The Shadow
The concept of the Shadow is a central element in Carl Gustav Jung's theory of analytical psychology. The Shadow represents the aspects of the personality that are unconscious, repressed, or denied. These are the traits and behaviours that individuals do not recognize or accept in themselves, often because they are deemed unacceptable by society or their moral conscience.
Poet and writer Robert Bly explored the concept of the Shadow in A Little Book on the Human Shadow. He uses an interesting metaphor: the bag.
At birth, children have a 360-degree view of the world. Their perception is not divided or defined. The bag they carry on their shoulders is empty.
However, very early on, they learn to focus on their vision. They are taught which behaviours, character traits, and emotions are considered acceptable or not in their relationships with their parents, others, friends, and society.
As they grow, they place in their bag the parts of themselves that they consider unacceptable in response to the expectations and judgments of their surroundings and the constructs of their own expectations.
As they age, this bag becomes heavier because they continue to throw in aspects of their personality that they prefer not to see or admit. This growing weight can lead to losing vitality and spontaneity because we expend much energy keeping these repressed aspects out of our consciousness.
To these "forbidden" or "norms" from childhood is added everything acquired during the evolution of the human race. The Shadow is thus the reservoir, the totality of what Jung called the collective unconscious.
Negativity is not the sole aspect of the Shadow. Many treasures are found there, qualities deemed ineffective for a people's moral conduct or an individual's survival. A woman with a golden voice living in a remote countryside or a rigorous religious environment will not develop her talent. The repressed voice remains within her, perhaps projected into a boundless admiration for musicals. A man with too much sensitivity will project into an idealized maternal figure, etc.
Over time, our personality grows, refines, and becomes clear, sometimes luminous. Where there is light, there is also Shadow. Bly thus evokes the luminous Marilyn Monroe, who had to bear the weight of her fans' admiring projections. She turned towards her poorly conquered Shadow and sank into it.
We easily recognize these explanations because they impose on us as we experience them to varying degrees. We wonder why the Shadow sometimes seems so suffocating and why entire peoples submit to it for the benefit of kings and other despots. There is so much to discover to see "more clearly."
We must remember the inexhaustible richness of the Shadow, which offers the poet the absurdities they need to weave their verses. We cannot truly detach and emancipate ourselves from the Shadow, which serves both a useful and repressive purpose. The accumulation is too significant, too cemented. However, we can successfully attempt to live with it, recognize it, and draw enough of the necessary fertilizer to make our lives blossom. It is through the Shadow that we recognize the light and vice versa.
This inner work, as proposed by Robert A. Johnson in Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth, can be done by taming one's dreams and imagination, the two larynxes of the Shadow. He presents practical methods for using dreams and active imagination as personal growth and self-understanding tools.
It is a challenging experience to undertake. Despite the simplicity of the approach, it takes time to listen to one's dreams and a particular discipline to collect, gather, and remember them.
If you are one of those people who claim not to dream, you must first allow the gates of the unconscious to brush against the shores of the mind. To do this, you can invoke memories of vivid dreams that seem indelible.
For my part, I have three or four. The first is from childhood. I am in a tunnel, like an old Parisian aqueduct. It is obviously dark. Calm and black water, like the Styx, flows before me. A pale body slowly floats by, passing before me to disappear at the other end.
The second, recurrent during adolescence, is almost a nightmare: I perceive the entire universe passing through the eye of a needle. I wake up when it becomes too dense and am carried away.
The third is the timeless dream where my walking feet eventually lift off the ground. I then become a sort of dervish free from gravity.
I pass over, since I must, everything that is downright and sexually impregnated...
I dreamed a lot about my former choir, always in situations where I did not belong.
Finally, during my ten years at S., I regularly dreamed of a dynamic but labyrinthine workspace in which I got lost.
After my layoff, I eventually found this kind of dream again. Still, this time, anger and prohibitions were added while the labyrinthine elements seemed to disappear. I am still looking for answers to these dreams. I am on the verge of a new job. I wonder what the shadows of my mind will tell me... and what will become of those places where I sit...
Recent readings have made me understand that I have invested much in this inner bag. I have left pearls always stuck in their oysters, wounds protected by oblivion, desires not accepted by morality, and prayers addressed to no god.
Ah! Another of those deeply buried dreams... an icy, translucent man wakes up in an abandoned house. He is naked and goes out. The landscape is white and completely snow-covered. The man walks toward the yard's exit and opens the wooden gate. The fence is made of stone. Closing the gate, he sees the two columns interlock. Inside each of them is a frozen body visible through a frosted window. The man decides to walk barefoot on the snowy, icy path.
Now dreams invade me, and, through the window beside me, I see the blue sky of this first of July. I keep accumulating.
I have put away my drawing, my voice, my literature. I find myself putting everything I remember of my life into an electronic jumble. I have all the time to think about the interweaving of lights and shadows around my being and destiny. What will I do with all this? What will remain of it? More questions to dialogue with my Shadow...
