The shadow side of the eternal child (tertiary) function of the personality type is the trickster.

Jungian analyst John Beebe came up with the trickster archetype for this function (and all of the shadow function archetypes) based on his study of dream figures that display the negative of our preferred typologies.

According to Beebe, “The archetypal thrust of the trickster’s restless energy is to resist having to do things the way others think is right.” And “the trickster can be a force for self-defense in a dangerous world.” It points out the opponent’s weaknesses with withering remarks.

He says that it is “an enormous step in type development” when we can make the trickster conscious. Then we are less vulnerable to being taken advantage by others.

He cites Alfred Hitchcock as one who had a developed trickster function. There was a time Kim Novak was upset the clothes for her role did not reflect her taste. Hitchcock had extroverted feeling (Fe) as his trickster function. Giving into her would have ruined the picture, so he told her “you can wear anything you want, anything – provided it’s what the script calls for.” This succeeded in placating her.

Here is a list of trickster funtions by personality type. When you encounter that same function in someone who has it as a hero, parent, or eternal child function, your trickster may sometimes get triggered. So the more conscious you become of that, the less defensive you will be, and the less vulnerable to being taken advantage of by others.

ISTJ – extroverted feeling (Fe)
INTJ – extroverted feeling (Fe)
INFJ – extroverted thinking (Te)
ISFJ – extroverted thinking (Te)

ESTJ – introverted intuition (Ni)
ENTJ – introverted sensation (Si)
ENFJ – introverted sensation (Si)
ESFJ – introverted intuition (Ni)

ISTP – extroverted intuition (Ne)
INTP – extroverted sensation (Se)
INFP – extroverted sensation (Se)
ISFP – extroverted intuition (Ne)

ESTP – introverted feeling (Fi)
ENTP – introverted feeling (Fi)
ENFP – introverted thinking (Ti)
ESFP – introverted thinking (Ti)

In an interview with Type in Depth, Beebe says the following about integrating the Trickster:

“When I talk about the “shadow functions,” their archetypes, and the difficulties they present, I try to mention also, as with other complexes, the opportunities they offer. We need our shadow to survive. The shadow functions are what my colleague Donald Kalsched (1996) calls “self-care systems.” And it takes a certain amount of evil in yourself to be able to handle the evil that’s in the world. If you’re the kind of person who often is put in double binds by other people because you’re too naive and too sweet and too eager to please them, and then they give you contradictory expectations and put you in a box, you must learn to use your own trickster archetype to turn those double binds around. So, the integration of the shadow is very important. ” [emphasis mine]

I like how he calls shadow functions “self-care systems.” How can you use your trickster function to take care of you?

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Source: Type in Depth December 2021 issue

John Beebe assigns the eternal child (puer) to the third function of the personality type for good reason – it is a function that remains weak and childish throughout life.

Here is what Marie-Louise von Franz (Jung’s close associate) says about this function:

The next step in the process of psychic development is to assimilate the two auxiliary functions. One must not forget that the assimilation of these functions is such a difficult task that people generally spend a very long time at it. Sometimes people actually become a certain type, which was not their original type, for eight or ten years.

Lectures on Jung’s Typology, location 1101

The eternal child archetype is the eternal youth in all of us, “the brilliant but volatile side of ourselves that is by turns the seemingly immortal Prince or Princess and the helplessly vulnerable wounded boy or girl.” James Hillman believes that the eternal child has a special relationships to the transcendent spiritual powers of the unconscious.

The puer aetrnus comes from the child god Iacchus in the Elusinian mysteries “who was identified with the new birth these rites promised individuals who partook of them”. In a clinical setting Beebe says the eternal child is someone who displays a “false individualism.” He quotes Marie-Louise von Franz: an “arrogant attitude towards other people due to both an inferiority complex and false feelings of superiority. Such people also usually have great difficulty in finding the right kind of job, for whatever they find is never quite right or quite what they wanted.”

The parent and child functions are complements both within the psyche and between people. These two functions are the ones we lean on in our interactions with others. Our child function will be attracted to the parent form of that same function in others. For example, an INFJ has introverted thinking as the child function and will be attracted to the parent form of it in the ENTP and ESTP. The ESTJ has extroverted intuition as the child function and will be attracted to the parent form of it in the INTP and INFP. And so on.

Paralysis can overtake the eternal child function because it is hard to sustain the activity of this function. Beebe describes its up and down quality as “inflation/deflation cycle” and as a “third function crisis.” The shadow form of this function is the trickster function and it is this function that makes it hard to use our eternal child function. This will be the topic of my next post on the functions.

Sources:

Energies and Patterns of Psychological Type by John Beebe

Lectures on Jung’s Typology by Marie-Louise von Franz and James Hillman

The “opposing personality” is an archetype created by Jungian psychologist John Beebe, M.D.

This function is opposite the Hero (superior) function in your personality type. Beebe describes it in the language of character pathology as “oppositional, paranoid, passive-aggressive, and avoidant.” It is the cluster of defenses we use to oppose others rather than work with them. He says it is hard to see in yourself and falls within the blind spot of the superior function.

The opposing personality is a primary resource of defense, a part of us that tends to lurch forward first when we feel our heroic superior function and its most cherished values to be under attack.

John Beebe, Energies and Patterns of Psychological Type, p. 132

In situations where we are forced to use our opposing function, the negative traits of that function will be on display. For example, an INFJ who is forced to brainstorm on the spot, which requires using extraverted intuition, may do so in cranky and oppositional way. Beebe describes that, as an ENTP, he has to use introverted intuition to describe archetypes, and pointed out how in his book he often ended up using negative, oppositional examples.

The opposing personality shows up as one of two places in the psyche as the opposite sex figure. Beebe says that a man in the grip of his opposing personality “may make ‘bitchy’ remarks or unleash a seductive charm whose purpose is to exercise control over others.” A woman might exhibit it as being overly competitive, angry, or spiteful.

The opposing personality is one of four functions that make up your shadow side. The shadow side is the part of us we repress because it is incompatible with our values. The shadow functions allow us to name these aspects of ourselves and make them more conscious The other three shadow functions are trickster, senex, and demon. I’ll write about senex next, so stay tuned.

The hero is he who is immovably centered – Ralph Waldo Emerson

All of us know what a hero is and, without much effort, can think of individuals we consider heroes and are able to identify hero figures in literature and movies. But we can also look inward to find a hero, because we have a hero within us in the form of the lead/dominant function of our personality.

Jungian analyst John Beebe expanded the four function model of Myers-Briggs to an eight function model of the personality and assigned archetypes to each one. We are the most conscious of our dominant function. In depth psychology the hero archetype represents the ego, so Beebe gave this function the name of the hero archetype. As Jung said, “Consciousness needs a centre, an ego to which something is conscious.” (Psychological Types, paragraph 506).

The hero function, combined with the inferior anima/animus function, forms the “spine” of the personality. This spine, per Beebe, is “the axis of our relation to self.” He says that this spine is a “plumb line of personhood that develops between superior function hero and inferior function anima ]…]When this happens, a personality can bloom, and the personal self will acquire more affective coloration, cohesion, and temporal stability than before.”

Below I’ll list brief descriptions of how each of the eight cognitive functions displays itself in the hero archetype. I included links to my full posts on each function:

Hero Te (Extroverted Thinking) – The environment of things must be efficiently organized and mechanically correct.

Hero Ti (Introverted Thinking) – Intellectual clarity. Life must make technical sense to the individual’s understanding.

Hero Fe (Extroverted Feeling) – The environment of people must be socially friendly.

Hero Fi (Introverted Feeling) – Life must be humanely congruent to the individual’s values.

Hero Ne (Extroverted Intuition) – The environment of patterns must be scanned for alternative hypothetical possibilities. Makes remarkable inferences.

Hero Ni (Introverted Intuition) – Life must be “filled in” by the individual’s subconscious impressions.

Hero Se – The physical environment must be scanned for opportunities for action in the present and tangible experiences.

Hero Si – Recognition of the natural order of things. Life must be familiar to the individual’s storehouse of practical data.

The hero function is the only one of the eight functions that is measured by how strong it is. This will be important to keep in mind while studying the archetypes of the other 7 functions:

As we move beyond the heroic first function, however, we should recognize that not all of the eight functions follow hero psychology in being measurable by their degree of strength.

They do not, in actual experience, follow a descending hierarchy of differentiation from first (superior) through fourth (inferior) to eighth. Rather, the strength, and the kind of strength, a function of consciousness displays is a consequence of the archetypal role associated with it, and archetypes are differently developed in different people. The numbering of the positions is a bit of an anachronism, left over from the early days of Jungian psychology and of Isabel Briggs Myers’s adaptation of that psychology to the analysis of the MBTI findings. When I use numbering today, in these post-heroic times, the numbers are meant to be read as qualitative rather than quantitative, much the way the numbers of streets can be read in a well-differentiated city that one is intimately acquainted with. Thus the ‘second’ and ‘third’ functions are identified, like avenues in New York City, by the qualities experience has taught us to recognize when

p. 135

The opposite of the hero function is the “opposing personality” function, which is the shadow form of the hero function. Studying the opposite, and learning how to integrate it, will enhance your understanding and use of the hero function. My next post will be about the opposing personality function. Stay tuned!

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Source of the Beebe quotes in this post: Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type