The Shadow
"Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the
individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an
unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions."
"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious."
The second endopsychic function is a more difficult problem. We are now getting into deep waters because here we are coming into darkness. I will give you the name first: the subjective components of conscious functions. . . . Every application of a conscious function, whatever the object might be, is always accompanied by subjective reactions which are more or less inadmissible or unjust or inaccurate. You are painfully aware that these things happen in you, but nobody likes to admit that he is subject to such phenomena. He prefers to leave them in the shadow, because that helps him to assume that he is perfectly innocent and very nice and honest and straightforward and 'only too willing', etc.--you know these phrases. As a matter of fact, one is not. One has any amount of subjective reactions, but it is not quite becoming to admit these things. These reactions I call the subjective components. They are a very important part of our relations to our own inner side. There things get definitely painful. That is why we dislike entering this shadow-world of ego. We do not like to look at the shadow-side of ourselves; therefore there are many people in our civilized society who have lost their shadow altogether, they have got rid of it. They are only two-dimensional; they have lost the third dimension, and with it they have usually lost the body. (Jung, 1968, p. 22,23)
In order to grasp the fantasies which were stirring in me "underground," I knew that I had to let myself plummet down into them, as it were. I felt not only violent resistance to this, but a distinct fear. For I was afraid of losing command of myself and becoming a prey to the fantasies--and as a psychiatrist I realized only too well what that meant. After prolonged hesitation, however, I saw that there was no other way out. I had to take the chance, had to try to gain power over them; for I realized that if I did not do so, I ran the risk of their gaining power over me. A cogent motive for my making the attempt was the conviction that I could not expect of my patients something I did not dare to do myself. The excuse that a helper stood at their side would not pass muster, for I was well aware that the so-called helper--that is, myself--could not help them unless he know their fantasy material from his own direct experience, and that at present all he possessed were a few theoretical prejudices of dubious value. This idea--that I was committing myself to a dangerous enterprise not for myself alone, but also for the sake of my patients--helped me over several critical phases. (Jung, 1989, p.178)
Jung, Carl G. (1968). Analytical psychology: Its theory and & practice.
Vintage Books.
Jung, Carl G. (1989). Memories, dreams, reflections. Vintage Books.
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