Odilon Redon aka Bertrand-Jean Redon (French, 1840-1916, b. Bordeaux, France) - And Bound Him a Thousand Years
In my last blog post about societal mass delusion I made reference to Jung’s concept of The Shadow, so I thought that it would be useful to write a fuller explanation of what it is and how it shows up in therapy.
Carl Jung was a contemporary and associate of Sigmund Freud who eventually branched out to pioneer an approach that represented his own very unique vision of the human psyche. One of the foundational beliefs of Jung’s approach to psychotherapy was the belief in archetypes; resonant images that occur in the unconscious mind and show up in dreams, visions, art, and religious symbolism. Jung theorized that these archetypes were not only very powerful forces that shape the individual mind, but universal in nature - that being, they exist in the unconscious mind of every human being on the planet. As evidence, Jung pointed to similarities in the myths of cultures separated by vast amounts of time and space as well as the apparently “mythical” content he saw reflected in the dreams and visions of his patients.
There are an innumerable amount of archetypes in existence, but one of the most prominent and influential archetypes is that of The Shadow. Jung described The Shadow as an entity comprised of the parts of ourselves that we don’t want to accept, or in a sense the “opposite” of our personality. What does this look like in practice? When you read about an evangelist preacher caught smoking meth with a homosexual sex worker, The Shadow is showing its power. When the neighbor of a serial killer claims that he was just a normal and friendly guy, this is also due to The Shadow. While individually The Shadow may represent our craven, selfish, or taboo impulses, collectively it is seem in images of the demonic or in the face of The Other. An apt picture of this, and one written about by Jung, is the image of The Soviet Union in the collective American psyche during The Cold War. I also believe The Shadow to be in effect in racist and xenophobic beliefs, with the dominant group usually projecting their own undesirable traits onto the minority group ; an example of this being the racist myth that Black people are lazy when White people were literally enslaving them so they wouldn’t have to do manual labor themselves.
Marcin Cienski (Polish, b. 1976), You Won’t, 2012. Oil on canvas, 18 x 24 cm.
From the above description, one may get the impression that The Shadow is a corrosive and destructive impulse, purely to be avoided. And by its very nature the “dark side” induces a repulsion in us, an almost knee-jerk drive to disown it and cast it out. That, however, is not Jung’s approach. As hideous and evil as it may look, the power of The Shadow lies primarily in one thing: it’s secretly a part of us. As any physical form will cast a shadow when exposed to light, our personalities, if truly substantial, will cast their own shadows. And despite our dearest wishes, it’s not actually possible to divorce oneself from one’s shadow. The path to wholeness, and the prescription for psychic healing, is in embracing The Shadow. Jung said "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." Not only does ignoring The Shadow impede our growth, it actually aids in giving it more and more destructive power. If a human being is able to truly face their repressed sexual or aggressive or transgressive urges, then they hold the power to calm their inner and outer strife, and even make friend with The Shadow.
The wrathful form of the Tibetan deity Vajrapani.
Tibetan Buddhism has a tradition of working with “the demonic divine” in this way through its use of “wrathful” deities as objects of meditative focus. A celibate monastic tradition within a deeply pacifist ideology, Tibetan Buddhism utilizes images of violent and monstrous beings, often in sexual union, as a means to assist us in attaining enlightenment within our lifetime. In Tsultrim Allione’s book “Feeding Your Demons” she illustrates the Tibetan practice of chöd, which involves visualizing the dissolution of one’s own body to become food for one’s inner demons, and then witnessing them transform. This shows a highly sophisticated approach to The Shadow for such an ancient tradition, and often mirrors the transformative process of therapy, especially in Jungian and Internal Family Systems approaches. I often see the most powerful element in therapy as the client’s encounter with the Shadow and the formation of a healthy relationship with it. This runs contrary to what many people think therapy is - that it’s a process in which you bring in your problems and then a therapist helps you fix them - and it can be jarring at times when people begin the process of therapy expecting something like that. The more challenging work, however, is to understand and make peace with your “problems,” which are, despite their destructiveness, actually attempts by repressed parts of the human mind to heal itself. This is a difficult thing for people to understand and accept, but as Jung said, “neurosis is really an attempt at self-cure.” Substance abuse, for example, is a very real and highly destructive problem, but comes out of an urge to fill a void or protect oneself from trauma through numbing one’s emotions. When an individual in recovery is ready to face this, they have the potential for incredible insight and growth. Thus, the addict who can say that they are thankful for their addiction has the best chance at a healthy recovery. Similarly, the individual who can talk openly about their depression has a much better chance at decreasing their symptoms than someone who chooses to ignore it. As scary as it can be, making friends with our demons can turn them into powerful allies. It only takes the courage to look them in the face and listen.