The Female Trickster: The Mask That Reveals, Post-Jungian and Postmodern Psychological Perspectives on Women in Contemporary Culture »

Ricki Stefanie Tannen, L.L.M., Ph.D is an Analytical Psychologist, attorney, author, artist and former professor of women’s studies, law and rhetoric. She has published and lectured internationally on the subjects of gender bias, depth psychology and constitutional law.

The Female Trickster presents a Post-Jungian postmodern perspective regarding the role of women in contemporary Western society by investigating the re-emergence of female trickster energy in all aspects of popular culture.

Ricki Tannen explores the psychological aspects of what happened when women’s imagination was legally and psychologically enclosed millennia ago and demonstrates how the re-emergence of Trickster energy through the female imagination has the radical potential to effect a transformation of western consciousness. Examples are drawn from a diverse range of sources, from Jane Austen, and female sleuth narratives, to Madonna and Sex and the City, illustrating how Trickster energy is used not to maintain power and control but to integrate and unite the paradoxical through humour. Subjects covered include:

• imagination and metaphor
• the traditional trickster
• law and the imagination
• humour: Eros using logos
• the postmodern female trickster.

This highly original perspective on women's role in contemporary culture will offer readers a new vision of how humour psychologically operates as a healthy adaptation to trauma and adversity. It will be of great interest to all analytical psychologists and psychoanalysts as well as those in women's, cultural, legal and literary studies.

Preface     xi
Acknowledgments     xiii
Introducing the female Trickster     1
Introduction     3
Definitions     4
What is a Trickster and is the female Trickster really different?     7
How Trickster energy transforms culture through art     9
The fictive female sleuth as postmodern female Trickster     9
Notes     11
Meetings with remarkable women     12
Introduction     12
Jung and I: captured by a literary manifestation     12
Me and the girls     13
The postmodern female Trickster appears     23
Conclusion     26
Notes     26
Location, location, location     30
Introduction     30
Texts written by women and a feminist approach to text are not the same     30
Psychological considerations: research on the feminine     34
Jungian and post-Jungian perspectives on the feminine     41
Summary     50
Notes     51
Calling upon the ancestors     57
Imagination and metaphor     59
Introduction     59
Imagination and recovered memory: the numinous process of remembering     59
Shape-shifting and transformation in the imagined realm     60
Imagination     61
What has women's imagination produced?     66
Summary     70
Notes     71
Where have all the virgins gone?     72
Introduction     72
Mnemosyne, mistress of Eleutherian Hills     72
The pre-patriarchal virgin and today's virginal feminine presence     73
The pre-patriarchal virgin energy and Jungian feminism     75
Summary     75
Notes     76
Law and the imagination     78
Introduction     78
The enclosure     78
The importance of being: ancient Athens     79
The crumbling of the enclosure     82
Can law produce a nev archetype?     93
Summary     94
Notes     94
From the madwomen in the attic to mainstream and mysterious: a brief and highly selective history of literature and literary theory as it relates to the female Trickster     97
Introduction     97
The novel form and early women's literature in England and the United States     97
The importance of developments in the mid to late nineteenth century     105
The importance of being single and mysterious     107
The 1970s and women's literature     113
Jungian approaches to popular cultural forms     115
The psychological and the aesthetic attitudes     115
Problems with traditional Jungian literary criticism     118
Summary     119
Notes     119
Honoring the traditions     121
The traditional Trickster     123
Introduction     123
Traditional Trickster myths     124
Traditional Trickster as individuation myth     129
Other voices on the meaning of Trickster     130
Trickster as taboo transgressor     133
Enter Hermes     134
Conclusion: Trickster is humor     135
Notes     137
Humor: Eros using Logos     138
Introduction     138
Deep play     138
How and when in the developmental sequence does humor develop?     140
Psychoanalytic approaches to humor     145
A brief gallop through humor's pasture     148
Summary     151
Notes     152
Re/storation     153
Women are funny     155
Introduction: is there a female sense of humor?     155
An example of a postmodern female Trickster     155
Differences between male and female humor     156
What is a feminist comic sensibility?     161
Psychological considerations     162
A woman with a sense of humor is dangerous     163
Anger     167
Women writing redux: women writing funny     167
Conclusion     173
Notes     174
The postmodern female Trickster     176
Introduction     176
Reconsidering what Trickster signifies     177
Refusal to be a victim     179
The postmodern female Trickster as social worker     181
Status within a culture     187
Sex and pro/creativity     188
Kinsey as quintessential Trickster or how to deal with the tough stuff through humor     192
Ethics and the postmodern female Trickster     196
Summary     200
Notes     201
Blanche White, re/storation agent     203
Introduction     203
Introducing Blanche White: re/storation agent     204
Blanche's ancestry     219
Conclusion     223
Notes     223
New sightings, Sex and the City     225
Introduction     225
Sex and the City     225
The serious nature of being: Sex and the City     233
Other Trickster sightings     237
Conclusion     238
Notes     239
Conclusion: the divine comedy of being     240
Introduction     240
Individuation     241
Does literature have the radical potential to change imagination into reality?     244
Is mainstream culture capable of adopting the humor sassitude found in out-group humor?     245
Ethics and the postmodern female Trickster     246
Recent sightings or just another first wave?     249
Conclusion     251
Notes     252
Bibliography     253
Index     268