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Batman, Pippi, Spock… are all expressions of energy types in the world of fiction. The article tells how the characters in the world of fiction give life to the energy types.
By Soren Hauge
The energy types are of course also expressed in the world of fiction. Here it is even possible to see them caricatured in exaggerated form. A wealth of vivid descriptions of the diversity of the energy types and their mutual interaction have been given in, for example, films, novels, fairy tales, music and visual arts. It can be said without exaggeration that only the imagination sets the limits. In the following we will give some selected examples from the great cornucopia of fiction’s unreal reality.
Action and power
The dynamic type is easy to spot in action-packed and powerful fiction, and we recognize characters from both classic and new representations. Here we encounter Sinbad the Sailor, Odysseus and David’s fight against Goliath in old tales. In more recent times, characters such as Robinson Crusoe and Tarzan or Batman show the lone or deviant hero. In the light genre, it is the good-natured but strong Obelix or Skipper Scarecrow, the Iron Man or Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story. As a girl character, we find, for example, Pippi Longstocking and Ronja the Robber’s Daughter, and as archetypal, feminine characters, it is the power of the Valkyries and the Amazons.
Fiction is reality presented in dramatic form. Therefore, the fictional archetypes are a direct look into the world of energy types, often made clear through liberating exaggeration.
In the more adult entertainment genre, it is, with a twinkle in the eye, an Indiana Jones who fights the impossible battle. It is Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry who defies cynical crime, and it is Sylvester Stallone who lets Rambo rage to achieve the unattainable victory, just as it is Bruce Willis who refuses to give up in the Die Hard films. It is under the same hard-hitting banner that Arnold Schwartzenegger can unfold as the Terminator, and it is here that we become acquainted with the furious Hulk. In such a macho universe, we find war films with explosions, death and destruction, side by side with the hard-hitting gangsters of the mafia genre, led by the Godfather and Al Capone, the mutant heroes in the X-Men, not least Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, and many of the uncompromising roles that have been played over the years by people like Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. It abounds with examples of hard-hitting heroes and unyielding loners, who provide the excitement and extreme expression associated with the display of strength, raw power, war, destruction, freedom and victory.
The power of good
As we move into the sensitive world of the sensitive, the scenario becomes completely different. Now we meet the good fairies, the wise figures and benevolent forces who will bring joy and cohesion into life. The part of the world of fiction that shows us the gentle side allows us to meet characters that can be difficult to portray without appearing sentimental or naive, but they nevertheless play an important role. It is the generosity of Santa Claus, the advice of the wise women to the traveler and the certainty that there is a happy ending after the troubles of life.
When we encounter the beneficent power in films and stories, we gain faith in love and the victory of good. In Star Wars, it is Obi Wan Kenobi and not least Yoda’s wisdom. It is the encounter with the kind, good-natured face in a desert of cold and cynicism. It is the selfless power of love that the lion Aslan demonstrates in Narnia, the solidarity with the weak in Charles Dickens and Dostoevsky’s stories, the unbreakable friendships in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and the healing power when the medicine man does his work, or separated people are reunited in epic stories. It is also the maturation of love from naive infatuation to tested loyalty through hard trials.
Genius and deception
The mental energy type plays its own roles and contributes to the richness of the world of fiction, both in the funny, the cunning and the mean way that contains its indispensability. In the first category we find Walt Disney’s always moving Peter Pan and the brilliant Georg Gearløs. In Herges Tintin the world-distant Professor Tournesol appears, Holberg has the hopelessly theoretical Erasmus Montanus, and still in the funny corner, but now much more cunning, many will remember the cunning advisor or spin doctor Sir Humphrey Appleby, played by Nigel Hawthorne in the TV series Javel Mhr. Minister. Molière’s comedy The Misanthrope shows Alceste’s disgust for hypocrisy and snob and his eternal criticism of others’ and his own faults; a typical trait of the sharp, mental observer. Both cynics, complainers and chameleons display aspects of the energy type in dramas and stories.
“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
It immediately becomes much more serious when intelligence is given the task of being the testing adversary, the archetypal tempter in the Garden of Eden, or even the devil’s advocate. The implacable Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is such a figure, and even worse is the advisor Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello, who, due to a missed promotion, decides to create a false accusation of infidelity that causes Othello to kill his beloved Desdemona. With such demonic seriousness in mind, it is good to know that it is also the same type of energy that functions as the redeeming jester who says the both dangerous and necessary things, or as the super-intelligent characters Spock and Data in Star Trek.
The grotesque and the ridiculous
The creative energy type can really unfold on home turf when given space to explore both the hilarious and the completely improbable. Characters that show us the lovingly caricatured appear, for example, as the fool, the fool, the fool or the extreme type, for example the lying hero Münchhausen, who seduces through his improbable fantasies and crazy exaggerations, who has not had a chance of being in the real world. In the fairy tale The Wind in the Willows, the intolerable Toad appears as the lovable, vain and self-absorbed fantasist who loves attention. A wonderfully jarred caricature of the expressive creative. Another classic character is Shakespeare’s drunken Falstaff, who is both indebted, cowardly, boastful and full of wit.
We find the creative as the joker and the court jester, who says the things that are not otherwise said, and who brings the oddity into the predictable. It is also the adventurer who wants to try the untried, and who throws himself into wild extremes. The actor Jack Nicholson has often taken roles in this field, where he is intolerable, crazy, extreme and unpredictable, or just an existence that does not fit into the mainstream. The creative can, in his odd existences, bring redemption and bring that to the surface that is otherwise not seen. It is a fascinating and truly entertaining facet, which is often a kind of valve for the subconscious, and what makes reconciliation and harmonization possible.
Solving the criminal mystery
In the sober sharpness of the analytical energy type, we can often see the solution of mysteries and criminal puzzles through methodical unraveling and precise unrolling of facts. The incomparable Sherlock Holmes is of course a central archetype, side by side with Agatha Christie’s immortal characters, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, who each pursue the trail of murder mysteries in their own way. English characters such as Inspector Morse and Detective Inspector Barnaby are in the same line or tradition, and we find an incalculable wealth of crime novels and films that bring the same idea to life in many different ways. Stieg Larsson’s crime trilogy – and later film adaptations: Men Who Hate Women; The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Airship That Was Blown Up, show an action-packed, harsh and modern version of the classic crime mystery.
Among other facets that also show the analytical energy type unfolding in fiction, on a very casual level, one can mention the miser Uncle Scrooge from Walt Disney, and the older, more serious version is the unbelievably stingy Ebenezer Scrooge in the famous Dickens Christmas tale, A Christmas Carol , a character who comes into contact with the essence of love and is redeemed from his own self-created, greedy prison of money.
The hero and the romantic figure
In the vibratory field of the dedicated and idealistic energy type, we open ourselves especially to the epic and magnificent. Here there is room for the light-hearted and grandiose, whether with a smile on our lips or in the deepest seriousness. The classic Don Quixote shows us the over-excited, fanatical, but also unfortunate idealist, with a clear touch of melancholy. Goethe’s youth figure, Young Werther, is a kind of early teenage novel with love at its center, and it has undeniably been followed up ever since with an inexhaustible swarm of romantic tragedies, comedies and fairy tales. Here we enter the eternally seductive, the unattainable ideal and the immortal longing for fulfillment, grand love and heroic deeds. Here there is room for Braveheart and Aslan, Romeo and Juliet, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, the hero Muad’Deep in Frank Herbert’s Dune series of novels, and the knights and maidens in King Arthur’s mythical universe. It is also the implied love and melancholic idealization in the young adult novels and films Twilight. The heroic aspect and the romantic figure have an incredible number of faces and are constantly seeing the light of day in new variants that follow the prevailing spirit of the times.
The magical universe
Through the practical energy type that masters energy and its possible transformations, we definitively enter the fantasy world, the science fiction universe and the magical reality. The practical energy type is precisely the one that, through a deep knowledge of the laws of nature, manages to transcend them through the magic of manifestation. This is where Tolkien unfolds his archetypal characters and the magician Gandalf, just as JK Rowling’s Harry Potter, Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story, Star Wars Jedi Knights, and the Matrix trilogy show us the technological magic. We are faced with Dumbledore and Merlin, Miraculix and Goethe’s Faust, Shakespeare’s Prospero in The Tempest, and the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Disney’s Fantasia. It is also the gloomy universe of Batman and the alluring, deadly mystery of Dracula. Energy undergoes metamorphoses and transformations are created. We are taught the art of using power in the service of good, and the costs of failing and ending up supporting The Dark Force. In this way, the magical universe prepares us for the drama of reality, which, as we know, surpasses all fiction.
You can often see almost all types of energy in formation and interaction in the world of fiction, sometimes conjured up unconsciously and not directly intended, but nevertheless in a beautiful reflection of the spectrum of consciousness. The central team of two Star Trek TV series, the original series and Next Generation, clearly and precisely present the seven types of energy in perfect interaction, and something similar occurs in the fairy tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, where the basic characteristics of the little guys strangely demonstrate the types of energy in their most elementary forms. If you look closely at the main characters in good stories, you will probably often discover that there is at least an interaction between the will, the feeling and the thought, but also often with the involvement of the imagination, logic, desire and action, which in this way deepens the range of human development and confronting challenges.
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Also read the article Psychosynthesis an Integral Psychology and the biography of Roberto Assagioli
Read the introductory article about energy psychology
Read the introductory article about integral meditation
