Meeting Our Own Shadow in the Dark Forest of the Psyche:
The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature
Content from
Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams
Edited and Adapted
by Michael Mervosh & Irene Tobler
for the
PsychoEnergetics Training Program
Everything with substance casts a shadow.
The ego stands to the shadow
as light to shade.
This is the quality that makes us human.
“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious
life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting
our most well-meant intentions.”
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the
darkness conscious. This procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not
popular.”
“I would rather be whole than good.”
- Carl Jung
WHAT IS THE SHADOW?
The term “shadow” refers to that part of the personality that has been repressed for
the sake of the ego ideal.
The existence of the shadow is a human archetypal fact. It is a part of the process of
ego formation. The clash between ‘collectivity and individuality’ is a general human
pattern.
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The development of the ego takes place in the relationship between the developing
self and the external reality.
The child accepts himself in terms of fitting in. Harmony with self requires external
acceptance and fitting in with collective values. The ego cannot become strong
unless we first learn collective taboos, values, and moral standards, whether
“positive” or “negative”.
Those elements of individuality that are too much at variance with accepted values
cannot consciously be incorporated into the image that the ego has of itself.
In other words, repression is indispensable to ego formation.
Yet persistent repression always results in psychopathology. This means we all
carry the germ of psychopathology within us; it is an integral part of our humanity
and our personal and collective evolution.
Although these elements of individuality are repressed, they do not disappear; they
continue to function outside ego awareness as an unseen alter ego, which seems to
be a darkness outside oneself, which we call the shadow.
By being removed from view they are also removed from supervision and can
thereby continue their existence unchecked and in a disruptive way.
The shadow, no matter how troublesome, is not intrinsically evil.
The shadow is the door to our individuality.
There is no access to our individuality BUT through the shadow.
The ego, in its refusal of insight and its refusal to accept the entire personality,
contributes much more to evil than the shadow.
“In a showdown, God is always on the side of the shadow, not the ego.”
- Fritz Kunkel
The family shadow contains all that is rejected by a family’s conscious awareness. It
contains those feelings and actions that are seen as too threatening to the family’s
self-image. The same is true for social or business or religious groups or
organizations.
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The Collective Shadow
While most individuals and groups live out the socially acceptable side of life, others
seem to live out primarily the socially disowned parts. Then they become the object
of negative group projections.
The collective shadow takes the form of scapegoating, racism, enemy-making,
religious war, ethnic war, etc.
In these ways, humans attempt to dehumanize other humans in an effort to ensure
that that killing the enemy does not mean killing humans like themselves.
Similar scapegoating and objectification and “killing off” happens in families, social
groups and business organizations.
The biological shadow is in our very cells; our animal ancestors survived with tooth
and claw. The beast in us is very much alive, just caged most of the time.
Shadow Boxing
In order to protect its own control and sovereignty, the ego instinctively puts up a
great resistance to the confrontation with the shadow. When it catches a glimpse of
the shadow, the ego most often reacts with an attempt to eliminate it.
When we refuse to face the shadow in ourselves or try to fight it with willpower
alone, we merely relegate this energy to the unconscious, and from there it exerts its
power in a negative, compulsive, projected form.
Then our projections transform our surrounding world into a reality of defensive
reactions, and we seek validation for our inner projections. This is how we create
self-fulfilling vicious cycles.
Then comes the final shock when we face the shadow. We discover that it is
impossible to eliminate the shadow, no matter how we try. The shadow energy can
only be re-channelled and transformed. This requires both awareness and
acceptance.
Ironically, a strong ego is required to integrate the shadow and attain true
individuation, as well as to realize one’s potential.
The healthy, strong ego has a creative relationship to both the shadow and the self.
It is not diminished in the process of integration; it simply becomes less rigid in its
boundaries.
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Shadow Work
Right relationship with the shadow offers us a great gift: to lead us back to our
buried potentials.
The shadow, when it is realized, is the source of renewal; the new and productive
impulse cannot come from established values of the ego. When there is an impasse,
or sterile time in our lives -- despite our adequate ego development -- we must look
to the dark, hitherto unacceptable side.
Remember that the shadow is the door to our individuality.
It is not until we have truly been shocked into seeing ourselves as we really are,
instead of as we wish or hopefully assume we are, that we can take the first step
toward individual self-realization.
The confrontation of one’s own shadow can be a mortifying, deathlike experience.
But like any kind of dying, it points beyond the personal meaning of existence.
FINDING THE SHADOW
Because the shadow is by definition unconscious, we usually do not see it or know
that we are under its control. Indeed, the shadow qualities are usually in glaring
contrast to the ego’s ideals and wishful efforts.
There are however, many clues.
There are also our friends, partners, learning companions and journey allies who
will be happy to point our shadow pieces.
What we have neglected, forgotten, or buried usually erupts in our inconvenient and
uncomfortable interactions with the world.
Meeting the shadow calls for slowing down the pace of life, listening to the clues,
and allowing ourselves time to be alone in order to digest the clues from the hidden
world.
Following the Clues
1) Identify your projections.
Since everything unconscious is projected, we encounter the shadow in projection -in our view of the other.
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We project in an unconscious attempt to banish from ourselves some unwanted,
dangerous, painful or infantile attribute. We sometimes seek to do this by keeping it
safely out there in the OTHER person.
Our ego does not just repress the negative, but also the positive aspects of ourselves
that do not match the ego ideal we have developed.
Hence there can be a Golden Shadow, and positive as well as negative projections.
A projection invariably blurs our personal view of the person who is the object of
our projection.
Even when the projected qualities happen to be the real qualities of the other
person (when our projections are accurate), our emotional reactions or our
transference (whether negative or positive) reveals the projection of OUR issue.
It is our own issues that blur our vision of others, and interferes with our capacity to
see objectively and relate humanly (and humanely).
Where a shadow projection occurs, we cannot tell the difference between the
actuality of another person and our own issues. We cannot distinguish our energy
from the reality of the other. We cannot see the other or ourselves with clarity.
Owning Your Projections
1) Describe the personality type you find most despicable, most unbearable or hateful,
and most impossible to get along with.
By doing so, you will produce a description of some aspect of your own repressed
characteristics. This will hold some variation of a self-description, one which is
utterly unconscious, and which therefore always and everywhere disturbs you as
you receive its effect from the other person.
These very qualities are so unacceptable to you precisely because they represent
your own repressed side. Only that which we cannot accept within ourselves do we
find impossible to live with in others.
2) Examine any ways you tend to use humor to deflect or divert attention.
Humor, in the form of crude or sexual or demeaning or self-deprecating jokes, is
another window through which to see our shadow. This type of humor expresses
our hidden and unprocessed fears, emotions, prejudices, and judgments.
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3) Examine one particular emotional reaction and exaggerated feeling you may have
about an other.
We need feedback from conscious others, who can serve as our mirrors. This is a
great tool to develop more clarity in our own self-awareness. Soliciting feedback
from others as to how they perceive us helps us to be less afraid of our own shadow.
4) Examining interactions in which we continually have the same troubling effect on
several different people.
Here we can begin to investigate with more awareness what is really happening
with us, when we are perceived by others in way other than we intended to be
perceived.
Other ways that reveal the shadow aspects within us:
Looking at our impulsive and inadvertent acts, slips of the tongue and behavior.
In situations where we experience ongoing humiliation or shame.
In our tendency towards exaggerated anger about other people’s faults.
By studying our dreams, daydreams, and fantasies.
In excitement from violent or horror movies, television shows and video games.
Through a vicarious enactment of the shadow side, our darker impulses can be
stimulated and relieved in the safety of a theater or living room.
The Shadow and The Body
The body that hides beneath our clothing often blatantly expresses what we
consciously deny.
The body is the living shadow, in so far as it contains the tragic history of how the
spontaneous surging of life energy is murdered and rejected in a multitude of ways,
until the body becomes a deadened object.
The victory of an over-rationalized life is promoted at the expense of the more
primitive and natural vitality of our own embodiment.
For those who can deepen awareness of our own bodies, we can discover that it
holds the record of our rejected side, revealing what we dare not speak, expressing
our current and past fears.
“The body as shadow is predominantly the body as ‘character’, the body as bound
energy that is unrecognized and untapped, unacknowledged and unavailable.”
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- John Conger
Through “shadow work”, which is the continuing effort to develop a creative
relationship with the shadow aspects of our own nature, we can:
- Achieve a more genuine self-acceptance, one that is based on a more complete
knowledge of who we are.
- Defuse the negative emotional reactionss that erupt unexpectedly in our daily
lives.
- Become more free of the intense guilt and shame associated with our negative
feelings and actions.
- Recognize the inner projections we carry that distort our opinion of others and
perpetuate our vicious cycles of suffering.
- Heal our significant relationships through more honest self-examination and
direct communication of our increased self-awareness.
- Use our creative imaginations that we can access through dreams, drawing,
writing, and other art forms to own the disowned aspects of ourselves.
“Dealing with the shadow consists solely in an attitude. First of all, one has to accept
and take seriously into account the existence of the shadow. Secondly, it is necessary
to be informed about its qualities and intentions. Thirdly, long and difficult
negotiations will be unavoidable.”
- Carl Jung
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