10/02/2025
"Becoming aware of the unconscious material that makes up the shadow - any and all disavowed aspects of self brought to the surface and acknowledged - is in service of the greater life-long path of individuation."
I am struck yet again at the extreme polarisation and shadow projection that we are witnessing currently on the world stage.
Jung understood the shadow as both personal and transpersonal (as part of the collective unconscious).
Jung writes in “Psychology and Religion”:
“If you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw these projections, all and sundry, then you get an individual conscious of a pretty thick shadow. Such a man has saddled himself with new problems and conflicts. He has become a serious problem to himself, as he is now unable to say that they do this or that, they are wrong and they must be fought against. He lives in the ‘house of self-collection.’ Such a man knows that whatever is wrong in the world is in himself, and if he only learns to deal with his own shadow then he has done something real for the world. He has succeeded in removing an infinitesimal part at least of the unsolved gigantic, social problems of our day.”¹
The idea of “shouldering” one’s shadow as part of the collective shadow is significant - that is to behold and carry parts of it - as not all of the shadow can be, nor should be integrated. While the work of individuation is always towards wholeness, there are aspects of the shadow that are destructive to self and others and would be detrimental if incorporated.
“The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one becomes conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognising the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.”² writes Jung in “Aion”. As Stephen Farah put it, in a text penned on the subject, we are obligated through our engagement with our shadow to “…understand the limits of one's capacities and the prohibitions of one’s (authentic) morality”.
That said, the shadow possesses much of what would give us vitality, if we are able to witness and process that which is shrouded in darkness within our psyche. It is clear that we can never fully do this - the unconscious is a huge store, not even of our consciousness alone - but to the extent that we can incrementally access material, the shadow has immense libidinal energy.
A part of the shadow is incorporated into a necessarily expanding self and a higher consciousness, if we are able to bridge the divide, which we must earlier or later, or the inability to do so can have dire consequences. As Jung writes in “Aion”,’“The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.”³
The path is not an easy one, however it is work towards being whole, not despite, but precisely because it is an assault on the conscious ego-personality, with its neat categories and clearly defined identity. Our unconscious desires, primal instincts, un-lived lives, repressed memories, characteristics that we may well despise in ourselves, or its opposite - virtues that we may not recognise - are things that come to us often in intense affects triggered by “the other”, and in dreams and fantasies.
The “house of self-collection”, can be thought of as a gathering that can only be held by an expanded consciousness. It is not work that can be done all at once, and can be treacherous terrain. And at the same time the work restores our relationship to ourselves, connects us to our own vital life force. Jung described the encounter with the shadow as: “The meeting with oneself is the meeting with one’s own shadow. To mix a metaphor, the shadow is a tight pass, a narrow door, whose painful constriction is spared to no one who climbs down into the deep wellspring.”⁴
Becoming aware of the unconscious material that makes up the shadow - any and all disavowed aspects of self brought to the surface and acknowledged - is in service of the greater life-long path of individuation.
Cara Snyman
Image: Isabella Rossellini “Mammas"
Endnotes
1.C.G. Jung, Psychology and Religion: West and East, Collected Works Vol. 11, §140. Terry Lectures (1938).
2. C.G. Jung, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, Collected Works Vol. 9ii, §14.
3. C.G. Jung, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, Collected Works Vol. 9ii, §126.
4. C.G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Collected Works Vol. 9i, §44.
