The Archetype of the Shadow

[Gary Severson]

In 1939 Otto Rank, Freud's favorite student accd. to some, described the creation of the soul from the pre-historic understanding of the shadow as something real. Since pre-historic people didn't know the Sun as anything more than a heat source their view of the shadow cast by their body meant something more profound than just a shadow connected to the Sun's presence. As much as I appreciate Jung I wonder how he and Rank got along as contemporaries with Rank's rational minimizing of the shadow? I don't know since I haven't dug deep or long enough.

[David Guyatt]

See Chapter 1 - The Vienna Psychoanalytic Society 1906-1910 for a brief insight of Jung's thinking about Otto Rank.

[R.K. Locke]

I really enjoyed this episode of The Corbett Report, focussing on the 1940 movie Gaslight:


http://www.corbettreport.com/gaslight-flnwo-08/


Jung's archetype of the shadow features as a prominent theme in a very interesting discussion.

[David Guyatt]

I really enjoyed this episode of The Corbett Report, focussing on the 1940 movie Gaslight:


http://www.corbettreport.com/gaslight-flnwo-08/


Jung's archetype of the shadow features as a prominent theme in a very interesting discussion.

I'm old enough to say that I remember watching the Ingrid Bergman film when I was, ahem, a bit younger. Even so, I was not aware of the term "gas lighting" and had to Google it.

Oh well...

[David Guyatt]

Jung on the Shadow

From The Portable Jung, edited by Joseph Campell.
Whereas the contents of the personal unconscious are acquired during the individual's lifetime, the contents of the collective unconscious are invariably archetypes that were present from the beginning. Their relation to the instincts has been discussed elsewhere. The archetypes most clearly characterized from the empirical point of view are those which have the most frequent and the most disturbing influence on the ego. These are the shadow, the anima and the animus. The most accessible of these, and the easiest to experience, is the shadow, for its nature can in large measure be inferred from the contents of the personal unconscious. The only exceptions to this rule are those rather rare cases where the positive qualities of the personality are repressed, and the ego in consequence plays an essentially negative or unfavorable role.
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, and it therefore, as a rule, meets with considerable resistance. Indeed, self-knowledge as a psychotherapeutic measure frequently requires much painstaking work extending over a long period.
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. Emotion, incidentally, is not an activity of the individual but something that happens to him. Affects occur usually where adaptation is weakest, and at the same time they reveal the reason for its weakness, namely a certain degree of inferiority and the existence of a lower level of personality. On this lower level with its uncontrolled or scarcely controlled emotions one behaves more or less like a primitive, who is not only the passive victim of his affects, but also singularly incapable of moral judgment.
Although, with insight and good will, the shadow can to some extent be assimilated into the conscious personality, experience shows that there are certain features which offer the most obstinate resistance to oral control and prove almost impossible to influence. These resistances are usually bound up with projections, which are not recognized as such, and their recognition if a moral achievement beyond the ordinary. While some traits peculiar to the shadow can be recognized without too much difficulty as one's own personal qualities, in this case both insight and good will are unavailing because the cause of the emotion appears to lie, beyond all possibility of doubt, in the other person. No matter how obvious it may be to the neutral observer that it is a matter of projection, there is little hope that the subject will perceive this himself. He must be convinced that he throws a very long shadow before he is willing to withdraw his emotionally-toned projections from their object.
Let us suppose that a certain individual shows no inclination whatever to recognize his projections. The projection-making factor then has a free hand and can realize its object if it has one or bring about some other situation characteristic of its power. As we know, it is not the conscious subject but the unconscious which does the projecting. Hence one meets with projections, one does not make them. The effect of projection is to isolate the subject from his environment, since instead of a real relation to it there is now only an illusory one. Projections change the world into the replica of one's own unknown face. In the last analysis, therefore, they lead to an autoerotic or autistic condition in which one dreams a world whose reality remains forever unattainable. The resultant sentiment d'incompletude and the still worse feelings of sterility are in their turn explained by projection as the malevolence of the environment, and by means of this vicious circle the isolation is intensified. The more projections are thrust in between the subject and the environment, the harder it is for the ego to see through its illusions. A forty-five year old patient who had suffered from a compulsion neurosis since he was twenty and had become completely cut off from the world once said to me: "But I can never admit to myself that I've wasted the best twenty-five years of my life!"
It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going. Not consciously, of course for consciously he is engaged in bewailing and cursing a faithless world that recedes further and further into the distance. Rather, it is an unconscious factor which spins the illusions that veil his world. And what is being spun is a cocoon, which in the end will completely envelop him.
One might assume that projections like these, which are so very difficult if not impossible to dissolve, would belong to the realm of the shadow that is, to the negative side of the personality. This assumption becomes untenable after a certain point, because the symbols that then appear no longer refer to the same but to the opposite sex, in a man's case to a woman and vice versa. The source of projections is no longer the shadow which is always of the same sex as the subject but a contrasexual figure. Here we meet the animus of a woman and the anima of a man, two corresponding archetypes whose autonomy and unconsciousness explain the stubbornness of their projections. THough the shadow is a motif as well known to mythology as anima and animus, it represents first and foremost the personal unconscious, and its content can therefore be made conscious without too much difficulty. In this it differs from anima and animus, for whereas the shadow can be seen through and recognized fairly easily, the anima and animus are much further away from consciousness and in normal circumstances are seldom if ever realized. With a little self-criticism, one can see through the shadow so far as its nature is personal. But when it appears as an archetype, one encounters the same difficulties as with anima and animus. In other words, it is quite the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil.

[R.K. Locke]

Very interesting. What is your take on Joseph Campbell, David? I've watched some interviews with him online and he seems to know his subject very well, but I've never invested any time in his books. Worthwhile?

[David Guyatt]

Very interesting. What is your take on Joseph Campbell, David? I've watched some interviews with him online and he seems to know his subject very well, but I've never invested any time in his books. Worthwhile?

Impressive.

His "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" was required reading in one school I belonged too.

Understanding mythology and having mythological pulses rooted in one's own psyche as a living dictionary is fundamental, for the psyche is a million years old and talks in the archaic language of myths and riddles.

But I am not at all well read on Campbell.

[Michael Falcone]

Hi all, I'm new to the forum. In fact I joined because of this thread, because I feel I have something to contribute.

I want to share that I found a book called Mystery of the White Lions by Linda Tucker that is a fantastic read about forbidden and unknown archaeology, and definitely touches on the Christ-consciousness.

Also this (from one of her main sources in Africa, Credo Mutwa):

"Now all of you my dear children
Have to some small extent inherited
Amarava's split personality.
Within each of you there are two different beings,
One good and one evil - in constant conflict."

from Indaba, My Children -- the end of the story called "The Bud Slowly Opens"

[David Guyatt]

Hi Michael and welcome. How did you get into "ritual work" and what do you mean by that? Do you do martial arts? Can you explain the meaning of Mhondoro? I'm guessing a witch doctor of some sort?

It's very difficult and usually unwise to try to interpret dreams publicly - and I'm no good at that anyway. This is work that usually benefits from a one on one and face to face and trustworthy basis, I think. I do note that there seem to be a lot of "dragons" in your dreams. Unkillable dragons, man dragons and water dragons. I don't know what this means but you might consider reflecting on these dragons and ask yourself why dragons feature so heavily in your psyche. For example, have you in the past involved yourself in Dungeons and Dragons digital games or role play? Anyway, I'm sure you'll find an answer if you dig deep enough and reflect well on the question.

As a starting point you might find some interesting pickings about dragon on the following links: 1, 2, 3.

[Michael Falcone]

Hi Michael and welcome. How did you get into "ritual work" and what do you mean by that? Do you do martial arts? Can you explain the meaning of Mhondoro? I'm guessing a witch doctor of some sort?

It's very difficult and usually unwise to try to interpret dreams publicly - and I'm no good at that anyway. This is work that usually benefits from a one on one and face to face and trustworthy basis, I think. I do note that there seem to be a lot of "dragons" in your dreams. Unkillable dragons, man dragons and water dragons. I don't know what this means but you might consider reflecting on these dragons and ask yourself why dragons feature so heavily in your psyche. For example, have you in the past involved yourself in Dungeons and Dragons digital games or role play? Anyway, I'm sure you'll find an answer if you dig deep enough and reflect well on the question.

As a starting point you might find some interesting pickings about dragon on the following links: 1, 2, 3.

Thanks for the links, David.

Dragons were never really part of my life in any way, that I can remember.
I got involved through a combination of contacting a white South African diviner, dream and symbol work. I worked with a man named Mandaza... (mandaza.org). A mhondoro is a spirit medium of the Shona people; the Shona having the lion as their totem. He teaches at Linda Tucker's academy at the White Lion project. In that vein, I noticed this from the first link:
"And that of course is the case here; the dragon ought to be fought by the lion."
Linda Tucker's book (if I remember correctly) devotes an entire chapter to Christ being known as "the Lion of Judah." And she talks about Buddha being equated with the lion.

Mandaza made sure to pay attention to my dreams and the other man that was visiting with him as well....but I don't have anyone like that around right now. I agree a lot of this work is best left to such one on one care.