Trickster and Shadow: The Dark Dynamics of Our Psyche Through DC Universe Heroes

Adapted from the book “Joker: The Mad King of the Criminal World” by Dr. Travis Langley, PhD, professor of psychology and DC Universe enthusiast.

Jungian Archetypes: Trickster and Shadow

Archetypes are innate patterns of human feelings and instincts—primal myths, “emotionally charged complexes” rooted in human history, existing within the collective unconscious. Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung believed in their existence and identified archetypes such as the Anima and Animus, the Shadow, the Mother, the Child, the Wise Old Man, and the Trickster. According to Dr. Travis Langley, Joker and his cohorts are nothing less than the embodiment of these archetypes.

In his book, Langley and co-authors analyze key DC antagonists—Joker and Batman—through the lens of Jungian analysis, comparing them to the Trickster and the Shadow. They explore the differences between these dark, rejected sides of the human psyche, which embody chaos and primitive instincts, and discuss how their existence and dynamics impact the world, interact with other archetypes (like the gendered Anima and Animus), and why Trickster and Shadow cannot exist or disappear without each other—both in our psyche and in history.

Trickster and Shadow: Jungian Archetypes in Action

Writer and comic editor Dennis O’Neil once compared Joker to the mythological Trickster: “You never know what he’ll do next. Instead of killing you, he might hand you an ice cream—or change his mind and kill you after all!”

Joker’s message, delivered by Harley to Batman, reads: “Here I am, knocking on your window. Looking for you, my shadow.”

The rivalry between Batman and Joker has fascinated readers and viewers since Batman’s debut in 1939 and Joker’s in 1940. Some argue they cannot exist separately—they need each other. Commissioner Gordon once wondered if Joker’s appearance was the reason for Batman’s existence: “You wear a mask. And you can jump rooftops. We need your help. Double homicide, armed robbery—and by the way, he’s got a flair for tricks, just like you. Leaves calling cards.”

The connection between “jokes” and “bats” is obvious, but the duality of these characters goes deeper than a simple hero-villain conflict. Joker and Batman embody the Trickster and the Shadow, two of Jung’s most infamous archetypes. They battle in Gotham, a city full of collective unconscious forms, over and over: to become whole or to destroy each other.

Inside Arkham Asylum

While modern psychiatrists might cringe at the depiction of mental illness and treatment in fictional Gotham, there’s something eerily familiar about how Joker and his associates behave in and out of Arkham Asylum. Wild and unmoored, they roam Gotham’s streets and Arkham’s halls as if it’s their playground. Joker, Harley, and many of their allies embody stereotypes or archetypes of the Jungian collective unconscious. Within this unconscious exist archetypes—innate patterns of human feelings and instincts in their rawest form. Joker and his crew are their living embodiment.

Jung saw the collective unconscious as a storehouse of the human psyche within each person, containing primal myths and understandings. Mythologist Joseph Campbell later built on Jung’s work, supporting the idea of a universal collective unconscious. While the personal unconscious holds repressed emotions and unresolved childhood conflicts, the collective unconscious contains “emotionally charged complexes” based on human history. Here we find the eternal characters, themes, and ideas that appear in every story and define the core questions of human existence.

Over time, Jung identified many archetypes: Anima and Animus, Shadow, Mother, Child, Wise Old Man, and Trickster. Despite some confusion, Jung insisted that archetypes and the collective unconscious have a clear internal logic, describing them as “inherited ideas.” The personal unconscious leads to the collective unconscious, and exploring one often leads to the other, changing one’s life in the process.

For example, in Bruce Wayne’s personal unconscious, we see the suffering of a child traumatized by his parents’ murder. Shocked by the cruelty he finds in himself and the world, Bruce dons the mask of the Shadow archetype (the unconscious image of his inner darkness), allowing him to fight Gotham’s villains. These villains embody collective unconscious archetypes: Anima (the inner woman in a man, symbolized by Harley Quinn), Trickster (Joker), and Mother (the Great Mother, in a twisted form, as Poison Ivy).

Joker as Trickster

Joker is both a symbol and a man who has gone so far he’s almost ceased to be a multifaceted person and become the Trickster in human form—a “bringer of chaos.” To be the Trickster is to be both cartoonish and sophisticated, clever and foolish, aggressive and cowardly. Jung believed the Trickster was once part of the Shadow archetype but split off early in human development. He described the Trickster as an “animal nature” we long to escape and yet want to return to. This ancient archetype attracts and repels us, showing the amorality inherent in humanity’s past. Batman and Gotham are both drawn to Joker’s antics and repelled by his bloodlust.

The Shadow of My Shadow—My Trickster

Before Joseph Campbell described the “Hero’s Journey,” anthropologist Paul Radin outlined four cycles of hero evolution in the Winnebago tribe’s traditions. The first is the Trickster’s trial: the hero faces a character driven by instinct, with a mind like a child’s, cruel, cynical, and unfeeling. This certainly fits Batman’s nemesis, but even Joker was once different.

Joker was once an ordinary man, but a random transformation—falling into a vat of chemicals—symbolizes initiation. In a sense, he faces death and reunites with the collective unconscious. Returning to life, he becomes someone or something new. Like Bruce Wayne, who finds and claims his Shadow after plunging into the collective unconscious, the man who becomes Joker finds kinship with a powerful archetype and claims it. The Trickster, the archetype of all things crude and absurd, allows Joker to be both mastermind and murderer. He’s not just Batman’s antagonist—he’s the purpose of Batman’s existence.

In old legends, the Trickster was the “bringer of pleasure” and feasts, a source of joy and fun, evoking more than just immoral behavior. This display of animal nature, or embodiment of base instincts, is a familiar state we’re instinctively drawn to. As Joker himself notes: “Don’t all these big shots in ‘our city’ feel just as clumsy and crude as a man in a polka-dot suit?”

But Joker as Trickster is a formidable foe because of his powerful nature. Batman is the Shadow, but he lacks the Trickster’s qualities. That’s where they differ. Batman literally hides in the shadows, spends most of his time alone, and lives almost as a recluse, while Joker loves the spotlight and, above all, chaos. They’re two sides of the same coin, but fundamentally different. Originating from the Shadow and thus the unconscious, Joker and Batman are two halves of one whole.

Yet their attraction is as undeniable as their mutual reluctance to kill each other. Is it only Batman’s commitment to justice and Joker’s to chaos that binds them in eternal conflict? Looking at the roots of their aggression and the collective unconscious reveals the motives behind their endless struggle.

Joker Unleashed

Jung describes the Shadow as the opposite of the ego, the hidden part of the self we’re unaware of. The Shadow is often associated with the dark side—anger, lust, selfishness, and greed—traits we try to suppress or deny. The Shadow isn’t inherently evil, but can become so if unacknowledged or repressed. Jung believed that if ignored, the Shadow could “become a relatively autonomous split-off personality with contrary tendencies in the unconscious.”

It’s easy to assume Joker embodies the Shadow: he’s lustful, aggressive, a serial killer who revels in horror. Batman usually denies these traits in himself. As he matures, he becomes more aware of his own Shadow and ultimately confronts it. Alfred puts it this way: “Death and fate stole your parents. But instead of becoming a victim, you did everything you could to take control of your destiny. What is Batman if not an attempt to cope with the chaos that has overtaken our world? An attempt to control death itself.”

A Jungian analysis would go further: trying to control death is like trying to control both the personal and collective unconscious. Despite his efforts, Batman can’t unite his conscious ego or Persona (the public mask of Bruce Wayne) with his unconscious Shadow—Batman. The unconscious holds vital parts of the self: only by facing them and bringing them to consciousness can one truly become whole. Jung believed that only by integrating conscious and unconscious elements can a person achieve a unified self.

Thus, Joker is not just the embodiment of Batman’s Shadow, but the Shadow of his Shadow, representing the chaos and evil Batman rejects. Batman often wonders if his own existence created the villains who torment him. From a Jungian perspective, he might say: “Every good quality has its bad side; nothing good ever came into the world without producing a corresponding evil.”

To be a hero, Batman needs a threat to fight. If Batman rejects chaos, what can Joker do but bring “a little anarchy, a little disruption of the established order”? In other words: just as every person has a Shadow, every Batman has his Joker.

Harley Quinn and Mr. J: A Devilish Duo

Jung’s relationship with Sigmund Freud, especially in later years, resembled that of Batman and Joker. Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, was a bit like Batman with his protégés and followers, creating his own Robins and Batgirls. But like Batman, Freud tended to distance himself from his students and colleagues. In Jung, he hoped to find both a companion and confidant. But differing views on sex, repression, and power eventually drove them apart. Like Joker and Batman, the psychiatrists continued to influence each other’s work even as their animosity grew. While both studied the impact of sexual drive and obsession on the psyche, Jung criticized Freud for overemphasizing sex as the driving force of all human activity.

Jung’s description of the Anima and Animus archetypes has been criticized for outdated gender assumptions. If the collective unconscious of a man contains the female Anima, and a woman’s psyche contains the male Animus, what do transgender and nonbinary people find when following the Shadow into the collective unconscious? In a person’s life, the Anima or Animus reflects all that is attractive, exciting, spontaneous, and supernatural—the essence of life, or as Jung put it, “the Anima is the archetype of life itself.” If the Shadow archetype awaits the hero at the threshold of the unconscious, it is the Anima who greets him and introduces him to the setting, while the Trickster preens and prepares his act in the background. As abstract as this may sound, Jung’s vision of the relationships between Shadow, Anima, and Trickster is perfectly embodied by the brooding Batman, the active Harley, and the prankster king Joker.

Harley Quinn, Joker’s accomplice and a hardened criminal, brings endless distress to both Batman and Joker, partly because her only compatible partner is herself. She attracts and repels, creates and destroys: clear signs of the Anima, because as a symbol of life, the Anima “wants both good and evil.” While Harley sometimes resembles the Shadow or even the Trickster, at her core she embodies wild joy. In her own words: “I’ve changed a lot, you know! People look up to me as a role model. As the embodiment of happiness and kindness!”

Here’s where things get confusing and absurd: Harley isn’t just Joker’s Anima—he, in turn, is also her Animus. In Jungian terms, one can have more than one archetype, switching between them depending on the relationship. Since Joker relates differently to each person, he can be both Trickster to Batman and Animus to Harley. And while Harley is drawn to and repelled by Mr. J, he holds absolute power over her, telling her whatever he thinks will manipulate her: “I used to be just like you. I was helpless before those above me who kept me down. Until the greatest thing that could ever happen happened to me. An unpredictable event of legendary proportions. And when my eyes stopped stinging, I finally saw the world in all its true hypocrisy. And it set me free. I stopped caring about rules and instantly gained power. We all have it. It’s inside us. We just need to let it out. And I can teach you how.”

Of course, Harley and Mr. J’s connection goes much deeper than two archetypes. Together, they form a catastrophically unbalanced pair. Though neither seems to bring the other much joy, they repeatedly return to each other due to the power of syzygy—the compelling bond between Anima and Animus. Since these archetypal relationships contain “life itself,” the idea of leaving the person who embodies that force is impossible for both Harley and Joker. In fact, when Harley believes Joker is dead, she insists on finding the only remaining piece of him—his severed face. She presses it to another person, Deadshot, in an attempt to reconnect with Mr. J.

Harley copes best with separation when she finds help, often in the form of a new lover or mother figure. Poison Ivy, possibly the embodiment of the Mother archetype, is the one Harley turns to most for support and refuge from Joker’s cruelty. Ivy sees herself as a guardian of nature, a kind of Mother Earth, wrapping Harley in flowers and urging her to be kinder to herself. Ivy shows Harley she can use her archetypal power for her own crimes, not just to help a Trickster.

Life Really Is a Game

It’s fitting that in one of their most memorable showdowns, Joker makes Batman laugh. Until then, each tries to figure out how to meet the other: Batman offers Joker help with rehabilitation, while Joker tries to make Batman see the world through his eyes. This fits the Jungian interpretation of the Shadow and Trickster relationship. Sensing they’re made of the same stuff, the Trickster longs to reunite with his other half, the Shadow. True to his nature, he tries to reunite with Batman in the worst ways: kidnapping Bruce Wayne’s lovers, poisoning Alfred, paralyzing Batgirl, bombing Gotham—the list goes on. Both Batman and Joker are driven by the same, but opposite, reactions to the horror they experienced when first confronted with life’s possibilities. Batman seeks to control the darkness, while Joker tries to unleash it for himself, Batman, and the world.

Joker: “See? Now we can communicate. My king and I.”
Batman: “You’re nothing to me, but…”
Joker: “Shhh. Don’t do that. Don’t pretend. Not here. Not with me. Your loyal court jester. And what’s a jester for, if not to bring news to the king? Bad news… Especially… The worst! The fleet has sunk. The soldiers are pacifists! The children’s hands have rotted, and they can’t clap for the fairies! Because the jester is the only one he’ll hear it from. The only one who can make him laugh at it. At himself. And that’s exactly what I tried to do for you, Bats: bring the worst news to your heart.”

The great risk of confronting the collective unconscious is getting lost in it and falling victim to neurosis. Joker, and to a lesser extent Harley, battle this neurosis—or madness, as they call it. Joker’s past remains murky, but it’s clear he’s dealing with what he found in the collective unconscious, becoming the extreme of the Trickster archetype. Batman does much the same. As Harvey Dent might say, there are two sides to every coin (Shadow), both wanting to become whole. Life demands both sides of the Shadow be in balance. As Jung said: “Life is both foolish and full of meaning, and if you don’t laugh at the first and ponder the second, it becomes utterly pointless.”

But is this possible for Batman and Joker? Usually, they come closest to this idea when they’re vulnerable with each other. Whether Joker asks for a kiss or Batman begs him to finally talk, their attempts at connection rarely end in understanding. So they continue their cycle of terror in Gotham’s streets and Arkham’s halls, occasionally pausing long enough to save the city from total destruction. The only way out for Batman and Joker is either mutual destruction or some form of coexistence.

Batman: “I’m just going to say it: I hate you, Joker.”
Joker: “I hate you too.”
Batman: “I hate you more.”
Joker: “I hate you most in the world.”
Batman: “I hate you forever.”

This exchange is borrowed from the animated comedy “The Lego Batman Movie” (2017), but perhaps there’s truth in parody. If Joker and Batman could find a way to unite and acknowledge how much they mean to each other, what could they achieve? Or, in other words, what could they resolve—and finally put to rest?