Integrating An EVIL Shadow | Carl Jung

Hello everyone! November 2019 is over, which means that it’s time for another Q&A. As you may know by now: this is the public Q&A. There’s also a Patreon edition for those who want to support my work.

In this public edition, I’m going to talk about a Jungian psychological concept called the shadow. More specifically: integrating an evil shadow. Basically, everyone - even the most positive person you’ll meet - has a dark side. As Swiss psychologist Carl Jung stated: everyone has a shadow. The shadow is an unconscious collection of undesired characteristics.

These could be positive ones too, like creativity, that one has repressed because it’s, for example, looked down upon by family members. I’ve made a separate video about the shadow if you want to know more. In the comment section, I stumbled upon a question by Caleb about the integration of an ‘evil’ shadow. I quote: “I truly believe that my shadow is evil. Hellish even. Why would I want to integrate this? I see it as something external and out of my control, and would love to have it severed from my existence. All it does is making my life much more difficult than it needs to be.” End quote.

The whole idea of the shadow is that it includes a repressed evil side of oneself, that can even be what you call ‘hellish’. So it’s normal. The positive thing, in my opinion, is that you are at least conscious of it to some degree. What makes you think that this shadow part of yours is hellish? What are the characteristics you’re aware of? Do they appear in your dreams? Do you have strong projections onto other people that, basically, represent the things that you’re unconsciously repressing?

According to Carl Jung, dreams, as well as projections, are basically echoes of the shadow. In dreams, it manifests in the form of symbols and metaphors, and projections arise because we see in others what we deny in ourselves. For example: if we react emotionally and aggressively against, let’s say, homosexuality like Frank Fitts did in the movie American Beauty, this might be a sign that there’s some form of repressed homosexuality in ourselves.

The same goes for strong disapproval of someone who’s sexually active or even promiscuous, which might come from sexual repression or frustration in the person who has this strong disapproval. Now, a shadow is mostly out of control because it operates unconsciously. Unless you manage to make the unconscious conscious, which is the purpose of shadow work.

According to Jungian psychology, you shouldn’t repress your shadow side; instead, it’s recommended to manage and integrate it, so you can control it instead of it controlling you. The more you deny the shadow, the denser it becomes. So, this might be a result of many years of repression of unwanted characteristics, that sometimes tend to come out in an extreme form.

Accepting these things, no matter how dark and hellish, doesn’t mean acting upon them. Instead, it means shedding light upon them to understand them better. The acceptance of the shadow self lies in, at least, temporarily letting go of societal norms of what is good and evil, and accept that the dark side is part of your nature.

In nature, is there good and evil? Well, in my observation there are things that we, as living beings, are biologically inclined towards, like survival. Let's say that, somehow, you've discovered within yourself that you have a deep desire for killing, or perhaps even for torture, and in your free time you bully people online and torment animals. It sounds like a pretty dense shadow to me.

Now, I think in the light of Jungian psychology, we can reduce these dark desires to the primitive drives of power and death. In nature, we see that most animals carry these drives with them. A cat, for example, can be a very cute, cuddly animal, but have you ever seen it catching a mouse and toying with it until it dies? This part of the cat is very cruel and murderous.

But I think that we can all agree that a cat isn’t a cat without both its cuddly and murderous sides. We simply accept animals for having these dark instincts, yet we have much difficulty accepting them in humans. Sure, we have norms, religions, et cetera to get along better, as they are the basis of civilization.

But the sacrifice we make as humans is that we hide our darker sides - the things that are not socially accepted - just to fit in. Thus, we wear a mask - the persona. “There is no light without shadow and no psychic wholeness without imperfection.” An evil shadow is part of the complete self.

So denying it would be denying yourself. The question was, of course, how can you integrate this evil shadow? It starts with making the unconscious conscious and then the acceptance that this evil, this madness, is part of you, and that you’re better off knowing it than being oblivious to it.

Here’s what Carl Jung wrote about this in his Red Book, which is his personal account of his imaginative experiences during a period of voluntary confrontation with the unconscious. I quote: “Be silent and listen: have you recognized your madness and do you admit it? Have you noticed that all your foundations are completely mired in madness? Do you not want to recognize your madness and welcome it in a friendly manner? You wanted to accept everything. So accept madness too. Let the light of your madness shine, and it will suddenly dawn on you. Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life…If you want to find paths, you should also not spurn madness, since it makes up such a great part of your nature…Be glad that you can recognize it, for you will thus avoid becoming its victim. Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life.” End quote.

The madness you may find during periods of introspection, and using methods like active imagination and dream analysis, could be considered too disturbing to integrate into your daily life. But integration doesn’t mean that we should ‘act’ upon it.

First of all, there’s an energy aspect involved with these dark, repressed characteristics, which means that they could be harvested to achieve goals. It could be food for creative outlets, but also for physical exercise. A great example of this is David Goggins, who’s regarded as the toughest man alive, partly because of his almost superhuman achievements in the area of sports, like the world record for most pull-ups, running several ultra-marathons and triathlons, and facing many obstacles like asthma, obesity, difficulties in learning, et cetera.

He also completed Navy SEAL training in his thirties, against all odds. For me, the most interesting thing about his story was that in his youth he was severely physically abused by his father and also severely bullied at school. His early life was filled with violence, which created a tremendous amount of anger and grief below the surface of a very timid, anxious, obese man with a stutter.

When he decided to turn his life around, he was able to channel his rage and fear into extraordinary accomplishments. “Denial is the ultimate comfort zone,” Goggins said. And I think that’s surprisingly true in regards to the shadow.

It’s also true that staying in the comfort zone of denial and the unwillingness to see the dark in oneself will only lead to bigger problems later on. Integration can simply be the acknowledgment that it’s there, just to prevent that it leverages one’s awareness of it to take control.

Imagining these disowned qualities can give one insight and channel the energy that comes from it into better, productive things. Perhaps, if these characteristics are violent, they could be developed into something beneficial, by martial arts for example.

I personally think that acceptance and awareness - without acting on it - is the key when facing our dark side, because when our shadow is off the radar, we can’t monitor it, let alone control it, so we’ll never know when it suddenly lashes out towards ourselves or the outside world.

As spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle once said: “What you accept you go beyond.” Thank you for watching.