24-03-2014, 08:56 AM
David Guyatt Wrote:Lauren Johnson Wrote:David Guyatt Wrote:The problem as I see it David, is that the US has been involved with - mostly started - around 100 big and small wars since 1945. War has become its geopolitical and economic raison d'être. Not by chance but rather by conscious design of the elite leaders of the US. And the number of wars it was involved in prior to WW11 is pretty impressive too.
There's probably no one on this forum who would more happily get into a Jungian discussion than I, and as you probably know I often bang this particular drum. It is a malaise of the shadow. My position would be that for the great mass of people of any nationality, learning to absorb their own personal shadows is a vital ambition - because the evidence is uncomfortably clear that our leaders have completely abandoned peace and consciousness as a meaningful way of life.
Instead they have knowingly grasped war, fear, greed and misery as their personal totems.
David, I conversed with a Jungian psychotherapist a while back. In the context of the US starting wars, etc., he would have called what you call just "the shadow", the collective shadow. This simple change of language helped me see that how the work of coming to terms with one's own shadow is never simply a private affair.
Lauren yes, it is the Collective Shadow at work, but each of us contributes to that collective - if we all confronted and absorbed our personal shadows, the collective shadow would diminish correspondingly because all the energy/libido acquired by it would be used elsewhere for more positive outcomes.
Jung always thought that politicians should undergo analysis for the shadow, as a requirement of taking office, but also realised this was impractical. But it gives you an idea how important it is.
Quote:It is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses- and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism. The individual seldom knows anything of this; to him, as an individual, it is incredible that he should ever in any circumstances go beyond himself. But let these harmless creatures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster; and each individual is only one tiny cell in the monster's body, so that for better or worse he must accompany it on its bloody rampages and even assist it to the utmost. Having a dark suspicion of these grim possibilities, man turns a blind eye to the shadow-side of human nature. Blindly he strives against the salutary dogma of original sin, which is yet so prodigiously true. Yes, he even hesitates to admit the conflict of which he is so painfully aware.
"On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1912). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.35
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 recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14