish, tricksterish, daemonic character, who indulged in the unpredictable behavior o the trickster, o his senseless orgies o destruction and selimposed sufferings, together with the same gradual development into a savior and his simul-
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Te Clown, through his ribald antics, expresses the rickster’ rickster’ss compensatory and transormational unctions or saintly propriety. David Miller, in Christs: Meditations on Archetypal Images in Christian Teology (1981), traces a lineage o Christ as a holy ool oo l rom the mythologies o Dionysus, Pan, Pan, Hermes, Her mes, Silenos, and Polyphemos and up through more modern characters rom writers such as Joyce, Genet, Vonnegut, Vonnegut, and Greene. Miller presents Christ, in part, as representing resenti ng the imperect man needing to be b e sacrificed as a higher calling ca lling toward greater consciousness. He sees the Clown in Christ and Christ in the Clown. In looking at Christology and linking this study to the earlier myths, Miller brings our attention to Christ as Shepherd and the shepherding clown as a maniestat maniestation ion o this Christ: Te clown shepherds our sense o imperection with his humor, a humor never lacking in the strie known to warring brothers, in the eel o the monstrous and grotesque, in a comic vision that sees through tragic blindness, and in a down-to-earth physical sensuality. (1981, 48)
Miller’s nose is on the scent o something. In his nosing about, he points us to the clown’s red nose smack dab in the middle o a stark white ace. Alchemy is in the mix. Red Re d noses have been blackened as the tramp clown figure emerged in the twentieth century with Emmett Kelly and became more “na “naturalistic” turalistic” with W. W. C. Fields and Jimmy Jim my Durante. Te red o the rubedo, the black o the nigredo, and the white o the albedo speak to old alchemical processes, ancient clown aces, as well as Christian imagery. Tere is something in the air and the Clown Clown’’s task is to rub our noses in it! Midori Snyder, in the Journal of Myth Mythic ic Arts (2007), traces the history o the clown rom ancient Greek theater to the not-quite-contemporary Groucho Marx. Snyder describes the clown’s clown’s religious relig ious unction, connecting us to a power greater than our sel: Te chorus o clowns rips apart polite society and in that act exposes our true eelings. In his joyul disorder disorder,, we remember primal emotions: we lust, we become envious and jealous, we are starved or affection and ame, and we long or an illusive trouble-ree hap piness. We We would rather sleep than work; we are clever and undeniably oolish at times. Wee are complicated, conflicted and no single character can carry the weight o so many W inconsistencies. We need a chorus o clowns to speak or us. Despite their secular natures, clowns are mythic . . . Humor is an old response to ear o the unknown and contempt or the amiliar. For 3000 years, somewhere a chorus o clowns has misbehaved, and in their audacity, audacity, called down the gods, heroes, and legends leg ends or a ace-to-ace meeting with humanity, offering laughter as a orm o reverence. (2007, 5)
Te clown is always concerned with something that that is embarrassing, embarrassing , shocking, and astonishing. He maintains an intim intimate ate relationship to the improper, to the personally and culturally taboo. Many Native American tribes have sacred clown figures who
Michael Bala, Te Clown
the seriousness o the event; paradoxically his opposition highlights the important cultural values being expressed (Charles 1945, 32). Tese figures teach a tolerance through disruption and mocking o serious sacred ritual. Tey remind the community that the world came into being rom chaos and that disorder can occur at any time in the orm o illness, lack o rain, disappearance d isappearance o the herds, or the arrival o other more powerul peoples.
Te Clown and the Lord of Disorder Lest we all too much in love with the endearing comic clown, we must also consider how he is associated with the Lord o Disorder. Te clown is at heart a misfit. He is a social outcast who dresses in disreputable d isreputable attire. attire. Te clown’s clown’s motley dress d ress does not just reflect economic injustice or deprivation. Rather, it is careully chosen deliberately to challenge convention, convention, debunking status and order by standing outside conve convention. ntion. Te clown breaks taboos and receives both praise and punishment or doing so. He offers himsel or the hostility o the audience as his art becomes greater when he gives up his dignity. Te clown’s marginality, his accepting rejection and rejecting acceptance, finds its roots in religious oundations. Te clown stands outside o human order. He is in the service o the power that is the declared enemy o well-behaved and organized society. Te clown stands outside o decorum, propriety, and society’s censure. His guiding orce is the Lord o Disorder, as the devil was called in medieval times. Yet, through his antics, with his masked ace, the clown points out, even i his point remains unrecognized, that there is no separate Lord o Disorder. Rather, it is through ridiculing the presumptuous attitudes o humankind that the Clown, as advocatus diaboli, points to the ultimately uncontestable uncontestable majesty o God—as Go d—as both the Lord o Disorder and the Lord o Order are coexisting co existing mythic personifications personifications o deep archetypal energies.
Te Passing of the Clown? Generally, the clown silently expresses himsel through irrational play. However, when he does speak, his speech is oen so exaggerated that he mockingly turns language inside out. In Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1954), the character Lucky voices exGodo t (1954), aggerated agg erated and ormalistic speech that is directed against language languag e itsel. Lucky is finally reduced by an unseen orce so that he reverts to beast-like speechlessness (Zucker 1967). In a similar vein, Eva Metman puts orth that Lucky deserves his name because he has a master who, however cruelly, organizes his lie or him. Once, we are told, Lucky could, by dancing and thinking, amuse and inspire Pozzo; but his spark o spontaneity spontaneity has died; died ; o his original dancing nothing is le but a
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Trough the figure o the clown, Jung presents us with his understanding o the rickster’s continuing relevance because the figure continues to receive energy “rom sources in the unconsciousness which are not yet exhausted.” Yet Jung also speaks o the rickster’ rickster’ss decline: d ecline: “the trickster obviously represents a vanishing level o consciousness which increasingly lacks the power to take [ sic.] express express and assert itsel ”(1954/1968, CW 9i, ¶474). I wonder i the rickster, as Clown, might be undergoing some transormation ormat ion in our contemporary experience. Who are our Fools, Fools, our jesters, and today’ today’ss chorus o clowns? clowns? Tey are the standup comedians, comic actors, and late-night talk show hosts. Although these personalities serve a powerul cultural role, they express a orced artificiality. Tey have devolved rom the embodied Fool/Jester/Clown unctions, turning instead to cerebral word play that is so much in keeping with our collective colle ctive flirting with depth, which is ironically an avoidance o a deep inner world. In “Te Death o the Clown: A Loss o Wits in the Postmodern Moment” Moment” (1975), David L. Miller inorms us the clown is dead. dead . He posits that with the coming o the age ag e o reason by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—the centuries—the so-called age a ge o enlightenenlig htenment—came a proound split in culture and in our psyches when we lost our wits. In the twelh century, man was understood to have five wits: “(1) phantasy or common sense, (2) imagination, (3) imaginative or cognitive virtue, (4) estimative ability, and (5) memoria and reminiscence” (1975, 75). By the sixteenth century, century, these wits transormed into the more rational five senses. In the seventeenth century, century, our wits became b ecame the singular—wit. It (wit) became defined as reason (reason rather than sensation, sensation, intelligibility rather than sensibility, thinking without embodiment). Further, wit came to be viewed as an inerior orm o reason and intellect, hence finally unnecessary unnecessary and undesirable, except at parties. Wits became wit, and then then wit became mere cleverness. cleverness. (1975, 76)
We all may have We have had such an understanding, understanding, whether proessionally or or personally, personally, that an excess o intellect and reason can be deadly. What is oen needed is anima’s multiplicity o eeling, especially some good humor. Don’t Don ’t Shoot the Clowns!
Not everyone loves the clown. With their masked aces, strange clothing, and unpredictable behavior, clowns have instilled ear in many. In act, the term coulrophobia is defined as a persistent, abnormal, and irrational ear o clowns. Te phobia-inducing experience may have come about through childhood trauma related to mass media images o clowns: Clarabelle rom the Hoody Doody Doody Show or the own Clown on the Captain Kangaroo Show, or through movie depictions o evil clowns as in the movie
Michael Bala, Te Clown
A recent study conducted by the University o Sheffield in England ound that clown images were scary to many children aged our to sixteen. Te children ound clowns to be rightening and unknowable. Commenting on this research, Patricia Doorbar, a Welsh child psychologist, reflects that clowns come rom a different era, resulting in children’s unamiliarity with them (BBC News 2008). Is the Clown dead? Rather R ather than considering considering the Clown dead, or archetypal images can lose their vitality over time as consciousness emerges, perhaps the Clown has resubmerged into the collective unconscious or a uture rebirth. Or maybe he is starting to make his ordering and disordering energies elt in new, more personal ways. Don’t’t Shoot As I was writing this article, I came across a powerul book entitled, Don Wilding , tells the Clowns: aking a Circus to the Children of Iraq (2006). Te author, Jo Wilding o her experiences in bringing clowning to children in the midst o war: A tank blocked the way ahead and no-one dared sneak past its twitching gun. An ambulance behind screamed in the mire, emergency having lost lost all meaning in the encompassing trauma. A skinny, ragged child moved between the cars, offering newspapers, chewing gum, sweets, toilet paper, growing old as the minutes passed. Suddenly his sunke sunken n eyes swiveled back, new lie amid the lethargy, to confirm what they thought they had seen. Te man in the car took another ping-pong ball rom his mouth. And another. Te boy started to smile, to giggle, gigg le, to laugh out loud. He called to other children, who abandoned their columns o cars to come and look. Another man in the car took a cloth rom his pocket and made it vanish. A woman began pulling improbable aces and the children, ch ildren, a small crowd o them now, reciprocated. (2006, 11)
Whenever I orget org et that playulness and humor can activate libido, I hope I recall this passagee as it speaks so poignantly passag poig nantly o the power o play and clowning. clowning.
Clowning Around What in my person personal al expe experien rience ce led me to clow clowning ning arou around? nd? Sim Simply ply stat stated, ed, it was a deeply elt need to play. It was a deeply repressed need to play. Repressed material retains great potency poten cy,, as “. . . repr repressed essed contents contents are the very ones that have the best chance at sur vival,, as we know rom experience vival experience that that nothing nothing is corr corrected ected in the unconscious unconscious”” ( Ju Jung ng 1954/1968, CW 9i, ¶474). I needed, in a Winnicottian-childlike way, to learn to use both my body and my mind creatively. Such a ree exploration was unavailable to me rom childhood onward. My internal internal deenses were firmly in place as anything more than a modicum o independence in thought and especially in behavior were experienced in my amily as threats. I developed a fal false se self self —a perso persona na presentation as somewhat accom plished and and successul successul even as my inn inner er imaginal imaginal lie remai remained ned limp limp and withe withered. red. Tought had become a maintainer o boundaries. I had to act, and action in the
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School.” On this notice was a clown ace whose expression was ambiguous. School.” ambig uous. I intuitively knew I had ound something my soul needed. I entered into a study o clowning. During this period o study—which I have come to understand as being one o a multi-year active imagination—I developed, discarded, modified, assembled, disassembled, and reassembled various clown personalities until a particular character emerged. His name is Buster-Bag-O-Wind. For a while, he was Buster Bag-O-Nuts. However, my clown colleagues convinced me to change his name, as “Bag-O-Nuts” seemed too sexually provocative. Yet the name made little difference: In Te Fool and His Scepter, William Willeord notes the English word “ool” comes follies, s, meaning “bellows or windbag,” and “buffoon” comes rom the rom the Latin follie Italian buffare, which means “to blow” as well as meaning “scrotum,” “balls,” and “silly pretension prete nsion”” (1969, 20–21). Our term “clown” “clown” comes rom sixteen sixteenth-ce th-century ntury English, meaning “clod,” “clot,” and “lump.” In Te Encyclopedia of Religion Handelman writes, Put together, clown, clod, and clot connote connote an entity that is unfinished or incomplete in its internal organization: one that hangs together in a loose and clumsy way. Te clown is lumpish in its imperect—but congealing and adhering—usion o attributes. (1987, 547)
Tereore, despite a seeming acquiescence to the collective co llective demand, Buster, Buster, in true subversive clown ashion, remained aithul to an important aspect o his personality: knowing that a bag o wind is a related variation o a bag o nuts, and all o that could also be cloddish and lumpen. Whilee that Whil that you young ng boy boy in Ir Iraq aq sold sold toil toilet et paper paper to survi survive ve (Wildi (Wilding ng 2006) 2006),, Bust Buster er dis toilet paper to be an enchanted object. Not unlike a two-year old child who disco�ered toilet covers and takes such pleasure in unrolling toilet paper rom its dispenser, Buster ound that toilet paper, as a newly discovered object, could have a mind of its own. As with the enchantment o brooms by the curious but unconscious apprentice portrayed in Te Sorcerer’s Apprentice segment o the Disney film F Fant antasia asia (1940), Buster ound toilet paper could move about on its own. When Buster picked up this new thing, a seemingly inert object, it took flight, soaring through the air with ease. Playully flying rom Buster’s hands and alternately rolling around on the ground, toilet paper explored space and place to Buster’s engaged amazement. Yet, as always, the inevitable happened. oilet paper experienced the impingements o riction and gravity and the constrictions o being pursued and grabbed at. Ten it suddenly and demonically changed its nature. It began to wrap itsel around his body as a boa constrictor might. In this first magically charged meeting withh toilet wit toilet paper, paper, Bust Buster er had an experi experienc encee filled with with wonder, wonder, awe, awe, joy joy, and delight, delight, olollowed by awareness o things having gone g one awry, becoming filled with terror, and finally the success o reeing himsel through his own strength and ingenuity. Buster came to experience the all-too-human emotions o joy and ear—o emerging consciousness.
Michael Bala, Te Clown
with the internalized internalized and entrenched entrenched orces o propriety. propriety. I came to to play with and then then understand that psyche has many, many parts. Not every part is desirable. Some are ugly, oafish, lumpen, and stupid. Tese are the very aspects o mysel that rushed or ward once the invit invitation ation was made. Hav Having ing Buster to enact, in play play,, enabled me to integrate some o what I had not been able to live or to accept. Trough this active imagination, my ego stepped aside so that it could participate par ticipate with the material material emerging rom the unconscious. Te ego did more than observe: it began to structure the material, providing cohesion, lest it all be vaporous silliness that did not transorm but merely entertained in a very ver y temporary manner manner.. Trough Buster, I have come into contact with the oh-so-human archetypal pattern o the rickster as Clown. I have come to view Buster as an emergent Sel-figure o personal psychological growth and development. I offer Buster—or rather Buster offers himsel—as an example or the collective, which seems so much in need o buoonery—buffoonery that seeks seek s to communic communicate ate something about humankin humankind’ d’ss inherent experience o the ongoing tension and conflict between order and disorder. ��������
1. In the text, there are instances when the words “clown,” “ool,” “jester,” and “trickster” are capitalized and there are instances when the words are not. When the word reers to an archetype or is the name o a character, character, it is capitalized. When the word is used in an ordinary sense, it is not capitalized. 2. Although both emale and eminine clowns are ound in a broad range o cultures, here I present the clown primarily as masculine, albeit ambiguously masculine. Oen, the energies expressed through through the clown archetype are beore and beyond gender identific identifications. ations. 3. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Ed., s.v. motley. Absorbing bing play, as in active imagination, or example, is 4. I do not view all play as humorous. Absor requently solitary and oen has a serious tone when one is engaged in a deeply personal process. Silly play, which tends to evoke laughter, usually requires another to witness and respond, as when a clown perorms. Competitive play, as with physical games or multiperson verbal exchanges, may employ humor although it may not involve mutual laughter. 5. Groucho Marx as quoted in Balick (2003, ( 2003, 90) and Heimann (2002, 129). 6. Biblical quotations are rom Te Holy Bible, Revised R evised Standard Edition. ����
Works of C. G. Jung are Reerences to Te Collected Works are cited in the text as CW, volume number, and paragraph number. number. Te Collected Works are published in English by Routledge (UK) and Princeton University Press (USA). ������������
Aeclectic arot. Te Fool: Meaning o the Fool tarot card. http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/ basics.ool.shtml basics.ool.sht ml (accessed Febru February ary 24, 2008).
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BBC News. 2008. Hospital clown images “too scary,” January 15. http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/ mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co mpapps/pagetools /print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/71 .uk/2/hi/health/7189401.st 89401.stm. m. Beckett, Samuel. 1954. Waiting for Godot. London: Faber & Faber Ltd. Charles, Lucille H. 1945. Te clown’s unction. Te Journal of American Folklore 58.227 ( Jan January–M uary–March): arch): 25–34. Jungg on active imagination imagination. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chodorow, Joan, ed. 1997. Jun Anatomy my of an illness as perceived by the patient: Reflections on healing healing Cousins, Norman. 1979. Anato and regeneration. regeneration. New York: York: Norton. Durwin, Joseph. 2004. Coulrophobia and the trickster. rickster’s Way 3.1 (November 15), http://www.trinity.edu/org/tricksters/trixway/cu http://www. trinity.edu/org/tricksters/trixway/current/V rrent/Vol%203/V ol%203/Vol3_1/Durwin.htm ol3_1/Durwin.htm (accessed November 1, 2007). Edinger, Edward. 1996. Te new God-image: A study of Jung’s key letters concerning the evolution of the western God-image. Wilmette, Il: Il : Chiron Publications. Fant F antasia. asia. 1940/2000. Screenplay by Joe Grant and Dick Huemer. Directed by James Algar, et al. Freud, Sigmund. 1927/1950. Humour. Te future of an illusion, civilization and its discontents, and other works. Vol. 21 o Te standard edition of the complete psychological works. rans. Joan Rivere. Ed. James Strachey Strachey.. London: Hogarth Press and the Inst Institute itute o PsychoAnalysis. Haberman, Clyde. 2008. eaching nurses the value o big red noses. Te New York imes, December 5, N.Y./Region, Western edition. Handelman, D. 1987. Clowns. In Te encyclopedia of religion. V Vol. ol. 3. Ed. M. Eliade. New York: York: MacMillan MacM illan Publishing. American clown. Koln, Heimann, Jim, ed. 2002. 1000 clowns more or less: A visual history of the American Germany: aschen. Hinton, Ladson. 1978. Humor and the transcendent unction. Paper presented at the Fih Annual Conerence o the Societies o Jungian Analysts o Northern and Southern Caliornia, March: 21–35. PhilosooHyers,, M. Conrad. 1970. Te ancient Zen masters as clown-figure and comic midwie. Philos Hyers phy East and West, West, 20.10: 3–18. International Clown Hall o Fame. A brie history o clowning. http://www.theclownmuseum .org/historyandtypes.php (accessed August 3, 2008). Individuation iduation and narcissism: narcissism: Te psychology of self self in Jung and Kohut. Kohut. Lon Jacoby, Jacob y, Mario Mario.. 1990. Indiv don: Routledge. Psychological logical types. CW 6. Jung, Jun g, C. G. 1921/1971. Psycho ———. 1928/1969. Te relations between the ego and the unconscious. wo essays on analytical psychology. CW 7. ———. 1942/1954/1958. ransormation symbolism in the mass. Psycholo Psychologg y and religion: West and east. CW 11. ———. 1952/1958. Answer to Job. Psychology and religion: West and east. CW 11. ———. 1954/1968. On the psychology o the trickster figure. Te archetypes of the collective unconscious. CW 9i. Kaminski, June. Te Fool tarot card: Meaning and analysis. BellaOn BellaOnline, line, http://www .bellaonline.com/articles/art24632.as .bellaonline.com/a rticles/art24632.aspp (accessed Februa February ry 24, 2007). Kirsch, James. 1961. King Lear as a play o redemptio re demption. n. Harvest 7: 7: 25–45. Little, om ador. 1999. Te history o the Fool card. Te Hermitage: arot History, http:// www.taro www .tarothermit.co thermit.com/ool.htm m/ool.htm (accessed (accessed December 13, 2007). Malaysian Malays ian Medical Resources. 2006. Medical clowning is now a degree, November 25. http:// www.Mala www .Malaysian ysian MedicalResources.org/ofeat MedicalResources.org/ofeatnews/palmdoc.ht news/palmdoc.html. ml.
Michael Bala, Te Clown Miller, David L. 1975. Te death o the clown: A loss o wits in the postmodern moment. Spring 58 (Fall): 69–82. ———. 1981. Christs: Meditations on archetypal images in Christian theology. New York: Te Seabury Press. Nauert, Rick. 2006. Is laughter contagious? PyschCentral, http://psychcentral.com/news/ 2006/12/13/is-laughter 2006/12/13/islaughter-contagious/475.ht -contagious/475.html ml (accessed April 8, 2008). PsychCentr entral, al, http://psychcentral ———. 2008. Anticipation o laughter protects health. PsychC .com/news/2008/04/08/anticipation-o.com/news/2008/04/08/an ticipation-o-laughter-p laughter-protects-health/212 rotects-health/2129.html 9.html (accessed April 8, 2008). PsychCentr entral, al, http://psychcentral.com/ Purcell, Maud. 2006. Te healing power o humor. PsychC lib/?p=437 (accessed June 30, 2008). Radin, Paul. 1956. Te trickster: A study in American Indian mythology. New York: Philosophical Library. dictionary of Jungian Jungian analysis. New York: Routledge. Samuels, Andrew, et al. 1986. A critical dictionary Shakespeare, William. 1952. King Lear . In Te Arden edition of the works of William Shake speare. Ed. Kenneth Muir. London: Methuen and Co. Journal al of Myst Mystic ic Snyder, Midori. 2007. A Chorus o clowns: Te roots o masked comic theater. Journ Arts (Winter), http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/rrclownchorus1.html (accessed August 21, 2008). �uadrant ant 13.4 Ulanov, Ann, and Barry Ulanov. 1980. Te clown archetype. �uadr 13.4 (Spring): 4–27. ———. 1987. Te witch and the clown: wo archetypes of human sexuality. Wilmette, Il: Chiron Press. Welsord, W elsord, Enid 1935/1961. Te Fool: His social and literary history. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. Wikipedia contr contributors. ibutors. Te Fool ( (arot arot Card). Wikipedia, Te Free Encyclopedia, http:// en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=he_Fool_(tarot_ en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=he_F ool_(tarot_card)&oldid=326315906 card)&oldid=326315906 (accessed February 24, 2008). Don’t’t shoot the clowns: aking the circus to the children of Ir Iraq. aq. Oxord, Wilding, Jo. 2006. Don England: En gland: New Internationalist Press. Willeord, William. 1969. Te Fool and his scepter: A study in clowns and jesters and their audience. Evanston, IL. Northwestern University Press. Journal al of Mythic Mythic Arts (Winter), http://www Winding, erri. erri. 2007. 2007. ricksters. ricksters. Journ http://www.endicott-s .endicott-studio tudio .com/rdrm/rrtricksters1.h .com/rdrm/rrt ricksters1.html tml (accessed August 3, 2008). reality. New York: Brunner-Routledge. Winnicott,, Donald W. Winnicott W. 1971. Playing and reality. wiseGEEK. What is coulrophobia? http://www http://www.wisegeek.com/what .wisegeek.com/what-is-coulrophobia.ht -is-coulrophobia.htm m (accessed September 4, 2008). Zucker, Wolgang. M. 1967. Te clown as the lord o disorder. Teology oday 24.3 (October): 306–317. http://theologytoday. http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/sear ptsem.edu/search/indexch/index-browse.ht browse.htm m (accessed Nove Novemmber 1, 2007). is a Marriage and Family Terapist (MF) with a private psychotherapy practice in San Francisco treating treating children, adolescents, and adults, employing sandtray, sandtray, dream work, and an d expressive arts. He is a candidate in analytic analy tic training train ing at the th e C. G. Jung Institute o San Francisco and is an assistant editor o the Jung Journal. Correspondence: 4326 Eighteenth Street, San Francisco, Francisco, CA 94114, email: michael@micha
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archetype, the Clown, as an expression o the rickster, carries and expresses bipolar energies o silliness/seriousness, play/work, hidden/known, creating/destroying, and order/disorder. Culturally and personally the clown serves many unctions. One o his unctions is as a carrier o the transcendent unction unction acilitating an Ego-Sel Ego -Sel axis. ��� �����
active imagination, imagination, archetype, Clown, Ego-Sel axis, a xis, the Fool, Freud, humor, humor, Jester, Jester, C. G. Jung, King Lear, laughter, play, Sel, Shakespeare, tarot, transcendent unction, rickster
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