THE CLOWN
Clowns are very powerful. Some use gallows humor in order to keep everyone laughing and to distract them from noticing the clown’s deep pain of loneliness or despair. Other clowns are sad and dejected, downtrodden and bullied or sneaky and mischievous. But in each case, the clowning is distraction to cover up a fear of intimacy, which feels too risky without the buffer of clowning around.
THE TRAPEZE ARTIST
She thrives on the thrill of freefall between letting go of one stable and secure home base and attaching to the next. She relies on her excellent sense of timing to avoid the disgrace and danger of falling. And she also must rely on her fellow trapeze artists to catch her when the time comes, and to hang on tight. When she becomes truly accomplished at this feat, she may be tempted to perform without a net in order to add more suspense. She can often be found flying high above the mundane details of most ordinary lives, dazzling other people with her extraordinary adventures. For this reason, she is actually quite dependent on those others to catch her when she falters.
THE TIGHTROPE WALKER
He keeps everyone looking up (away from what is really going on down below), fearing catastrophe but bringing relief when he makes it. He has learned to “walk a tightrope” between disasters on either side, and his movement is intensely constricted. He feels right at home in situations and relationships that demand concentration to navigate, and that allow no deviation from the “straight and narrow.” The balance is precarious, and even the slightest tilt one way or the other would be disastrous. The balancing wires are almost invisible, so everyone believes the fantasy of his death-defying feat.
An example of this character is Ashley, a woman who came to us from a very conservative religious community. Ashley is the mother of three children, two boys and a girl. She was in a very dysfunctional marriage that began early in her life to a man from the church to which her family belongs. Her parents were behind the marriage and as a young woman, she felt she was pushed into this almost “arranged marriage.” As she began to develop in her personal and professional life, she realized that being married to Fred was like having a fourth child. He was emotionally immature, unable to bring home a decent salary, and he floundered around in his life about what he wanted to be when he “grows up.”
Ashley has known for quite some time that she is gay. She had no interest in sex with her husband, or any man for that matter. She has had several encounters with women about which she carries a great deal of shame and guilt, especially living in such a conservative community. She is realizing that she has grown up in shock due to fearing a very violent father and seeing a terrified mother, who herself was in a great deal of shock. The main way that Ashley has come to know herself is through hypnotherapy and Jungian dream work. Her dreams over the years have clearly indicated that she has a deep, dark secret buried beneath the surface, which she does not want to face or even look at.
At an early age, she learned to walk the tightrope between having her deep needs for love and nurturing from a woman met in secret and keeping up the pretense of being devoutly religious in a conservative community. Her affairs with women were usually started by the other woman, so Ashley was able to justify to herself that she didn’t instigate the relationship. She also walked the tightrope, carefully balancing between her desperate need for love and appearing to maintain her image as a married woman, a devoted mother and a consistent churchgoer.
As the years went on, Ashley had a successful psychology practice. Her training, based on self-examination and personal growth, led her to finally release her shame and admit, first to herself and then to others, that she was gay. Next she was able to reveal that her marriage was a sham and that her children had been raised believing in lies; the lies that, as they got older, became more and more clear to them. She could no longer participate in the rigidity and shaming atmosphere of her church and her community. She could no longer keep up the pretense of being a devoted wife to a man she didn’t respect, love or admire. She was married to an immature man and she was tired of taking care of him both physically and emotionally.
Finally, Ashley felt she could no longer keep up the highwire routine. She did have below her, however, the huge safety net of a very supportive professional community, which assisted her in moving to a new environment with like-minded people and gently stepping down from her highwire act.
She gained the courage to speak openly and honestly with her now-teenage children, who actually had watched her development and were not surprised at all that she was gay. Nor were they nearly as judgmental about her life as she had been. Ashley realized, as she peeled away the layers of shock that kept her frozen in self-deceit, that it was the shock that had allowed her to live in a dream world for all those years. It was the shock that kept her frozen in fear, shame and turmoil, and perpetuated the lie that all was well. No longer having to balance on that high wire, Ashley discovered a new zest for life along with increased creativity and the ability to manifest many more of her gifts that had been buried deep below the shame and fear.
THE ESCAPE ARTIST
The Escape Artist can always find a way out of every predicament and flees every entanglement before you know it. He always seems to feel trapped and that he therefore needs to extricate himself. Relationships become threatening or suffocating when the other person wants true intimacy, so it’s time to leave. He doesn’t want to stay too long in any one place or job, because the longer he stays, the more tied down he feels. He is at his best when the challenge is great, so he seeks out people who demand more of him than he is willing to give. That way he gets to do what he enjoys the most and what he is the best at: abandoning others. Actually, he is running away from ever being in the position of being abandoned by someone else.
THE STUNTMAN
He loves being shot out of a cannon because it requires one to be fearless. He is seeking attention and thrills through danger. Live dangerously, seek the thrill of narrow escapes and feel alive by cheating death. Sometimes one can achieve this by getting involved in a sinister or creepy subculture. The more spine-chilling the feats of daring, the more recognition he claims. And underneath the bravado, he has a numbing disregard for his own value and worth.
THE MONKEY/ORGAN GRINDER
The organ grinder plays his organ while a cute monkey sits on top, holding out a cup to take money. The monkey has a leash around its neck and is dressed up in cute little outfits to attract the children. The monkey looks appealing but is actually a captive and is being used as a ruse by the Organ Grinder.
Frances has recently had a series of physical problems. These directly followed some deep work she did to begin to take her life back from her very dominating mother who uses the church and church rules to control her and the entire family. Just as the monkey is the captive of the organ grinder and the organ grinder is captive to the circus, Frances ran away to the circus at a very young age to become a captive of her mother and the church. At the age of forty, Frances still lives with her mother, has never been married and described herself as feeling strangled, unable to move or breathe. After bringing all these deeply buried feelings to the surface, Frances ended up in the hospital with pneumonia for quite some time.
After she recovered and was about to continue to unravel the deeply repressed relationship between herself, her mother and the church, Frances slipped and fell on some ice, breaking a few bones, and again found herself in the hospital, unable to move or take back her power. She knew on a deep level that this was her internal small child, still afraid of confronting her mother. But Frances was determined to salvage her life and take it back from her mother and the church. She had a powerful dream where she saw a small child, trapped in a freezer, and then she saw herself as a small child with a dog collar around her neck. She knew these were powerful symbols