The Jungian Shadow: The nexus of all individual growth

Here I am going to point out the fundaments of the Jungian shadow, and how it is probably one of the most useful concepts, if not the most useful concept, of emotional growth.

First, a brief explanation.

Carl jung was an Austrian psychoanalyst, he was a contemporary, and even a student of Freud. However they differed on many aspects of their practice. Freud, for example, was fond of the idea that the primary motivation of the human psyche was the libido, hence the many popular (and often disregarding of his import as a philosopher and psychologist) theories revolving around castration, sexual intercourse, sexuality and so on. Therefore it was the main driver of behaviour; what he would call the Id. Jung on the other hand believed in the self-organising principle of the human psyche called Individuation. That it has a drive to incorporate all aspects of emotional life, to integrate the many characteristics it possesses, some of which are repressed to the conscious mind, into a whole. And it is the unconscious, rather than showing symbols of latent sexual or survival aspects (though not fully excluding them), which guides and hints towards repressed elements of our day to day conscious personalities, and tries to even forewarn of conclusions to the paths our ego is treading. Thus our unconscious communicates to us through dreams, and also through day to day habits and phrasing to a lesser extent, that which it strives to find: equilibrium between the opposites of our identities.

Now, personally I think they both make good points, and in synthesising the two we are better off. We can't overlook procreation and our physical survival as massive primitive drivers. However there is a higher level function, our most human qualities of personality and character at work too. And so we have emphasis on the inner animalistic side, and also the higher functions of humanity, which is why Jung often bridges into spirituality. So this brings us to the main topic: The Jungian Shadow.

​ It is important to understand Jung's understanding on the ego. A point of some contention between the theorists. Freud thought it was the main 'I' drive of the psyche for self-preservation, dominance and power; Jung believed it was simply that which we conceptualise as our identity. The ego therefore is everything we see ourselves as. It could be 'I am empath'; 'I love bacon'; 'I am not an introvert; 'I hate floppy hats, especially when worn by vigilante clowns'. Whatever really. For the purposes of this blog post, I will give my own extension (probably propounded by someone along the way, but it's how I rationalise it). Which is that our identity is one of the higher integrated concepts we hold. So much information is corralled into a definition of 'self'. However, as with most our rational explanation of things, it works by reason and rationality to build this construct. Which works, at it's most fundamental, by the law of non-contradiction. Therefore A cannot equal - A. Therefore in personality terms, and introvert cannot be an extrovert; an egoist cannot be and empath; a lover cannot be a fighter. At first glance it came seem almost obviously erroneous, but if you replace cannot be, with shouldn't be, then you can see one of the primary thought patterns of those who condemn themselves, and others. As though they might express certain traits, they feel shame as they are letting their rationality concocted identity down. That is if they don't completely repress and deny those elements of their character to themselves. Now, the idea is that we are all those things. With the concept of ourselves, the identity, the ego, through how we are raised and through cultural pressures we push a whole set of traits, behaviours and thoughts into the unconscious. We repress them, and this is what we call the Shadow-Self. The self which is repressed, the self which is not allowed to show its head, and if it does is affirmed to be at best annoying, at worst a blight on our very being. And it is not as though they aren't expressed or thought, but condemned or denied when they are. It is like the unconscious trying to get the ego to admit all the ways in which it is kidding itself, and it does this through dreams, and clues can be found in day to day life. The more one remove's themselves from a certain identity trait, the more the neurosis deepens, almost as though by trying to house in one polarity, the invisible line of elastic between that and the shadow element it is trying to get away from just gets more tense and more desperate to pull us back to centre. We break before the elastic does. Every time. Because no amount of repression or convincing otherwise can stop us having those traits, we just become blind to them.

This balancing act is what Jung calls 'individuation'. So dreams offer clues as to our discontent, but a great clue, is in how we project it onto other people in certain ways. This is called shadow projection.

One of the primary ways we do this is through the condemnation of others. Essentially whatever we condemn someone for we are culpable of ourselves. If we call people stupid, it is because we fear stupidity, probably from culture and parents putting negative emphasis on that term, and therefore see it as weakness, and to condemn it in another is to implicitly say to ourselves If I know what stupid is, then I would never do it. And therefore plays into the game of convincing the ego it is not stupid. Yet it is a reflection of a person's inability to incorporate their own irrationality and mistakes into a sense of self. They might deny anything as stupid by rationalising it as someone else's fault, just being a victim of fate. Yet will not give another the same forgiveness and justice, and may not accept their responsibility. It is a double standard we all fall into. Yet with the fear of hypocrisy, again we struggle to admit it. We can do this with anything and it generally rings true.

The best example I can often see in liberal culture is the idea of bigotry and ego being bad. We condemn selfishness, self-orientation and arrogance as BAD. And thus we conceptualise sharing, empathy, generosity and selflessness as GOOD. The problem here is that many people I treat and have talked to over the years can't assert themselves, can't ever think what they do is good. Every positive statement about self has to be prefaced with: 'Well, you know, it sounds really arrogant, but...' as if it is a bad thing to observe, with good reason, our strengths. Where everyone else, even people who cause pain, can be 'beautiful really.' It is because it is a cultural strength to be empathic, and no one likes the 'ego'. Yet it is that mentality which causes so many people to have boundary problems, who are taken advantage of, and who try and give far much more than they can and cause negative mental states which benefit no one. Not to mention those who condemn the 'others' as those who are ego-centric and self-serving etc. That's not to say they aren't and I agree with them. But if we label, condemn, shout and descry the belief systems of others, that is, by its very definition, bigotry (seriously look it up). It is also arrogant to label people, to resort to out-group homogeneity and tell people what they should or should not believe, and act as though 'it's just obvious' when we are talking about the way we see the world. Where really both sides are doing the same thing to each other in many fundamental ways. Disclaimer: I am totally liberal. But in accepting our ability to do this, we can find balance, know when to be ego-centric, and know when to be empathic. And therefore avoid strong sentiments, labelling and targeting people, which often just causes society to polarise further. It works well when it comes to large scale media and politics sometimes, however person to person it is often very counter-productive. We are doing the same things to each other, the whole irrational impetus of in-group bias, confirmation bias, the use of rhetoric and biased sources is justified to everyone, because it's in our collective human shadow that we don't want to admit we are the irrational ones. But, we all are. And even where we are more rational, to resort to anger, diatribe and condemnation of others means we are acting irrationally even of sound rational premises. And therefore are no better than those we condemn. And that's ok too. Once we find no shame in that, we can recognise it and stop it.

​ Another aspect of shadow is projecting the gold of the shadow. The shadow, despite its name, is just darkness, it doesn't imply bad qualities. When we project them we do this with people we love, we fall for positive qualities we feel we don't have in ourselves, we gravitate and respect those who show off the things we think we don't have and shout their praises. What happens is we fall in love and gravitate to those people who have those qualities, actively projecting onto them those things we wish we were, and in their validation we find validation for being worthy of those qualities. All the while they are always there, but just kept in the shadow. The shy person who falls in love with the assertive, the assertive who falls in love with the shy; the aggressive attracted to the passive and the passive in love with the aggressive; the giving loving the conservative; the open book loving the reserved, the reserved loving the freeness of the open book. And so on. The opposites attract rule I think finds its nexus here. All good therapy is is finding different ways to bring the good out out of the shadow, breaking down perfectionism, labelling and absolutism to see how the good is present and must be accepted; and conversely to bring the negative traits out, to show there is no shame in them, that it is human, and that every impetus in the average human mind has a time and a place, and can be mixed well with their counterparts to form balance, and thus wisdom. The moral of this is: With Jung he looks at as paradoxes, in Buddhism it is the 'middle way'. It is that place you find where you find the good in ego-centrism, and the good in empathy; the good in pride and the good in fluidity; the good in introversion and the good in extroversion. The more adamant we are of one polarity, the more we polarise and repress another bit, and anxiety, depression and neuroses is our unconscious's way of trying to pull us back to centre. But in a world which value's certainty over doubt and learning, we often polarise for fear of having it backtrack on all of the clear identity statements of our ego, often stretching decades. And we are so protective over personalities, their neuroses included, which weren't even the one's we created. Neurology and upbringing did most of that. But we can choose, but first we must choose to dig into the bits we hate to admit, find no shame, integrate them and then we end up growing as human's, and with it we find a lot more calmness and acceptance of others, as we realise, none of us are that different really. Especially when it comes to the Shadow Self. ​