Carl Jung and the Shadow (Jack E. Othon)
(...) Have you ever said or done something really shitty, mostly on an impulse, that you later regretted? After the damage was done and the other person involved was hurt, you couldn’t bury your shame fast enough. “Why did I say that?” you might have asked yourself in frustration. It’s that “Why?” question that indicates the presence of a blind spot. And though the reason for your reaction may have been obvious (perhaps even “justified”), the lack of control you had over yourself betrays the existence of a different person lurking beneath your carefully constructed idea of who you are. If this person is coming into focus for you, congratulations—you’ve just met your shadow self. (...)
The “shadow” is a concept first coined by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung that describes those aspects of the personality that we choose to reject and repress. For one reason or another, we all have parts of ourselves that we don’t like—or that we think society won’t like—so we push those parts down into our unconscious psyches. It is this collection of repressed aspects of our identity that Jung referred to as our shadow. (...) However, the problem is that you’re not necessarily aware of those parts of your personality that you reject. According to Jung’s theory, we distance ourselves psychologically from those behaviors, emotions, and thoughts that we find dangerous. Rather than confront something that we don’t like, our mind pretends it does not exist. Aggressive impulses, taboo mental images, shameful experiences, immoral urges, fears, irrational wishes, unacceptable sexual desires—these are a few examples of shadow aspects, things people contain but do not admit to themselves that they contain. Here are a few examples of common shadow behaviors:
1. A tendency to harshly judge others, especially if that judgment comes on an impulse. (...)
2. Pointing out one’s own insecurities as flaws in another. (...)
3. A quick temper with people in subordinate positions of power. (...)
4. Frequently playing the “victim” of every situation. (...)
5. A willingness to step on others to achieve one’s own ends. (...)
6. Unacknowledged biases and prejudices. (...)
7. A messiah complex. (...)
Seeing the shadow within ourselves is extremely difficult, so it’s rarely done—but we’re really good at seeing undesirable shadow traits in others. Truth be told, we revel in it. (...) Seeing in others what we won’t admit also lies within is what Jung calls “projection.” Although our conscious minds are avoiding our own flaws, they still want to deal with them on a deeper level, so we magnify those flaws in others. First we reject, then we project. (...)
Unfortunately, our impulse to avoid the unpleasant confrontation with the truth is so strong that we remain completely unaware of what’s happening. The mind ignores and buries all evidence of our shortcomings to protect itself—i.e. to prevent the experience of pain—storing it deep within our unconscious minds. This doesn’t make those thoughts, memories, and emotions go away, but it does put them somewhere we don’t have to “see” them.
Our conscious minds are where our ego personality dwells—the “I” that walks around every day talking to other people. When you think of who “you” are, this is the part of yourself you usually identify with. However, that “you” is only the part of your identity that is visible to you. Your conscious awareness is like a light enabling you to observe what is happening inside your mind. Beneath that conscious “light” is a whole world of “darkness” containing those very aspects of ourselves that we have strived to ignore. The ego is only the tip of the iceberg floating above the sea, but the unconscious mind is the vast mountain of ice lurking beneath the surface. Much of that bulk consists of our repressed thoughts, memories, emotions, impulses, traits, and actions. Jung envisioned those rejected pieces coming together to form a large, unseen piece of our personality beneath our awareness, secretly controlling much of what we say, believe, and do. This secret piece of the personality is the shadow self. (…)
Our society teaches us that certain behaviors, emotional patterns, sexual desires, lifestyle choices, etc. are inappropriate. These “inappropriate” qualities are usually those that disrupt the flow of a functioning society—even if that disruption means challenging people to accept things that make them uncomfortable. Anyone who is too challenging becomes outcast, and everyone else moves on. Now, we humans are highly social creatures, and the last thing we want is to be excommunicated from the rest of our tribe. So, in order to avoid being cast out, we do whatever it takes to fit in. Early in our childhood development, we find where the line between what is socially “acceptable” and “unacceptable” is, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to toe it. When we cross that line, as we all frequently do, we suffer the pain of society’s backlash. People judge us, condemn us, gossip about us, and the unpleasant emotions that come with this experience can quickly become overwhelming. However, we don’t actually need people to observe our deviances to suffer for them. Eventually, we internalize society’s backlash so deeply that we inflict it on ourselves.
The only way to escape from this perpetual recurring pain is to mask it. Enter the ego. We tell ourselves stories about who we are, who we are not, and what we would never do to protect ourselves from suffering the consequences of being an outcast. Ultimately, we believe these stories, and once we develop a firm belief about something, we unconsciously discard any information that contradicts that belief. In the world of psychology, this is known as confirmation bias: Humans tend to interpret and ignore information in ways that confirm what they already believe.
The problem is that literally everyone possesses qualities that society has deemed undesirable. People fall short of others’ expectations, have a temper flare-up, are excessively gassy, etc. The ideal individual in any society is one who lives up to impossible standards. What no one wants to admit to others is that we are all secretly failing to meet those standards. Women wear makeup, men use Axe deodorant, advertisers Photoshop celebrities, people filter their personalities with photos and status updates on social media—all to mask perceived flaws and project an image of “perfection.” Jung called these social masks we all wear our “personas.”
“Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it. Furthermore, it is constantly in contact with other interests, so that it is continually subjected to modifications. But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected.”
— Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion (1938)
Uncommon thoughts and emotions put us at an even higher risk of being alienated from society. Ideas that are challenging or contrary to social norms are considered dangerous and are best left unexpressed if one wishes to “fit in.”
Emotionally, any mood other than happy, or at least neutral, is considered undesirable. Rather than admit we are going through a difficult experience, thus making others uncomfortable with the knowledge that we are uncomfortable, we say that we’re fine when we’re really not. Ironically, this need to avoid things that make us and others uncomfortable undermines our ability to confront and either heal or integrate them. And if this failure to heal is bad for us as individuals, the effects of that failure on a mass scale are catastrophic.
When our cultures were in their infancies, past humans beheld their more animalistic tendencies (murder, rape, war, etc.) with revulsion and fear. They developed a moral code, most often based on religious beliefs, about how the ideal, or “enlightened,” human should behave. While these ideals were intended to be inspiring, giving humans a model for spiritual growth, they were challenging in their tendencies to go against fundamental aspects of human nature. In many ways this is a good thing, since a society that allows rape, murder, and rampant violence does not tend to be a very good one to live in.
However, our collective moral codes fall short because they only offer ideals. Religious and secular morals only tell us who to be, not how to become that person. When solutions are offered, they are bogged down in esoteric practice that the average person has a hard time understanding—at least not without years of mentoring and study, something that not all of us have the luxury to undergo. We can’t all be monks, after all.
The result is that we struggle to change in ways that require us to suppress our base animal instincts without giving them safe outlets through which to manifest. In other words, we push our failures into the unconscious, where we can ignore them and go on pretending to be the people society wants us to be. We get to pretend to be enlightened without actually doing the deep inner work that it takes to move through the developmental process.
Jung’s proposed solution to this schism is for the individual to undergo “shadow work.” What we repress never stays repressed, it lives on in the unconscious—and, despite what our egos would have us believe, the unconscious mind is the one really running the show.
“Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
— Carl Jung, “The Philosophical Tree,” Alchemical Studies (1945)
Shadow work, then, is the process of making the unconscious conscious. In doing so, we gain awareness of our unconscious impulses and can then choose whether and how to act on them. We begin this process when we take a step back from our normal patterns of behavior and observe what is happening within us. Meditation is a great way to develop this ability to step back from ourselves, with the goal being to gain the ability to do this as we go about our daily lives.
The next step is to question. When we observe ourselves reacting to psychological triggers, or events that prompt an instant and uncontrolled reaction from us, we must learn to pause and ask ourselves, “Why am I reacting this way?” This teaches us to backtrack through our emotions to our memories, which hold the origins of our emotional programming.
Identifying triggers can be a difficult process due to our natural desire to avoid acknowledging the shadow. Our tendency is to justify our actions after the fact, when really the best thing we can do is avoid acting reactively or unconsciously in the first place. Cultivating an awareness of the shadow is the first step to identifying our triggers—but before we can do that, we must first overcome our instinctive fear of our shadows. Perhaps the biggest issue people face when confronted with the shadow is the question, “Am I a bad person?” Acknowledging the shadow means acknowledging that we contain darkness, a capacity for malevolence. (...) Jung indicates that under certain circumstances, all human beings have the capacity to do horrible, brutal things. And somewhat paradoxically, familiarizing ourselves with these dark potentialities and accepting them as part of us is perhaps the best way to ensure that they are never actualized. (...)
So, do taboo thoughts, hurtful actions, and the capacity to commit atrocities make you a bad person? No, not necessarily. Of course, everyone has a different definition of how “good” and “bad” people act—and those moral definitions are to some extent irreducibly subjective and arbitrary—but when it comes to the general consensus of “goodness,” you can make mistakes and hurt others without having an awareness of what you’re doing and still be a good person. Beyond that, once you acknowledge the massive potential for both light and darkness within each human being, the dichotomy of “good” people vs “bad” people begins to seem reductive and misleading. (...) Doing difficult shadow work—recognizing and correcting our unconscious destructive patterns—is a crucial aspect of becoming a better person.
Once we identify the original sources of our psychological triggers (e.g. repressed fear, pain, aggression, etc.), only then can we begin to heal and integrate those wounded parts of ourselves. Integration, in Jung’s definition, means that we cease rejecting parts of our personalities and find ways to bring them forward into our everyday lives. We accept our shadows and seek to unlock the wisdom they contain. Fear becomes an opportunity for courage. Pain is a catalyst for strength and resilience. Aggression is transmuted into warrior-like passion. This wisdom informs our actions, our decisions, and our interactions with others. We understand how others feel and respond to them with compassion, knowing that they are being triggered themselves. (...)
As Jung points out, we can’t correct undesirable behaviors until we deal with them head on. The shadow self acts out like a disobedient child until all aspects of the personality are acknowledged and integrated. Whereas many spiritual philosophies often denounce the shadow as something to be overcome and transcended, Jung insists that the true aim is not to defeat the shadow self, but to incorporate it with the rest of the personality. It is only through this merging that true wholeness can be attained, and when it is, that is enlightenment.
“If you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw all his projections, then you get an individual who is conscious of a pretty thick shadow. Such a man has saddled himself with new problems and conflicts. He has become a serious problem to himself, as he is now unable to say that they do this or that, they are wrong, and they must be fought against… Such a man knows that whatever is wrong in the world is in himself, and if he only learns to deal with his own shadow he has done something real for the world. He has succeeded in shouldering at least an infinitesimal part of the gigantic, unsolved social problems of our day.”
— Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion (1938) (...)
When you work to heal and integrate your shadow, you find that you stop living so reactively and unconsciously, thereby hurting others less. (...)
“The persona is the mask we wear in relation to the world and others. It is created through a combination of socialization, societal expectations, one’s experience of the world, and the natural attributes and tendencies of the individual. It combines elements of how we want to see ourselves, ideally, and how we want the world to see us, as well as how the world does see us and wants us to be. Our persona defines our social identity; it is constructed in relation to the roles we play in our lives and in our world, how we want to look and be seen. It is the face we wear to be presentable and acceptable to our society. It is not necessarily who we really are, but who we want and pretend to be to others and, many times, to ourselves.”
— David Schoen, War of the Gods in Addiction (...)
Before you can begin to work with your shadow, you need to know where to find it. Remember, your shadow aspects are those that you have buried deep in your unconscious mind, so you’ll need to create a psychological treasure map of sorts to dig them up. Your shadow is a very tricky thing, and it’s had years to learn how best to hide from you. However, the shadow doesn’t hide to vex you, but rather, to protect you. Each shadow thought or behavior surrounds a core of pain within you. All of your traumas — fears, humiliations, moments of rejection or abandonment, etc. — form tiny planets buried beneath layers of reactionary behaviors.
Just as the Earth’s atmosphere shields us from the sun’s rays and prevents our oxygen from escaping out into space, our shadows shield our traumas from outer triggers and prevent them from seeping into our conscious awareness, which would keep us in a state of constant suffering. The sum of these repressed “planets” is the shadow — an entire universe within us that we have yet to explore. But just as space is perfectly dark, so, too, is our unconscious mind — blind spots in our personalities form obstacles between us and true self-knowledge. Luckily, we can identify symptoms of the shadow to find its boundaries, enabling us to shine the light of our conscious awareness into this vast unknown territory.
Every once in a while, you may find yourself reacting strongly to people or situations in ways that you don’t understand. When this happens, you are likely being “triggered” on an unconscious level. The adverse emotions that come up are a sign that your shadow is being awakened in response to an old trauma that was reactivated — an old wound that was reopened, perhaps without us even knowing what has happened. Here are some signs that you are facing an encounter with your shadow.
Irrational anger or quick temperedness. (...)
Guilt. (...)
Fear or anxiety. At its heart, the shadow contains all of our survival instincts. When we feel threatened, the shadow rears its head, ready to jump to our defense. (...)
Dark thoughts. (...)
Impulsive behaviors. (...)
Unjustifiable hatred. (...)
Avoidance. (...)
Perpetual negativity. (...)
Obsessive behavior. (...)
Self-destructive behavior. Although self-destructive behavior can be apparent when it comes in the form of substance abuse, dangerous risk-taking, or outwardly turbulent behavior, this shadow drive has its more subtle side, as well. Negative self-talk, self-sabotage, defensiveness that kills all relationships and prevents true intimacy — these behaviors are also self-destructive. And all destruction, both inner and outer, is the work of the shadow.
Strong adverse reactions to criticism. (...)
Perhaps the problem stems from the fact that we dehumanize the human dark side. We look at people whose dark overshadows their light — the murderers, the rapists, the terrorists, the agitators — and we call them monsters. It is easier to label them and simplify the problem than to look at each individual life, to address the cultural problem of how we deal with mental illness, to trace the line of suffering in a family, to look at the cultural and societal factors that contribute to that suffering. To properly address these issues would take a massive shift on a cultural level, one that no individual could initiate on one’s own. (...)
“All those qualities, capacities and tendencies which do not harmonize with the collective values – everything that shuns the light of public opinion, in fact – now come together to form the shadow, that dark region of the personality which is unknown and unrecognized by the ego. The endless series of shadow and doppelgänger figures in mythology, fairy tales and literature ranges from Cain and Edom, by way of Judas and Hagen, to Stevenson’s Mr. Hyde in the ugliest man of Nietzsche; again and again such figures have appeared and made their bow before human consciousness, but the psychological meaning of this archetype of the adversary has not yet dawned upon mankind.”
— Erich Neumann, Depth Psychology and a New Ethic (...)
“No. They don’t consciously intend to hurt others. They simply find ways to feed the needs of their own ego, to make themselves feel powerful in an attempt to counteract previous feelings of powerlessness in their own lives, and then they give it no further thought beyond what it takes to satisfy that unconscious need.”
Does that make the behavior alright? Fuck, no — and I have years of baggage from working in customer service to back that up. But does it help us understand others? Does it help us understand ourselves? Absolutely. And that’s how we begin to answer the question for ourselves — by observing our behavior, by tracing our intentions, and by confronting the truth of what and how we need to change to be better versions of ourselves. (...)
Navigating the waters of life is exhausting, but it is the rise and fall of emotion that truly makes the human experience so profoundly beautiful. So many of us live a life of gray because we are afraid to be blinded by color. But if the price of sublime ecstasy is to endure moments of great suffering, one must ask oneself, is it worth it? You won’t know until you try. (...)
Obsessive behavior. We’ve already identified that obsessive behavior stems from a need to exert control in our lives. And that traces back to — you’ve guessed it — our survival instincts. Our ancient brain doesn’t like uncertainty. We don’t like chaos, and we don’t like the unknown. They remind us of long, dark winters where we weren’t sure if our food sources would last, and nights where we weren’t sure whether predators or rival tribes were lurking, waiting for their chance to pounce. Obsession is our mind’s way of analyzing a situation, of looking for patterns, of searching for ways to bring a person or situation under our control. The problem here is twofold. First, when we attempt to control people, we alienate them, we disempower them — we hurt them. And second, control is only an illusion. And illusions are no match for the sword of truth. (...)
At any given moment, our unconscious minds whisper to us of our deeper needs. The shadow wants to be acknowledged, so it will breed destruction to knock down barriers that stand between our conscious minds and true self-knowledge. The effect of self-destructive behavior on our lives is that things fall apart. Something isn’t working, so we unconsciously tear everything down to create an opportunity to build anew. This paradox of the psyche is not the healthiest way to breed change, but it can be effective if we awaken to our deepest truth of self. (...)
The more you come to understand how your own mind works, the more you’ll see these same principals at work in the people around you. Empathy and forgiveness come more easily when you see that others are simply acting out the same unconscious patterns that you are. Everyone is just trying to get by in the best way they know how — yet, our overactive survival responses get thrown together in a society built on competition, which leaves us trampling over each other at every step. (...)
(...) the only way to cultivate conscious awareness of our shadow behaviors is to be honest about our intentions, which means we have to be very brave in confronting the truth that we find within our hearts and minds. (...)
Perhaps the single biggest influence on the Western mind has been that of Christianity. Whether we are of secular mind or choose to practice religion, our collective guilt and self-loathing have transcended their religious origins and penetrated our cultural mind for hundreds of generations — with more and more to come. The Christian God — and his secular substitutes (the Holy Church of Public Opinion, for example, or perhaps the more timely Divine Temple of Political Righteousness) — is divine through his very ability to judge humanity. And we don’t want to be human, right? Because human = bad. So, we try to be like “God.”
And how, exactly, do we do that?
By its very nature, the shadow first internalizes, and then projects. What we see in us, we see in others, and vice versa. We perceive that we are perpetually being watched and judged, so we perpetually watch and judge others. (...)
“This confrontation is the first test of courage on the inner way, a test sufficient to frighten off most people, for the meeting with ourselves belongs to the more unpleasant things that can be avoided so long as we can project everything negative into the environment. But if we are able to see our own shadow and can bear knowing about it, then a small part of the problem has already been solved: we have at least brought up the personal unconscious. The shadow is a living part of the personality and therefore wants to live with it in some form. It cannot be argued out of existence or rationalized into harmlessness. This problem is exceedingly difficult, because it not only challenges the whole man, but reminds him at the same time of his helplessness and ineffectuality.”
— Carl Jung (...)
“In myths the hero is the one who conquers the dragon, not the one who is devoured by it. And yet both have to deal with the same dragon. Also, he is no hero who never met the dragon, or who, if once he saw it, declared afterwards that he saw nothing. Equally, only one who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it wins the hoard, the “treasure hard to attain”. He alone has a genuine claim to self-confidence, for he has faced the dark ground of his self and thereby has gained himself. This experience gives some faith and trust, the pistis in the ability of the self to sustain him, for everything that menaced him from inside he has made his own. He has acquired the right to believe that he will be able to overcome all future threats by the same means. He has arrived at an inner certainty which makes him capable of self-reliance.”
— Carl Jung (...)
And, the more you work on yourself — whether you do that through journaling, creating art, working with a therapist, meditating and practicing mindfulness, attending workshops, reading self-help books, talking with a trusted loved one, taking long walks, etc. — the more you’ll find that, not only are you gaining the power to change yourself, but you are also gaining the power to change your whole world.
“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
— Carl Jung (...)
Forgive yourself for being human, embrace your light and your dark — and give others the space to do the same.
Spend your whole life working to answer that question with, “No. No, I am not a bad person. I am human. (...)”
Surrender to the ebb and flow. Honor your cycles of self-destruction and recreation. Greet the opportunity of every new day. Give yourself as many second chances as you need.
The only lasting change is positive change, because the human spirit will always rebel against oppression and suffering.
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