Shadow-work
In Jungian psychology, shadow-work is critical for psychological growth. Every person has a shadow. The shadow is everything that is not conscious. It’s comprised of the parts of ourselves that we have disowned, often out of shame. We also shove painful memories into the shadows.
Robert Bly noted that we are born as “living globes of energy.” But as we grow up, we repress the parts of ourselves that aren’t acceptable to family or society as we find ourselves driving towards their definition of perfection. As children, we stuff our shadows full of our “badness” because we fear abandonment. And we end up with just a few slices of the globe left.
Bly created a vivid image of the shadow when he likened it to “the long bag we drag behind us”. The difficulty is that the parts of us that we shove into the shadow don’t just disappear; they become unsupervised by our conscious ego and continue to exist in a dysfunctional and potentially dangerous way. Thus, a large part of psychological development is befriending the aspects of ourselves that we have disowned. By bringing these shadow elements to life, there is less chance they will run amok.
The things that go into the shadow may be the less savory, negative aspects of ourselves and our experiences, such as our capacity to be jealous or petty or egotistical. But the shadow also often contains our gold. For instance, girls deny their leadership abilities when society tells them not to be bossy. Or our culture subtly (or less subtly) tells girls that their role is to support others, often at the expense of themselves. Boys are often denied their emotions and sensitivies, so those get shoved into their shadow bags. In a society that values productivity, logic, and outcomes, our creativity often gets shoved away.
The first place that we often meet our shadow is in the projections that we put onto other people. Projections are those feelings we have towards other people that have too much emotional charge for the situation; whether they are feelings of hate or feelings of love. We may blame someone for being lazy or greedy or immature, but our overreactions to other people’s behaviors often signify aspects of ourselves that we don’t want to recognize.
We can also meet our shadow in our dreams. A dream figure of the same gender often represents our shadow side. They are often disreputable or problematic in some way. But they may also represent aspects of our gold- our strengths and our talents.
Befriending the shadow is a life long process, and it isn’t for the faint of heart as it requires us to look at parts of ourselves that perhaps we would rather not. The process of psychological development involves calling back those lost pieces of ourselves, the less savory and the gold, so that we can move towards wholeness, which is the goal- not perfection.
Not only do individuals have shadows, but so do communities and organizations. Cities and countries also have shadows- as do political parties. Society must also do its shadow-work for the sake of the community, but also for the individual. One place we can see the cultural shadow is in film. I wrote about this extensivley in my article about The Shape of Water as it explores Western cultures problematic relationship with nature and how it is impacting our environmental crisis.
We can also find the shadow side of communities by listening to the stories that they tell about themselves and what they project onto other communities or places. They may accuse the “other” organization or political party of being corrupt, unreasonable, violent, or uncaring when they also are guilty of the same things.
The image is of the mysterious Cycladic feminine figure from Greece 3000 BC.