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In 1886 the writer Robert Louis Stevenson had a striking dream: a male
character, pursued for a crime, swallowed a powder whereupon his personality
was instantaneously transformed.!
!
Stevenson found his dream so striking that it inspired him to write the now
famous tale The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: a story significant for
its highly astute psychological insight that “man is not truly one, but truly two”. !
!
In Stevenson’s classic tale, Dr. Jekyll is a well-respected doctor, who cares
deeply about the admiration of others and strives to be a good human being. In
his laboratory he concocts a potion that, when ingested, transforms him into Mr.
Hyde - a primitive, unruly, and destructive man.!
!
Reflecting on the nature of his transformation into Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll discovers
a truth about the nature of the human being:!
!
“I learned to recognize the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of
the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could
rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both.” (Robert
Louis Stevenson)!
!
Numerous thinkers throughout the ages have commented on the “duality of man”
- on the idea that behind or underneath the mask we display to others exist anti-
social and destructive traits, desires, and impulses.!
!
In the Republic, Plato wrote: “There is in every one of us, even those who seem
to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and
lawless.” (Republic, Plato)!
!
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche observed:!
!
“Fear of wild animals - that has been bred into the human being for the longest
time, including the animal that he harbors within and fears: Zarathustra calls it the
‘beast within’” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche)!
!
The 18th century German polymath Goethe, a well-respected man who was
revered in the highest social circles of his day, claimed he had never heard of a
crime he did not feel himself capable of committing.!
!
But it was the 20th century psychologist Carl Jung who examined in most detail
the “duality of man”. Jung proposed that at a young age, as we begin to develop
a conscious ego and sense of self, two interdependent psychological systems
begin to form: the persona, and the shadow. In Stevenson’s tale, Dr Jekyll
represents the persona, while Mr. Hyde the shadow; the “beast within”.!
!
The formation of the shadow begins early in life. At a young age we learn that
some of our traits and qualities elicit negative feedback from family and peers,
and that others are deemed undesirable or disagreeable by society at large. !
!
This negative feedback from others, and realization that parts of our personality
are destructive or unacceptable, stimulates anxiety, guilt, shame, and feelings of
inadequacy, forcing us to adapt to the environment and eliminate these painful
emotions in the only way we know how - by repressing into the unconscious the
individual qualities we have been led to brand as unworthy. !
!
Common qualities we repress include unbridled impulses such as lust, anger,
sexuality, greed, and resentment - which together form what Nietzsche called ‘the
beast within’ - as well as weaknesses and impotences; we tend to hide our
cowardice from others, as well as from ourselves. Strengths and sources of
renewal, as we’ll examine, also populate the shadow, to the detriment of our well
being.!
!
This repression of unwanted individual qualities, or “denial of the negative”, does
not cause these qualities to disappear; they instead coalesce in the unconscious
to form the shadow - the rejected and therefore dark side of our conscious ego.!
!
As Erich Neumann explained:!
!
All those qualities, capacities and tendencies which do not harmonize with the
collective values...come together to form the shadow, that dark region of the
personality which is unknown and unrecognized by the ego. (Depth Psychology
and a New Ethic, Erich Neumann)!
!
While the shadow is the dark and unconscious side of the conscious ego,
composed of the qualities we reject and repress into the unconscious; the
persona is the light side, the part of the ego turned towards the outside world.!
!
The persona is made up of individual qualities we have learned via positive
feedback to be amicable, as well as socially desirable modes of appearance,
belief, and behaviour we have internalized and identified with. It is the socially
acceptable personality mask we wear to ensure we attain a sense of belonging,
smooth relations with others, and success in the social world. !
!
As the Jungian analyst David Schoen explained:!
!
“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.” (War of the Gods in Addiction, David
Schoen) !
!
While a well-functioning and malleable persona is essential for psychological
health and adaptation to the social world, a common danger is to over-identify
with the persona.!
!
Over-identification with the persona occurs when we become consumed by the
erroneous conviction that we are identical with our social role and identity; that
our total personality is nothing but the social mask we wear.!
!
By adopting a personality wholly dependent on one’s social role, or by
constructing and identifying with a personality excessively concerned with
conforming to socially desirable modes of appearance, behaviour and belief, one
is offered, in the words of Carl Jung, “easy compensation for personal
deficiencies”:!
!
“Identification with one’s office or one’s title is very attractive indeed, which is
precisely why so many men are nothing more than the decorum accorded to
them by society. In vain would one look for a personality behind this husk.
Underneath all the padding one would find a very pitiable little creature. That is
why the office – or whatever this outer husk may be – is so attractive: it offers
easy compensation for personal deficiencies.” (Carl Jung)!
!
While the persona as a social mask is often used to conceal our personal
deficiencies from others, it is also used as an internal mask, whereby we conceal
parts of ourselves from ourselves.!
!
Nietzsche observed:!
!
“We are like shop windows in which we ourselves are constantly arranging,
concealing, or illuminating our supposed qualities, which others ascribe to us - all
in order to deceive ourselves.” (Nietzsche, Dawn of Morning)!
!
The more we identify with the persona, the more we’ll feel our personality to be in
complete harmony with social norms, values, and expectations, and the more
we’ll have to deceive ourselves and repress the shadow deeper into the
unconscious - as the shadow is that part of our personality which is not in
harmony with, and cannot adapt to, the expectations, values, and norms imposed
by our family and society at large.!
!
In other words, the brighter the social mask, the more darkness it generally
conceals. As Goethe explained, “Where there is much light, the shadow is deep”.!
!
While identification with the persona offers “easy compensation for personal
deficiencies”, as well as granting us the capacity to ignore our darker and
unacceptable individual qualities, this psychological stance is not without its
dangers.!
!
Repressing and ignoring the existence of the shadow does not cause it to
passively lie dormant in the unconscious. Operating subterraneously it instead
transforms and proliferates in the dark; influencing our life in sometimes subtle,
but often destructive, ways.!
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The 20th century psychologist and popular writer, James Hillman explained:!
!
“…what is not admitted into awareness erupts in ungainly, obsessive ways,
affecting consciousness with precisely the qualities it strives to exclude”. (James
Hillman)!
!
Although the shadow is composed of all the qualities we deem unacceptable, are
ashamed of, and do not coincide with our socially constructed identity, it is an
integral part of who we are. As Erich Neumann pointed out, “it forms a part of the
nuclear structure of our personality”. Repressing the shadow is therefore
tantamount to denying an important part of our individuality; a difficult feat,
requiring large amounts of energy and imposing great stress on the conscious
ego.!
!
In his book War of the Gods in Addiction, the Jungian analyst David Schoen
argued that the stress required to maintain a persona-identified and shadow-
repressed psychological state can lead one down the path of addiction or self-
destruction, by forcing one to seek out “a coping mechanism that becomes
concentrated around the repetitive discharging of tension provided by various
potentially addictive behaviors such as use of alcohol or drugs, gambling, sex,
food, work, relationships, or whatever.” (War of the Gods in Addiction, David
Schoen)!
!
The development of an addiction releases psychological tension by providing the
repressed shadow a chance to express itself - to momentarily come out into the
open, so to speak. As Schoen explained:!
!
“…the personal shadow reinforces, encourages, and becomes dependent upon
the addictive behavior to express itself, to have any existence in the light outside
of the closet, the attic, and the basement where it has been locked up and hidden
for so long. Often the addictive behavior allows the personal shadow the only
opportunities to live and to be. The more cut off and unconscious we are of our
personal shadows, the more vulnerable we are to having those shadows break
out and be set free for a time by addictive behaviors.” (War of the Gods in
Addiction, David Schoen)!
!
When given an opportunity to express itself via an addiction or any other self-
destructive tendency - such as issues with anger, self-hate, or extreme apathy -
the shadow has the capacity to gain complete control of our conscious faculties,
and like an invading god of ancient cultures, exert a possessive-like influence on
our thoughts, emotions, decisions, and behaviour.!
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As Carl Jung noted:!
!
“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, possessive quality.” (Carl
Jung)!
!
The Apostle Paul could very well have been describing his own personal
experience with “shadow-possession” with these words:!
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“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the
very thing I hate...I can will what is right but I cannot do it.” (Apostle Paul)!
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Another main way in which repressing our shadow can have negative effects in
our life is through a type of psychological projection called shadow projection.!
!
Sigmund Freud was the first psychologist in the 20th century to take note of
psychological projection, observing that people frequently project, or externalize,
their own internal subjective contents - such as emotions, assumptions, ideas,
and fantasies - onto other people and the world at large. !
!
Along with Freud, Jung believed psychological projection to be a natural
tendency of the human mind. The prominent Jungian psychologist Marie-Louise
Von Franz wrote: “Jung defined projection as an unconscious, that is
unperceived and unintentional, transfer of subjective psychic elements onto an
outer object.” (Marie-Louise Von Franz)!
!
Psychological projection is an automatic process, as Jung commented, it “is
never made; it happens” (Carl Jung). It is therefore very difficult to catch oneself
projecting inner contents onto the world.!
!
We frequently infuse the world and other people with our own internal
psychological elements, and proceed to navigate reality and interact with others
oblivious that many of our perceptions and assumptions are coloured and
distorted by our own mind. “In the darkness of some externality I find, without
recognizing it as such, a psychic or inner something that is my own.”, wrote Jung.!
!
While projection affects much of our experience and is unavoidable to some
degree; it can be harmful when used as an emotionally defensive strategy to
protect us from facing our shadow. To avoid the fear, anxiety, and guilt that would
arise if we were forced to face our shadow, we frequently project our flaws,
weaknesses, unruly and destructive impulses onto others - a process known as
shadow projection.!
!
“…the individual has an ineradicable tendency to get rid of everything he does
not know and does not want to know about himself by foisting it off on somebody
else.” (Carl Jung)!
!
By ejecting onto others our shadow qualities, we proceed to attack the other
upon whom we have foisted our darkness. The victim of our shadow projection
comes to embody in the external world our own inner hatred and fear of the
“beast within”. !
!
As Erich Neumann explained:!
!
“The shadow, which is in conflict with the acknowledged values, cannot be
accepted as a negative part of one’s own psyche and is therefore projected –
that is, it is transferred to the outside world and experienced as an outside object.
It is combated, punished, and exterminated as “the alien out there” instead of
being dealt with as “one’s own inner problem”.” (Depth Psychology and a New
Ethic, Erich Neumann)!
!
The target of shadow projection is called the scapegoat, named after an ancient
Hebraic ritual, where the sins of the community and the evils which troubled them
were laid upon the head of a goat, which was subsequently killed or sent off into
the wilderness. Similar rituals have been observed by anthropologists in
numerous different tribes and communities. The function of these rituals is to
atone individuals from their deviations from the collective morality, as well as
exterminate evils such as death, disease, and suffering.!
!
While these rituals no longer exist for us in the modern day, the same
psychological processes are at play. Instead of projecting our shadow qualities
onto a designated scapegoat within the confines of a ritual, we project it freely
onto family members, neighbours, groups, races, religions and nations across
the world.!
!
At the level of the family, shadow projection is common. Each family tends to
isolate one individual as the scapegoat - the one upon whom all family members
project their shadow material onto. The scapegoat of the family is usually the one
most identified not with their persona, as most people are, but with their shadow. !
!
Highly aware of and identified with the darkness within, the scapegoat of the
family is able to tune into the darkness which others hide from themselves and
others behind a socially acceptable persona. Because of this sensitivity to the
darkness within others, the scapegoat’s mere presence tends to stimulate in
others an awareness of their own shadow-qualities. !
!
To protect themselves from becoming too aware of their shadow, family members
proceed to project their dark qualities onto the family scapegoat - the one who
stimulated an awareness of it in the first place.!
!
Speaking of the family scapegoat Sylvia Brinton Perera wrote:!
!
“Not uncommonly they are perceived by the scapegoating parents as dangerous
viewers of shadow material best left unseen. Like the child who saw that the
emperor’s fabled robe was imaginary, their vision often pierces the persona
because it is attuned to the deeper layers of the psyche. Because they arouse
unconscious discomfort, their perceptions may be disregarded or denied, while
they themselves are shamed and rejected.” (Scapegoat Complex, Sylvia Brinton
Perera)!
!
At the collective level, shadow projection occurs when groups or entire societies
seek out or create an enemy, who acts as the scapegoat for the collective.
Collective shadow projection grants large populations the opportunity to eject
their shadow onto a group of others, who are subsequently perceived as
subhuman, or even evil incarnate - demons who need to be eradicated. !
!
Jung asserted collective shadow projection to be the fuel which feeds all wars,
sustains conflicts between nations and races, and is responsible for much of the
division and hate which isolates groups and minorities from one another:!
!
“…the normal person…acts out his psychic disturbances socially and politically,
in the form of mass psychosis like wars and revolutions. The real existence of an
enemy upon whom one can foist off everything evil is an enormous relief to one’s
conscience. You can at least say, without hesitation, who the devil is: you are
quite certain that the cause of your misfortune is outside, and not in your own
attitude.” (Carl Jung)!
!
Whether we are the unwilling victim of shadow-possession, whereby our dark
qualities take hold of our mind and express themselves through addictions or
other self-destructive tendencies; or whether we project our shadow onto others,
creating strife in our personal relationships and contributing to the hate in the
world, in repressing the shadow we obstruct the capacity to move towards self-
actualization, or what Jung called individuation.!
!
Instead of repressing the shadow and rejecting parts of our personality into the
dark corners of the unconscious, we need to integrate them into our life, and
make the shadow conscious.!
!
As Jung explained:!
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“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making
the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however is disagreeable, and
therefore not popular.” (Carl Jung)!
!
In bringing our previously rejected shadow into the light of conscious awareness
we not only mitigate its ability to cause chaos and strife in our life, but as we’ll
explore in part 2 of this episode, hidden within the nucleus of some shadow-
qualities are life-enhancing energies that have the potential to revitalize our
existence.!
!
“The great epochs of our life come when we gain the courage to rechristen our
evil as what is best in us.” (Friedrich Nietzsche)!
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Or as Edward Whitmont explained:!
!
“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, and sterile time in our lives—despite an adequate ego
development—we must look to the dark, hitherto unacceptable side which has
been at our conscious disposal.” (Edward Whitmont)!
!
Some may wonder why anyone would repress into the shadow qualities, traits,
and impulses that are life-enhancing, or potential sources of renewal. To
understand how the repression of positive qualities into the shadow is not only
possible but normal, we must investigate the role of socialization in the formation
of the shadow.!
!
Growing up we are rewarded when we behave like others, think like others, and
desire what others desire. When we show individual deviation from the collective,
more often than not we are shunned and ostracized; sometimes in subtle ways,
sometimes in overt ways. But either way, we are taught that an expression of our
individuality, of the ways we are different from others, does not grant us the
acceptance of peers and the approval of authority figures. And so we tend to
repress our individuality, both the good and bad portions of it, into our shadow.
We hide it from ourselves and others, through the construction of a persona and
socially acceptable worldview.!
!
Through adolescence and into adulthood, our explicit dependence on the
approval of others tends to diminish, but our implicit dependence remains,
managed by an inner authority - our conscience.!
!
Our conscience is an internal censor informing us of what is right and wrong,
good and bad, acceptable and unacceptable. It tells us what we should be doing,
guides our actions and decisions, and thus shapes our personality and destiny. !
!
While it may appear to be a psychological entity of our own making, an
expression of our personal moral compass, it is actually a by-product or remnant
of the socialization process. Through the course of our development, the
commands and expectations of others become introjected and internalized,
forming our conscience. In other words, the demands of others, and society at
large, continue to exert authority over us into adulthood; only now they are
disguised as our own voice. As Erich Neumann pointed out: “Conscience is the
representative of the collective norm.” !
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Or in the words of Nietzsche:!
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“The content of our conscience is everything that was regularly demanded of us
without reason during our childhood, by persons whom we respected or feared…
The faith in authorities is the source of conscience: it is thus not the voice of God
in the human breast, but rather the voice of some other human beings in the
human being.” (Friedrich Nietzsche)!
!
As the demands and expectations of the collective continue to exert authority
over us through our conscience, many people continue to repress their
individuality well into old age for the same reason they repressed it in childhood:
to appease the demands of others, to look good in the eyes of society.!
!
With one’s individuality repressed into the shadow, one will go on living, but the
meaning of one’s individual existence will be lost, and sterility and stagnation will
prevail. In the words of Jung:!
!
“To the extent that man is untrue to the law of his being and does not rise to
personality, he has failed to realize his life’s meaning.” (Carl Jung)!
!
To release your individuality from the confines of the shadow, and accept the
idiosyncratic parts of your personality you have previously rejected and
repressed, requires you retract your emotional dependence on familial and social
values, and make a psychological break with the collective in favour of a higher,
inner law. !
!
“I have seen many human lives destroyed through the inability to take a personal
stand in relation to the collective. The collective…has fixed rules in accordance
with its general interests, which do not take account of individual demands. And
so our singularity can find room in the world only if we succeed in recognizing
what our genuine needs are, and on that basis finding the courage to break
collective rules.” (Vertical Labyrinth, Aldo Carotenuto)!
!
The overcoming, or breaking, of collective rules, has been recognized in
mythology as an essential process for psychological development. It has been
expressed in two especially powerful metaphors: the struggle with the dragon,
and the killing of the father.!
!
As explained by Erich Neumann in his classic work The Origins and History of
Consciousness, in mythology the father often represents the worn out and stale
social institutions and norms which threaten the individual’s development. In his
words, the father is symbolic of:!
!
“a spiritual system which…captures and destroys the [individual’s]
consciousness. This spiritual system appears as the binding force of the old law,
the old religion, the old morality, the old order; as conscience, convention,
tradition, or any other spiritual phenomenon that seizes hold of the [individual]
and obstructs his progress into the future.” (The Origins and History of
Consciousness, Erich Neumann) !
!
To kill the father means to overcome the familial and social expectations you
have previously respected and obeyed. It is to gain awareness of the ways in
which your life has been collectively conditioned, and to replace this conditioning
with an attitude that emphasizes individual solutions, instead of social and
familial sanctions. !
!
The killing of the father is an essential stage in life, for as Neumann commented,
"without the murder of the 'father' no development of consciousness and
personality is possible." !
!
The struggle with the dragon is another powerful metaphor for the process of
overcoming our dependency on the collective. This metaphor is nicely expressed
in the section titled “The Three Metamorphoses” of Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
where Nietzsche describes the transformations of the “human spirit” which
aspires for freedom and independence; room to engage in what he thought the
ultimate of all endeavours, the creation of new values in the service of one’s
individual development.!
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In the first metamorphosis, the spirit assumes the form of a camel, the “load-
bearing spirit” which is obedient and dependent; identifying with the persona and
adhering to the culturally accepted patterns of life. Many spend their life stuck at
this stage, to the detriment of their well-being.!
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It is when the spirit suffers a crisis of values that the next metamorphosis occurs.
Disoriented from the realization that collective solutions to life no longer possess
any meaning for it, the spirit becomes a lion; “it wants to capture freedom and be
the lord in its own desert” (Nietzsche). The lion wants to pronounce “I will”, to
assert the validity of its individuality, and to seek a personal path instead of
relying on those that are collectively conditioned. !
!
But to become lord in its own desert, the lion must fight its ultimate enemy, the
great dragon called ‘Thou shalt’. !
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“Thou shalt’ lies in its path, sparkling with gold, a scale-covered beast, and on
every scale glitters golden ’Thou shalt’.!
Values of a thousand years glitter on the scales, and thus speaks the mightiest of
all dragons: ‘All the values of things - glitter on me.” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
Friedrich Nietzsche)!
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The dragon represents the dead weight of tradition. It is the source of the
oppressive burden we can feel in the face of institutions and decaying familial
and cultural values. Nietzsche’s fable points to the necessity of developing the
courage and will of the lion, and to champion the validity and value of one’s
individuality in the face of the often crushing weight of the collective. To kill the
dragon and make a break with the oppressive family or collective entails a
“sacred No” - a refusal to conform with others in ways that thwart your irresistible
drive towards personal fulfillment.!
!
The successful overcoming of the dragon “Thou Shalt” initiates the final
transformation into a child, signifying one who has attained the freedom and
innocence to live and create, not in reaction to some external authority or norm,
but in the service of one’s inner law and out of the fullness of one’s being. “The
child”, Nietzsche says, “is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a sport, a
self-propelling wheel, a Sacred Yes”!
!
Along with granting us an independence from the collective required to release
our individuality from our shadow and thus discover, or rediscover, meaning in
our life, making a psychological break with society also grants us immunity from
social pathologies. In his book Vertical Labyrinth Aldo Carotenuto explained the
importance of immunizing ourselves from the ills of society.!
!
“Allowing for obvious differences, each of us, proceeding gradually in our
psychological development, must also learn to observe critically the world we are
about to enter, and be capable of evaluating and distinguishing between our
illness and the collective one. It is very important to understand this point
because so much neurotic suffering is precisely the result of not having
understood that what has gone wrong is not within the individual, but in the
outside world.” (Vertical Labyrinth, Aldo Carotenuto)!
!
All societies contain pathological elements, and to remain passive victims of the
socialization process, and fail to slay the dragon “thou shalt”, is to be socialized
into an illness. Many social pathologies are responsible for stimulating large
numbers of people to repress into the shadow, traits and impulses that are
conducive to potency and vitality.!
!
One clear example of this is detailed in an article by the psychologist Bruce
Levine titled “The Systematic Crushing of Young Non-Conformists and Anti-
Authoritarians”. In the article Levine explains how young students are
increasingly being diagnosed as suffering from a psychological illness called
Oppositional Defiance Disorder, symptoms of which are said to include defying
and refusing to comply with adult requests or rules, and a tendency to argue with
adults.!
!
The medicalization of those who tend towards anti-authoritarianism and non-
conformity sets a precedence. It teaches young children, and society at large,
that questioning rules and requests, and refusing to accept ideas merely because
they come from authority figures, constitutes a psychological illness.!
!
But this medicalization of a small subset of anti-authoritarian children is only a
symptom of a much larger pathology that has been rampant in the modern
schooling system for over a century. As the former teacher turned author, John
Taylor Gatto made clear in his series of books, the modern Western schooling
system, was inspired and built upon the Prussian schooling system, which, in
turn, was constructed primarily for the purpose of cultivating widespread
obedience in the population:!
!
“The Prussian mind…held a clear idea of what centralized schooling should
deliver: 1) Obedient soldiers to the army; 2) Obedient workers for mines,
factories, and farms; 3) Well-subordinated civil servants, trained in their function;
4) Well-subordinated clerks for industry; 5) Citizens who thought alike on most
issues; 6) National uniformity in thought, word, and deed.” (John Taylor Gatto)!
!
It would not be far-fetched to claim that generations of individuals, as a result of
spending their formative years in a schooling system specifically designed to
cultivate obedient conformists, have repressed into their shadow qualities such
as self-reliance, independence, and the will to stand up to those who exert a
coercive influence in one’s life - be it family members, peers, institutions, or
governments.!
!
One of the key elements in the process of meeting and integrating the shadow, is
to recognize and reject or overcome the pathological social norms, values, and
institutions, which have led you to brand as negative and evil, individual qualities
which are in fact life-enhancing, and essential for your well-being. !
!
But the shadow, along with positive qualities we have rejected and repressed
during the process of socialization, contains qualities which are definitely
destructive and evil. Speaking of the modern individual, Jung warned:!
!
“He never suspects that his own hidden and apparently harmless shadow has
qualities whose dangerousness exceeds his wildest dreams.” (Carl Jung)!
!
As we confront the shadow, we cannot merely pick and choose the positive and
discard the negative, but must find a way to accept the entirety of the shadow as
a necessary and even desirable part of our personality. It goes without saying
this can be exceedingly difficult, stimulating all sorts of defence mechanisms to
protect us from having to look into the depths and abysses of our darkness.!
!
Especially for one who has previously over-identified with the persona and
conformed to the socially acceptable ways of being in and seeing the world, the
discovery of these destructive and negative shadow qualities can be traumatic;
often resulting in temporary depression or existential disorientation. As Neumann
explained:!
!
“To be obliged to admit that one is infantile and maladjusted, miserable and ugly,
a human animal related to the monkeys, a sexual beast and a creature of the
herd is in itself a shattering experience for any ego that has identified itself with
the collective values [i.e., identified with the persona]. But the roots of the
shadow problem go deeper still, and it becomes a matter of deadly earnest when
the probe reaches right down to the sources of evil itself, where the personality
experiences its relationship with the enemy of mankind, the drive to aggression
and destruction, in the structure of its own being.” (Depth Psychology and a New
Ethic, Erich Neumann)!
!
The temporary depression or disorientation experienced upon probing the depths
of the shadow can be overcome by two realizations. Firstly, a shattering of the
ego which has previously over-identified with the persona is the essential primary
stage in the process of self transformation: before a new state of being is born,
the old one must perish. !
!
Secondly, the drive to aggression and destruction within us has the capacity to
manifest evil in our life and the world only when it remains repressed. If we can
become aware of the sources of evil within, acknowledge and explore them, we
can learn to domesticate them, and channel their powerful energies towards
positive ends.In the words of Nietzsche:!
!
“[The] most shortsighted and pernicious way of thinking wants to make the great
sources of energy, those wild torrents of the soul that often stream forth so
dangerously and overwhelmingly, dry up altogether, instead of taking their power
into service and economizing it.” (Friedrich Nietzsche)!
!
Furthermore, gazing into our own darkness can be rendered easier by
remembering that the goal of life is not to become perfect, but to become whole.
Wholeness is attained by accepting our creatureliness, limitations, fears,
neuroses, as well as the beast within, as not only necessary but desirable
aspects of our personality; without which we would lack depth, breadth, a
connection to the earth and our animal past.!
!
Our society places too great an emphasis on positivity, presentableness, and the
removal or overcoming of any faults or socially unacceptable traits or tendencies. !
!
This striving for the heights of perfection is not only an unrealistic goal, but a
perversion of our nature. As human beings our development can be likened to a
tree. An emphasis on a growth towards the sky without a corresponding growth
of our roots downwards into the depths, would result in personal decay or even
catastrophe. Our personal development is dependent on cultivating a conscious
relationship with our darker elements; if we fail to nourish this relationship, we are
surely headed for a fall.!
!
“It is the same with the human being as with the tree. The higher they climb into
the height and light, the more strongly their roots strive earthward, downward,
into the dark, the depths – into evil.” (Friedrich Nietzsche)!
!
There is a reason William Blake painted the devilish figure Lucifer as bathed in
light. For although he is a figure of darkness, his name means “the bringer of
light”. We’ll conclude with a passage from Erich Neumann, whose words can
offer comfort as we are forced into a confrontation with our shadow, either the
result of being overwhelmed by self-destructive behaviours, an addiction, or a
general stagnation in life and apathetic attitude.!
!
For sickness can be a stimulant to health, and a meeting with the shadow can
mark the beginning of a psychological rebirth. !
!
“It is only when he is compelled by sickness and extremities to come to terms
with his own nature that the opportunity may arise for him gradually to experience
the sombre power of the shadow as a messenger from the creative potential
which lives in his own psyche. It is part of the destiny of modern man that his way
should first lead him “down to the depths”, not “up to the heights”; is it then
surprising that the guide who meets him as he sets out on his journey should turn
out to be no shining angel of light but the dark shadow figure of his own
evil?” (Depth Psychology and a New Ethic, Erich Neumann)