The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology

2024 Reprint of the 1956 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. The trickster myth, which is the basis of this scientific study, is one of the most imaginative narratives known to man. It concerns the exploits of a grotesque individual whose main physical features are enormous digestive and sexual organs and who unites in himself some of the traits of a god, an animal, and a human being.

Primarily his activities, over which he has no conscious control, represent attempts to dupe others, yet actually always recoil upon himself. He is cruel, obscene and possessed of a voracious appetite which he is never permitted to satisfy. Creator and destroyer, affirmer and negator at one and the same time, his activities finally result in the transformation of himself into a being approximating to that of man.

The figure of Trickster is of tremendous historical and psychological importance for an understanding of ourselves. As Dr Jung suggests in his Foreword, Trickster is the symbol of the unconscious and undifferentiated in man. That is why he is represented as being everything to every man-god, animal, human being, hero, buffoon, he who antedates all values, good and evil.