Download I` ONE - Seattle Central College

CHAPTER I
SHADOW AND FAIRY TALE
The psychological definition of the shadow, which we must bear in mind before going into our material,
can vary greatly and is not as simple as we generally assume. In Jungian psychology, we generally define the
shadow as the personification of certain aspects of the unconscious personality, which could be added to the ego
complex but which, for various reasons, are not. We might therefore say that the shadow is the dark, unlived, and
repressed side of the ego complex, but this is only partly true. Dr. Jung, who hates it when his pupils are too
literal minded and cling to his concepts and make a system out of them and quote him without knowing exactly
what they are saying, once in a discussion threw all this over and said, "This is all nonsense! The shadow is
simply the whole unconscious." He said that we had forgotten how these things had been discovered and how
they were experienced by the individual, and that it was necessary always to think of the condition of the patient
at the moment.
If someone who knows nothing about psychology comes to an analytical hour and you try to explain
that there are certain processes at the back of the mind of which people are not aware, that is the shadow to them.
So in the first stage of approach to the unconscious the shadow is simply a "mythological" name for all that
within me of which I cannot directly know. Only when we start to dig into the shadow sphere of the personality
and to investigate the different aspects, does there, after a time, appear in the dreams a personification of the
unconscious, of the same sex as the dreamer. But then this person will discover that there is in this unknown area
still another kind of reaction called the anima (or the animus), which represents feelings, moods and ideas, etc.;
and we also speak of the concept of the Self. For practical purposes, Jung has not found it necessary to go
beyond these three steps.
Most people get stuck when it is a question of practice and not just theory. To integrate the anima or
animus is a masterpiece and nobody can claim to have succeeded. When we speak of the shadow we have
therefore to bear in mind the personal situation and even the specific
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stage of consciousness and inner awareness of the person in question. Thus at the beginning stage we
can say that the shadow is all that is within you which you do not know about. In general, when investigating it,
we discover that it consists partly of personal and partly of collective elements. Practically, when we first meet it
the shadow is simply a conglomeration of aspects in which we cannot make out what is personal and what
collective.
As a practical example, let us say that someone is born of parents quite different in character and
inherits from both parents certain characteristics which, so to speak, do not mix well chemically. For instance, I
once had an analysand who had inherited a fiery and brutal temperament from her father and an oversensitive
touchiness from her mother. How could she be both people at the same time? If someone annoyed her she was
filled with two opposing reactions. In a child there are opposite possibilities which do not harmonize with each
other. In the course of development generally a choice is made between them so that one side becomes more or
less established. Then comes education, which adds to this, and then habit, for by always choosing one quality
and giving that attitude preference, it becomes "second nature" and the other quality is swept under the table,
though it still exists. From these repressed qualities, which are not admitted or accepted because they are
incompatible with those chosen, the shadow is built up. With a certain amount of insight, and with the help of
dreams, and so on-, it is relatively easy for people to recognize these elements, and that is what we call making
the shadow conscious — and with that analysis usually comes to a stop. But this is no achievement, for then
comes the much more difficult problem where most people have great trouble: they know what their shadow is,
but they cannot express it much or integrate it into their lives. Naturally, those in the immediate surroundings do
not like a person to change, for that means that they also have to re-adapt. A family will be simply furious when
a hitherto mild and lamb-like member suddenly be-comes aggressive and says No to their demands. It leads to
much criticism and, as the ego of the person concerned does not enjoy this either, the integration of the 'shadow
may go wrong, and the whole problem gets stuck.
To have the courage to accept a quality which one does not like in one-self, and which one has chosen to
repress for many years, is an act of great courage. But if one does not accept the quality, then it functions behind
one's back. To see and admit the shadow is part of the problem, to say
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something has happened to me, something has leaked out; but the great ethical problem begins when
one makes up one's mind to express the shadow consciously. That requires great care and reflection if it is not to
have a disturbing reaction. I want here to give you an example.
Feeling types are apt to be cruel and narrow-minded in their judgments of their friends. On one side
they feel their way very well through to people, but behind their own and other people's backs they have the
most negative thoughts and judgments about them. The other day I was in a hotel with a feeling type. I am
myself a thinking type, and it happened that when we first met I was in a tremendous hurry and just rushed past
her with a brief greeting, whereupon she made up her mind that I hated her, was furious with her, and that I did
not want to spend the day with her — that I was a cold and unrelated person, etc. The feeling type had suddenly
switched into a negative thinking and had produced a number of negative thoughts with a whole explanation of
why I had rushed by.
In the beginning stage the shadow is the whole unconscious — a rush of emotions, judgments, and so
on. You might say that my friend was en-gaged in negative animus thinking — but actually, it was an outburst of
negative thoughts (here the inferior function), brutal emotion (the shadow), and certain destructive judgments
(animus in this case). If you study such negative outbursts you can distinguish between the figure which we call
the shadow and the judgment faculty which, in a woman, we call animus. After a time people discover these
negative qualities in themselves and succeed not only in seeing but in expressing them, which means giving up
certain ideals and standards, aid entails a lot of consideration and thought if nothing is to be destroyed in the
surroundings. Then, since we can also discover in dreams things which seem not to be personal, we say that the
shadow consists partly of personal and partly of impersonal and collective material.
All civilizations, but especially the Christian, have their own shadow. This is a banal statement, but if you
study other civilizations you can see where they are better than we are. In India, for example, they are far ahead of
us in their spiritual and philosophical attitude in general, but their social behavior, to our minds, is shocking. If
you walk through the streets of Bengal you will see numbers of people obviously starving to death; they are in
extremis, yet no one takes any notice for that is their
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"karma," and people must attend to themselves, to their own salvation; to look after others would only
mean being involved in worldly considerations. To us Europeans, this social attitude spoils the whole country, for
it is revolting to see people starving and ignored. We would call this plight the shadow of Indian civilization.
Their extraversion is below the mark and their introversion above. It could be that the light side is not aware of
the dark side, which is so obvious to another civilization.
If one lived quite alone it would be practically impossible to see one's shadow because there would be
no one to say how you looked from the outside. There needs to be an onlooker. If we take into consideration the
onlooker's reaction we could speak of the shadows of the different civilizations. For instance, most Eastern
people think that our group attitude is absolutely unaware of certain metaphysical facts and that we are naively
caught in illusions. That is how we appear to them, but we do not see it. We must have a shadow which we have
not yet realized, of which we are unconscious; and the collective shadow is particularly bad because people
support each other in their blindness — it is only in wars, or in hate for other nations, that an aspect of the
collective shadow reveals itself.
Therefore you can say that the European has certain bad or incompatible qualities which have been
repressed by the individual and that he also has the bad or inferior qualities of the group of which he forms a part
— qualities of which he is generally unaware. The collective shadow also appears in another form: certain
qualities within us are diminished when in a small group, or when we are alone, and increased suddenly if we are
in a bigger group. You see this compensatory phenomenon typically with retiring introverts who have a great
longing to be brilliant and the big bug in a crowd. The extravert is the contrary. When alone, the introvert says
that he is not ambitious and does not care, he will not make ambitious intrigues, he will really be himself and
content in his introversion. But put him in a crowd where there are ambitious extraverts, and right away he
catches the infection. It is comparable to the woman who rushes to a shop to buy something cheap and all the
other women run after her and when they get home say, "Why on earth did I buy this? "
If a person is caught by ambition only when in a group, you could say that it was a collective shadow.
Sometimes you feel quite all right within but you can come into a group where the devil is loose and get quite
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turbed, as happened to some Germans when they went to Nazi meetings. Thinking things over at home,
they would be anti- Nazi, but when they went to a meeting something switched and they became, as one man
said, "as though possessed by the devil." They were temporarily caught by the collective rather than the personal
shadow.
The collective devil is still personified in the religious system by belief in the devil or evil demons. A
medieval person who had returned from such a meeting would say that the devil had caught him and that now he
was free again. The devil himself exemplifies such a personification of a collective shadow. On the other hand,
we could say that as long as such collective demons get us, we must have a little bit of them in us; otherwise they
would not get us, for then our psychic door would not be open to infection. When parts of the personal shadow
are not sufficiently integrated, the collective shadow can sneak through this door. Consequently, we have to be
aware that these two aspects exist, because this is an ethical, practical problem that otherwise we may inflict too
much on people.
Suppose an analysand behaves outrageously in a group. If we try to make him see that that was all his
fault, he is too crushed and, objectively, that would not be right, for a part was the group shadow. Otherwise
there might be too great a feeling of guilt, and there is a kind of secret inner norm of how much of the shadow a
human being can stand. It is unhealthy not to see it, but just as unhealthy to take too much of it. One cannot function psychologically if one takes on too much. As long as one has a bad conscience, one should take more; but
the worst thing is that one often does not see where one's conscience is, it is blurred by looking at the shadow too
closely — and then there is a very subtle problem.
I say all this to make clear that when we speak of the shadow there is a personal individual aspect and
also a collective aspect, the group shadow. The latter naturally would in some way be the sum of the shadows,
and also within the group be something which does not disturb the group and which is apparent only to outer
groups. Practically put, if you put together three or four typical intellectuals of the same intellectual interests,
they will say that they have spent a wonderful evening in intellectual discussions and not notice that the contact
was otherwise bad; but a peasant boy placed with them would say it was a dreadful evening. If all have the same
problem it feels wonderful! Probably all Europeans have many qualities
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which we do not notice for to us they are normal. That is the normal awareness in individuals and also in groups.
I would like to correct one point. Earlier I said that only when a group comes up against another group
does it realize its shadow; but I was not fully accurate, since in many civilizations religious rituals tend to make a
group aware of its group shadow. In our Christian civilization these would correspond to the Black Mass where
one would curse the name of Christ, kiss an animal on the anus in the name of the devil, and so on, and the point
of it all would be to do exactly the reverse of what one thought was holy. These counter-religious festivals have
died out and tend to be forgot-ten, but they were an attempt to show the crowd its shadow. In many primitive
civilizations there is a group of jesters who have to do everything contrary to the group rules. They laugh when
one should be serious, cry when others laugh, etc. For instance, in certain North American tribes someone is
elected to perform in a ritualistic way shocking things contrary to the group standards. There is here probably the
vague idea that another side should also be brought into the open. It is a shadow catharsis festival. If you want to
see genuine remnants of such things in Switzerland, go to the Basel Fastnacht, (although now too many
foreigners go and disturb the atmosphere); there you can see the way in which a group brings out its group
shadow in a genuine and beautiful way. In the Swiss Army one speaks of the Company Calf, who is
unconsciously selected by a company to play the scapegoat, the man selected usually being someone with a
weak ego complex who acts out the collective shadow under compulsion. It can be quite a tragic constellation.
You see the same pattern in the family black sheep who is forced to carry the shadow of the others.
from Shadow and Evil in Fairytales by Marie-Louise von Franz