When I was a starry-eyed 27-year-old, I heard a question that tickled my fancy.
“Which would you choose,” I asked my boyfriend, Fred, who would later become my husband. “Fame, fortune or power?”
I hoped to discover what made him tick.
“Fortune,” he said.
What? Fred wore overalls, drove a rusted-out VW van, and, for long stretches of time, sustained himself on peanut butter and crackers. In short, he was one of the least materialistic people I’d ever met.
“Why fortune?” I asked. “I thought you’d choose fame, being that you’re always working on the Great American Novel like your hero Jack Kerouac.”
“Money gives you freedom,” he said.
Hmm, I’d always associated the m-word with greed, conspicuous consumption, and a lack of soul. Growing up in the ’60s, I’d choose the life of a starving artist over that of a corporate money grubber any day.
My fame/fortune/power question gave me a sort of Rorschach test for gauging prospective friends and suitors. People who answered fame valued talent; fortune, material goods; and power, control over others. Or so I thought.
Fred helped shatter my tidy system of putting people in boxes. During our 30-year-marriage, he dazzled me with his many colors. He was a true Renaissance man and colorful as a peacock.
Fred’s passing from a disease that tragically bleached out his many colors rekindled my curiosity about what makes people tick. During the pandemic, I had plenty of time to sit around and muse about the question that had lit a fire under me in my youth.
What I once had found so revelatory had lost its luster. How could I have found it so profound? How could I have not seen that fame often had little to do with talent — as in the case of the Kardashian family? How could I have fallen for any kind of quiz with only three possible answers?
Serendipitously, one of my brilliant writer friends invited me to a webinar about Jungian archetypes. I listened, mesmerized, as she discussed ways to use a colorful wheel of personality types to avoid the pitfalls of stereotypical characters. We could deepen our story people by giving them unexpected characteristics.
Recently, my son Rio, a screenwriter, came home from Los Angeles for a visit. I told him about my recent exploration of Jungian archetypes and Fred’s answer to the fame-fortune-power question.
“I would have guessed fame, too,” Rio said about his dad’s choice.
“In terms of archetypes,” I continued, “Fred was definitely an Explorer.”
Then I realized he also had traits from the Trickster and Rebel, diametrically across the wheel from the Explorer. No wonder he was such a fascinating guy!
Rio and I decided that, as writers, we’d both be Artisans. He Googled Jungian archetypes on his phone and asked if I’d be up for taking a quiz. His suggestion struck me as a perfect way to pass a lazy rainy afternoon.
He quizzed me first. I needed to agree or disagree with statements like “I try to see myself in other people’s shoes” and “I enjoy imaginative stories.” The computer tallied up the results for us.
Rio looked at me from across the kitchen table. “You came out a Wise Old Man.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Not an Artisan, but I’ll take it.”
Then I found a quiz to use on him. Some of the questions struck as so abstract and philosophical we cracked up. For example: “I have a sense that a better world awaits me.” Our laughter brought me back to my days as a teenager taking quizzes like “Which Beatle would you be?”
I’d always pick George, the dark horse. Some things never change.
Rio gamely answered all my questions, which led to the revelation of his archetype: Magician. I read the description aloud, “The Magician archetype goes by many names: Wizard, Sage, Shaman … Wise Old Man.”
My jaw dropped to the floor. “I can’t believe it! We got the same archetype!!!”
And not the one we expected. We read about the Magician and saw some traits in ourselves we’d always considered secondary. Futuristic. Visionary. Intuitive.
Jung believed that everyone was born with the 12 archetypes inside of them. I’m no scholar of Jungian psychology, but, as a fan of pop personality quizzes, my casual brush with archetypes brought back memories of living with Fred, a man who fully developed his many-sided self. Now, thanks to a rainy day with our son, I get to be The Magician Mother. Life doesn’t get much better than that!
Joan Axelrod-Contrada is a writer who lives in Florence. She writes a monthly column for the Gazette called Only Human. You can reach her at joanaxelrodcontrada@gmail.com.