Shadow fragments

I'm working on a presentation for my Psychoanalysis unit, where we are challenged to choose a term from the field of psychoanalysis, and discuss the term as it is relevant to an experience arising within our own lives.

I'm choosing the Jungian term, 'shadow'. Mention of Jung to any of my psychology tutors  has historically had the effect of eliciting some decidedly less than favourable facial expressions, to be honest. The wizard's wily ways just aren't a digestible form of intellectual de rigueur for our Psychology department teachers. It makes sense, really, with the neuroscience and and cognitive psychology orientation that our university is renowned for - neurotransmitters and between-subjects designs are several times twice removed from mandalas and collective unconscious archetypes.

Anyway, I'm gathering here some of the paragraphs from his different books that I've read (and that I have on my bookshelf) that address the phenomenon of shadow.

Until I had sat here, this morning, and perused my bookshelf, I hadn't really cognised precisely how many of Jung's works I have in my possession.

Shadow?

:)

'The unconscious is commonly regarded as a sort of incapsulated fragment of our most personal and intimate life - something like what the Bible calls 'heart' and considers the source of all evil thoughts. In the chambers of the heart dwell the wicked blood-spirits, swift anger and sensual weakness. This is how the unconscious looks when seen from the conscious side. But consciousness appears to be essentially an affair of the cerebrum, which sees everything separately and in isolation, and therefore sees the unconscious in this way too, regarding it outright as my unconscious. Hence it is generally believed that anyone who descends into the unconscious gets into a suffocating atmosphere of egocentric subjectivity, and in this blind alley is exposed to the attack of all the ferocious beasts which the caverns of the psychic world are supposed to harbour.'

'True, whoever looks into the mirror of the water will see first of all his own face. Whoever goes into himself risks a confrontation with himself. The mirror does not flatter, it faithfully shows whatever looks into it; namely, the face we never show to the world because we cover it with the persona, the mask of the actor. But the mirror lies behind the mask and shows the true face.'

'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 at least a small part of the problem has already been solved; we at least have 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 rationalised into harmlessness.'

Ref:

Jung, C.G. (1959). The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. 2nd Ed. London: Routledge.

'The archetypes most clearly characterised from the empirical point of view are those which have the most frequent and disturbing influence of the ego. These are the shadow, the anima and the animus. The most accessible of these, and the easiest to experience, is the shadow, for its nature can in large measure be inferred from the contents of the personal unconscious. '

'The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognising the dark aspects of personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge, and it therefore, as a rule, meets considerable resistance.'

'Closer examination of the dark characteristics - that is, the inferiorities constituting the shadow- reveals that they have an emotional nature, a kind of autonomy, and accordingly, an obsessive, or, better, a possessive, quality.'

'Although, with insight and good will, the shadow can to some extent be assimilated into the conscious personality, experience shows there are certain features which offer the most stubborn resistance to moral control and prove almost impossible to influence. These resistances are usually bound up with projections, which are not recognised as such, and their recognition is a moral achievement beyond the ordinary... No matter how obvious it may be to the neutral observer that it is a matter of projections, there is little hope that the subject will perceive this himself.'

'Let us suppose that a certain individual shows no inclination whatever to recognise his projections. The projection making factor then has a free hand and can realise it's object - if it has one - or bring about some other situation characteristic of its power. As we know, it is not the conscious subject but the unconscious which does the projecting. Hence one meets with projections, one does not make them. The effect of projection is to isolate the subject from his environment, since instead of a real relation to it there is now only an illusory one. Projections change the world into a replica of one's own unknown face. [italics mine]... The resultant sentiment d'incompletude and the still worsening feeling of sterility are in their turn explained by projection as the malevolence of the environment, and by means of this vicious circle the isolation is intensified.'

This paragraph has completely made me re-think the notion of 'shadow' that I had been holding in my mind:

'One might assume that projections like these, which are so very difficult if not impossible to dissolve, would belong in the realm of the shadow - that is, to the negative side of the personality. This assumption becomes untenable after a certain point, because the symbols that then appear no longer refer refer to the same but to the opposite sex...a contrasexual figure... Though the shadow is a motif as well known to mythology as anima and animus, it represents first and foremost the personal unconscious....when it appears as an archetype, one encounters the same difficulties as with anima and animus. In other words, it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognise the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil'.