Trap

Trap #1: The Gilded Carriage, the Devalued Life Trap #2: The Dry Old Woman, the Senescent Force Trap #3: Burning the Treasure, Hambre del Alma, Soul Famine Trap #4: Injury to Basic Instinct, the Consequence of Capture

Estés presents a systematic taxonomy of eight psychic traps encountered in the self-preservation chapter, each naming a distinct mechanism by which the instinctual wild nature is captured, weakened, or destroyed.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph D, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017thesis

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Climbing into the old woman's gilded carriage here is very similar to entering the gilded cage; it supposedly offers something more comfortable, less stressful, but in effect it captures instead. It entraps in a way that is not immediately perceivable, since gilt tends to be so dazzling at first.

Estés identifies the archetypal logic of the trap as seduction through apparent comfort and beauty, rendering capture invisible until the mechanism has already closed.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph D, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017thesis

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But the wolf she encountered was in a trap, in a trap this wolf's leg was in. "Help me, oh help me! Aieeeee, aieeee, aieeee!" cried the wolf.

In Estés's tale, the trap holds the instinctual wolf-guide captive, and liberation from it requires the woman to override conditioned fear and exercise courageous discernment—the act of springing the trap becomes an initiatory deed.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph D, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017thesis

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Let us surmise that her first step to entrapment, entering the gilded carriage, was made out of ignorance. Let us say letting go of her own handiwork was thoughtless but typical of those who are inexperienced at life.

Estés traces the progression into entrapment as a cumulative series of choices rooted in inexperience and eroded instinct, rather than a single catastrophic error.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph D, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting

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It is easy to get started in the wrong direction by falling into certain traps early in consultation. It happens with the best of intentions. Here are six such traps. The Assessment Trap

Miller employs 'trap' diagnostically to designate iatrogenic relational errors in clinical consultation—habitual professional behaviors that, despite good intentions, undermine the therapeutic alliance and client autonomy.

Miller, William R., Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change, Third Edition, 2013supporting

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The trap here is to persist in trying to draw the person back to talk about your own conception of the problem without listening to the client's broader concerns.

Miller identifies the counselor's conceptual rigidity—insisting on a predetermined problem frame—as a relational trap that produces discord and client defensiveness.

Miller, William R., Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change, Third Edition, 2013supporting

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So, again, he made some rope, this time out of basswood bark and set up another trap. But that which he was trying to trap broke away again. Finally, he went to his grandmother and said, 'Grandmother, will you make me a very strong rope?'

Radin's Hare myth stages the trap as a repeated, escalating effort that requires supernatural assistance—the grandmother's hair—underscoring the trickster-hero's progressive learning and the elusive nature of what is hunted.

Radin, Paul, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology, 1956supporting

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the piteous trap wherein is treacherous death. Most of all I fear the ferret of the keener sort which follows you still even when you dive down your hole.

In the Homeric Homerica, the trap appears as an archaic image of inescapable, treacherous death—contextualizing the motif's ancient resonance as mortal danger concealed within ordinary circumstance.

Hesiod, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, -700aside

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