ABSTRACT
The author, a psychiatrist and Jungian analyst, compares the effects of certain works of art in painting, film, fiction, and song to the double binds that emerge in communications between psychotic patients and their families. These artistic effects reveal a trickster at play and illuminate some of the dynamics of the archetypal field between artist and audience, in which unambiguous communication is almost impossible and the artist’s rage at being misunderstood must somehow be contained. The defensive strategy that is employed in creating a trickster work of art is connected to surreptitiously sustaining psychological values in communication with a world that may not wish to attend to them directly. The integration of the trickster’s gift for irony and ambiguity into the anima’s interest in making a sincere connection are important not only to the making of art that can endure, but also to every psyche’s ability to survive an often uncomprehending and unempathic world.
