Climate Inside: Knowing the Shadow

Note: This is one of a series of posts under the label Climate Inside.  Previous posts were on Jungian concepts of projection, denial and an introduction.

Those unacknowledged and repressed elements of ourselves we may project on others come from the unconscious, from what Jung called "the shadow."  Our sense of ourselves comes from the conscious ego, the bright and solid face and form we see in the mirror and show to the world.  But we also carry with us a large part of ourselves that is kept in darkness.  It follows us as a shadow does.

"The shadow is that part of us we fail to see or know," writes Robert A. Johnson in his very useful little book, Owning Your Own Shadow.  Into our personal shadow we relegate aspects of ourselves that we've learned are bad, that civilized society and our particular culture in our particular time and place tell us are wrong, or not useful to us.  They are feelings and behaviors that aren't part of the identity of a real man or real woman, a gentleman or a lady, a real American, a civilized person, a dressed for success person, etc.

But these feelings and behaviors are part of the human heritage.  Cultures in the past have tried to deal with them by somehow acknowledging them in order to discourage destructive behaviors resulting from them.  Our culture, dominated by a particular form of Christianity but also in other ways, tries to deny their existence.  Instead of using methods of understanding and dealing with these impulses, our culture insists they are outside what's human: they are the work of the devil.  But even among those who reject religion (though they are inevitably influenced by the culture shaped by Christianity and other forces) and take a scientific attitude, many deny the existence of the shadow, as well as other aspects of the psyche, as unscientific superstition.  

When an entire society denies that the elements of the personal shadow are part of being human, it sustains a collective shadow.  The collective shadow is a kind of cultural possession, leading to destructive projections and their very destructive consequences.  Marie-Louise von Franz connects the two, suggesting for instance that people fell into the collective shadow of Naziism first through their personal shadows.  Perhaps they went along with Hitler for their own economic gain, and wound up being captive to activities that were much worse than they would normally have done.  Certainly this was true of those who took financial advantage of the persecution of Jews in Germany, as it was here in California of those who took the property of Japanese Americans sent to camps during World War II.

Let's pause here for a moment to emphasize that in all of these psychological processes--denial, projection and the shadow itself--there is a positive as well as negative side.  Denial of a kind keeps people from unhealthy obsessiveness and a sense of helplessness.  Positive projections form one basis for empathy.  And the shadow contains all rejected qualities, including positive ones that a person or society doesn't value and may be ashamed of.  For instance a man might consider tenderness as unmanly, and a culture may call it unmasculine, so it goes into the shadow.  Or generosity may be frowned upon as being dumb, or not looking out for number 1 or even number 1's family.  "Curiously, people resist the noble aspects of their shadow more strenuously than they hide their dark sides," Robert Johnson writes.

But besides being the source of so much destructiveness, the shadow itself, the unconscious itself, is of enormous value to the individual. There are familiar myths and stories that deal with the division of light and dark within people, such as Robert Louis Stevenson's Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  But there's another story that explores the value of both sides--it's a famous episode of the original Star Trek series, called "The Enemy Within," in which a transporter accident divides Captain Kirk into two Kirks. One is his good side--reasonable, contemplative, courageous, but indecisive and unable to understand evil.  The other is his dark side--animalistic and driven by appetites, violent and cowardly, full of rage and cunning, but also decisive, strong and energetic.

After observing both Kirks, the ever-analytical Mr. Spock observes to McCoy, “His negative side, which you call hostility, lust, violence, and his positive side, which earth people describe as compassion, love, tenderness.” Then he asks, “What is it makes one man an exceptional leader? We see indications that it is his negative side that makes him strong---that his evil side, if you will, properly controlled and disciplined, is vital to his strength.”

Eventually McCoy agrees, and confronts the good Kirk. “Jim, you’re no different than anyone else. We all have our darker side. We need it. It’s half of what we are. It’s not really ugly—it’s human. Yes, human. A lot of what he is makes you the man you are” McCoy is forced to agree with Spock, “Your strength of command lies mostly in him.”

“What do I have?” the good Kirk asks. “You have the goodness…” “Not enough!” “The intelligence, the logic---it appears your half has most of those, and perhaps that’s where man’s essential courage comes from. For, you see, he was afraid. You weren’t.”

Then the good Kirk, who is also the conscious Kirk, confronts himself. "I have to take him back inside myself, I can’t survive without him. I don’t want to take him back! He’s a thoughtless, brutal animal! Yet it’s me! Me!”  It is only when the two are integrated--in Trek fashion, through the transporter--that Captain Kirk reemerges.

It's a script for which Jung could have been the scientific advisor.  People must accept their opposites consciously, and use their consciousness to deal with them, while respecting and honoring the unconscious for all that it provides--not only in leadership over oneself, but in creativity and getting in touch with the profound mysteries of existence.  And it takes work, techniques, eternal vigilance and lifelong comittment.  But it's also a satisfying process of connecting with yourself and life itself.

The danger for individuals and the people associated with them--family members, neighbors, co-workers, lovers, friends--is the unconscious projection of images from the shadow.  When someone denies tendencies within themselves, they have to go somewhere, and often they are projected on others.  Individuals who do this not only see what may well not be there (at least to such a great degree) in another, while failing to see what's prompting this eruption from within themselves.

But all of this becomes even more dangerous in the public sphere, as individual shadows come together to create large and powerful collective shadows.  "The tendency is see one's shadow 'out there' in one's neighbor or in another race or culture is the most dangerous aspect of the modern psyche," Johnson writes.  "The ego becomes unable to hold its own among the primitive impulses and dissolves in mass movements," writes Robert Bly in another useful little book, A Little Book on the Human Shadow.

  A contemporary Jungian, Samuel L. Kimbles, puts it in more textbook terms. He defines "complexes" as "basic, naturally occurring" patterns that "express themselves in powerful moods and repetitive behaviors...Without psychological work complexes function compulsively and autonomously through our reactions to others and the world, i.e. through projections.  Caught in such automatic modes of acting and reacting, we feel moved or carried by the force of a powerful energy over which we have little control.  Psychologically, this can lead to an inflated sense of one's own righteousness or a deflated sense of one's own inferiority in relation to others."

It sounds very primitive, and not something common in the rational modern world--at least until you look around, and look behind the pretenses of objectivity and "fair and balanced."  But of course it does happen, and without psychological reflection, the instruments of the modern world only amplify group projections and mass psychoses. Hitler and Mussolini used radio.  Today the Internet is a powerful addition to the communications arsenal, for just as it empowers individual voices, it empowers and amplifies individual shadows.

 Besides the ease of communicating globally, the Internet provides relative anonymity and the lack of face-to-face contact which is very important to sustaining projections as well as liberating people from personal responsibility for what they say, so they can unleash every vile expression from their shadows. The speed of expression, the fashion for brevity and the Internet's own brands of cliches and argot all encourage direct expressions from the unconscious.  Shadow expression is even socially acceptable and expected--for example, in the comments on political sites.  The violence of expression would be unacceptable in person--at least until Internet shadow behavior began migrating to public meetings and other occasions in real face-to-face life.

I began seeing these shadow eruptions becoming more prevalent in public life during the Clinton administration, when it seemed America was literally turning itself inside-out: consciousness was retreating into hiding while the shadow was out on Capitol Hill every day.  It's gotten noticeably worse and even more savage since President Obama was elected.  It is the savagery of some of his opponents that they project using the convenient African American stereotypes.

 But it is a longer term problem, of course.  Some of the energy may well be coming from a general dehumanization in this crowded, fast, complex world, and in this society dominated by mechanized lives, large dominant organizations, monopoly capitalism that devalues the individual, and sees people just as markets to sell products to, including pills to soothe their behavioral symptoms.  Diplomat and friend of Jung Laurens van der Post suggested that these pressures on the individual have destroyed democracy, and in these conditions the shadow tends to come to the surface.

We return finally to Jung:

"The great events of world history are, at bottom, profoundly unimportant.  In the last analysis, the essential thing is the life of the individual.  This alone makes history, here alone do the great transformations take place, and the whole future, the whole history of the world, ultimately springs as a gigantic summation from these hidden sources in individuals." 

"In our most primitive and most subjective lives, we are not only the passive witnesses of our age, and its sufferers, but also its makers.  We make our own epoch."

These concepts are only a few of the ideas in Jung and post-Jungian psychology, and I've presented only a very basic version of them.  Besides which I am hardly an expert.  But I see them as tools of reflection that empower individuals with concepts to test their own perceptions and behaviors.  And perhaps to help them guide themselves to clearer understandings of their own lives and selves, as well of as public policy issues.  With these tools and others, individuals can take some sort of control over themselves and their behavior in the world, that would otherwise elude them.

When looking at the debate over global heating--the most consequential events of our lifetime, with the future of civilization and with increasingly likelihood, that of life as we know it on Earth in the balance--the role of the psyche is only clumsily acknowledged, if at all, but it seems to explain some of what's going on.   If all we needed were reasoned arguments (as Marie-Louise Von Franz noted), we wouldn't be in the mess we're in, since we've had lots of those.  Understanding the role of the unconscious by using such conceptual tools as denial and projection seems a necessary and probably crucial task, both in general and by individuals in regards to their own perceptions and expressions.

In remarks to his associates, particularly towards the end of his life, Jung provided a warning and an encouraging word.  Jung noted that humanity had become so technologically powerful that it could unintentionally destroy itself.  He warned that unless people reflect and take back their projections, and take back their opposites into themselves, there will be total destruction in the world.

 But Jung also noted that a human being who withdraws his shadow from his neighbor is doing work of immense political and social importance.

  Living in the shadows may mean being blind to lies, dismissing contrary claims out of reflexive hostility and projection of motives on others.  But there are reasons in reality for such excesses, both in terms of the violence of psychological responses, and in what motivates them.  A few thoughts on the case for resentment next time.