10/05/2022
JUNG'S MYSTERIOUS 'SHADOW'
For those not familiar with Jungian Psychology (also known as Analytical Psychology), the concept of the Shadow as an archetype, or complex if you prefer, is necessarily clouded in some obscurity Often considered some sort of passive repository of repressed elements, the place where what is found unacceptable in us by our environment, is pushed into the unconscious to leave consciousness free to continue its necessary adaptation to the world outside. During out lifetime, the drive towards integration of the different parts of our psyche, with the Self being the endpoint.
Jung himself discussed society as having a Shadow, particularly in the events leading up to the Second World War. Also, it can be found in the succession of different periods in Western history, such as the Middle Ages giving way to the Renaissance, itself ceding its place to the Age of Reason, and ultimately, our current obsession with all things material. Placed in the context of Jungian Typologyy, each function, existing on the same spectrum, but at opposite ends of its opposite, this historical succession becomes even more obvious and relevant. What can prove difficult is our ability to correctly anticipate the coming age. That being said, if intuition and sensation are opposed, the religious fundamentalism is obvious. Fortunately, we are not stuck in a duality, going back and forth. As no function dominates absolutely, combinations of them can produce surprising shifts.
I have no dispute with any of this except for the fact that it grossly underestimates the role of the Shadow in mental illness – as well as mental health – as the most important key to an individual’s ability to change. As some of you may recall, I published a two volume commentary entitled “The Problem with Problems.” Though many thought it was a mathematical textbook due to the cover art, it was really a very simple concept: Behind ever problem that we just can’t seem to solve lies a deeper one which we fight with all our might not to recognize, let alone address.
To call it resistance is to minimize the scope of it influence, residing principally as the home of those aspects of our conscious self are exiled, mostly during childhood – a period when the developing mind has yet to develop sufficient awareness and analytical abilities to understand why traits that are experienced as naturally part of the whole must be painfully split off and forgotten, no matter how central they may be to the developing personality. Parents, for any number of reasons ranging from protecting a child from some activity to sanctioning embarrassing behavior, will deploy different means to impose what is essentially an amputation of the personality. Children may be beaten, punished, rewarded, misled, all subject to interpretation by the child. Most often, it is taken as bad, with no adequate explanation, and imposed without discussion (or excessive discussion which can be just as bad since the child cannot grasp all these words, but will experience lengthy explanations as confusion).
Deprived of its natural complement, this truncated version will find itself less than it would otherwise be. Of course, integration into society requires adaptation, itself requiring a selection and repression of certain traits. The result is a lesser version of the child without the ability to access all its capacities. In exchange, it does receive a structure, a framework, within which to learn and adapt to the demands of the outside world. Without this, there would be no society. Is it a fair trade? Yes and no, for every compromise comes at a cost. What Nature has anticipated, by the concept of Individuation, is a natural healing process whereby we spend many of our years first experiencing, then understanding, and finally learning to establish a healthy connection with these repressed contents. These aspects, having spent many years in exile, yet longing to return home where they belong, will regress over time become more primal in their expressions. Often appearing in dreams with disturbing contents. Other manifestation erupt into consciousness – all due the contents of the Shadow.
What to do? What lives in darkness longs only for the light. Acknowledge them, consider them and, deprived of the energy coming from the tension between their natural desire to integrate and the energy required to repress them, th0ey will begin to evolve. Over time, they will become more ‘normal’ in appearance and behavior, become less intrusive, and adding those talents and creativity which flow from the Shadow to the panoply of skills consciousness can access.
If this all sounds a bit formulaic, perhaps it is. But then any model is designed to inform observation and experience, not rigidly define it. In my many years of practice with a wide variety of cultures and individuals, one constant seems to guide every process of change. There is the obvious symptom or behavior which has proven to be resistant to every intervention designed to alleviate if not eliminate it. Whether truly troublesome or minor, there is no approach which seems to truly work. Treat the symptom but deny the cause? Presume that Evolution allowed for no defense?
The Shadow is in many ways the flagship of the unconscious for it contains perhaps those elements of experience which belong – albeit in their most undeveloped state since many of these early amputations occur which the entire personality is taking form. It’s implications and ramifications can extend well beyond their origin. Treat one symptom without understanding this, and even if some improvement has been observed, not only will the rest remain to emerge should circumstances elicit it, but he need for integration will remain.
As in all situations when the elements of the Shadow are involved, consciousness will have developed ways of blocking it out. Most people are successful in maintaining their cohesion during their lifetime, though external challenges – be they local of societal – will continue to create new stresses. Many, and given how often we speak of mental illness as the cause of so many problems in todays world, will find themselves unable to cope. It is just as these moments, when we face new difficulties for which old solutions are inadequate, that the need for the freedom to set aside the rigid defensive structures we impose on ourselves, our inherent fear of the unknown which is simply another way of looking at change, is most necessary. Lacking vial elements of our nature, having forged a defensive system to hold the unconscious’ manifestations, clinging to the known and therefore rejecting the opportunity to learn what we don’t know, any species chances of survival are seriously reduced.
The need for change is obvious. We talk about ‘new’ all the time. We even want what’s new. But to accept what is new into our lives, to open our closed systems, welcome back that which we were taught to fear, reject in ourselves before understanding what we were rejecting, and if we might someday need it, and abandon the curiosity and taste for real risk, is to close ourselves to the natural ability to progress. After all, change is the hallmark of progress, and our ability to meet the challenges of change are perhaps best represented by the Shadow. Fear it and one lives in darkness, feigning contentment with the unending emtptyness of the present. Look to it as an essential component of internal coherence, creativity, and the chance to realize our own potential.
What is the Shadow? Much the Unconscious in which it resides, it is a concept with a physical existence an can neither be located nor known directly, but only through its unmistakable manifestations. Jung, though his observational skills, his synthetic mind and his fearless dedication to understanding, has offered a model based on concepts which capture metaphorically a process which no one else has even attempted. Too often judged as more relevant to anthropology and the occult than to the struggling dubious science of psychiatry. Yet seen within the framework provided by his model, so many aspects of the human mind appear meaningfully, It matters little in which lobe the unconscious might exist, for it is an example, much like the mind, where the phenomenon is more than the sum of its parts. Yet the sum remains impossible to identify or situate. And for these very reasons, we remain stuck at the parts searching for an answer to a question that is itself incomplete.
Is the brain the mind – another transcendent concept – or is the mind what this is all about, with the brain providing the physical means for the mind to exist? When we speak of my brain being hard wired, we have removed so much of the mystery and wonder of the mind with its far more dynamic and plastic capabilities, able to imagine and create that which has never been thought or existed. How is it possible for something with a concrete existence, and therefore limited by its own nature, able to transcend this limitation, and imagine something entirely new?
If you can step outside the reassuring familiar and into a world where things interact because life is dynamic, in constant movement, a place where the whole is more important the any of the parts taken as one or together. It is only when they function as one, the composite of a lifetime of experiences, noted, retained, available for use in almost any circumstance whether foreseen or not, that we can escape our physical existence, the restrictions imposed by the laws of time and space, and imagine whatever might be necessary for our kind to survive. Evolution, Nature have been generous with us. Now we just have to learn how to use what was designed into us by Life itself.
