Embrace The Darkness (Carl Jung & The Shadow)
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung noticed that the traits we repress in ourselves are cast into the unconscious. The more we repress, the more we cultivate an unconscious entity called The Shadow. These unwanted characteristics may be hidden behind the masks we wear; as long as they are repressed, they will get back at us eventually. That’s why it’s important to recognize our shadow and to embrace it.
Philosopher Alan Watts spoke of what he called the ‘element of irreducible rascality’, which is inherently part of ‘being human’. We are both the good and the bad, the angel and the devil, the reason and the passions. All these aspects make a complete human being. Unfortunately, we often deal with this rascality in an unhealthy way: by repression. Throughout the ages, many different ideologies erupted that celebrated one set of characteristics and condemned another. At first glance, it seems a good thing to banish the undesirable, in an effort to transform humanity into something more ‘desirable’, whatever that may be.
We can try hard to be purely good, but the problem with this pursuit is that it’s impossible to get rid of something that’s inherently part of us. In psychology, one often speaks about self-improvement but also about self-acceptance. And that to become better people, we should first accept ourselves. So, how can we improve if we partly repress who we are? Shouldn’t self-acceptance be the acceptance of everything, including our undesirable aspects? Only through this acceptance, we’re able to work with these aspects and integrate them into our daily lives.
That’s why it’s important to embrace the fact that we’ve repressed certain traits within ourselves, instead of denying their existence. Not just evil traits, but also traits like creativity, certain interests, or sexual preferences can end up in the shadow. Most likely, the repression of those tendencies happens because the environment considers them unconventional and inappropriate.
Now, humans can react to the shadow by denial and projection. These are forms of resistance, which I’ll talk about individually. Let’s start with denial. The denial of our shadow could lead us to a destructive path. Some people simply deny that they possess negative traits, or heavily reductionize their undesirable characteristics. But doing so is basically an act to betrayal: not only to oneself but to the environment as well.
Me, for example, I’m aware that I’ve got some pretty dark sides in me, which are hidden behind the persona. Especially as a YouTuber that talks about spiritual topics, I could wear the mask of being all love and light, and a near-perfect human being, but then I would be nothing more than a fraud. There is evil in me that has come out in the past several times, in ways I regret.
When the shadow takes over, and we commit evil deeds, we tend to blame the environment or say “I wasn't myself”, or, in a religious context, we might put the blame on the devil for possessing us. The truth is that nothing can erupt in us if the seed isn’t already present. The more we deny these darker sides, the denser the shadow becomes. That’s why, and I paraphrase Alan Watts here, the goodie-goodies are often the biggest troublemakers.
In many cases, these are extremists, waging ideological wars, forcing their vision of “goodness” upon others. Goodness is just a construct and does not equal humaneness. Humaneness consists of what we consider as good, as well as what we consider as bad. And there can only be good when there’s bad. Because without bad, what's the basis for calling something good? Thus, being humane means being the complete package, including all its ugliness.
A significant manifestation of the shadow is called projection. We recognize in others what we repress in ourselves. This reaction is quite logical because traits we dislike in ourselves we automatically dislike in others. We can see a strong example of projection in the retired colonel Frank Fitts; a character in the movie American Beauty (spoiler alert). Fitts expresses himself as strongly homophobic and is devastated when he suspects his son to have an affair with the neighbor: a man named Lester Burnham. He reacts aggressively towards his son by beating him up and telling him that he’d rather want him to be dead than a homosexual.
Later in the movie, it turns out that he has repressed his own homosexuality his whole life (end spoiler). Instead of resisting the shadow, we can also do an attempt to acknowledge it, so we can integrate it into our daily lives in a healthy way. Integration of unwanted traits seems to be odd, but it’s a way to mitigate their harmful elements, and to cultivate the positive aspects that hide in the shadow, like creativity.
This process of integration starts with awareness. Projection, for example, is actually a great opportunity to discover the things we repress by becoming mindful of our own reactions towards other people’s characteristics, which is a direct manifestation of the shadow. Thus, our projections can be a guiding light for making the unconscious conscious. I quote: If you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw all these projections, then you get an individual who is 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. End quote.
The shadow speaks to us in many ways. Carl Jung suggested other methods like active imagination and dream analysis to make sense out of the symbolic language in which the unconscious tries to speak to us. Again, awareness is the key here. The integration of the shadow is a lifelong process since we probably can't reveal the shadow overnight. By making the unconscious conscious, the first step towards integration is already made: we have let go of our projections and see what’s lingering in the dark.
Yes, the sight will be ugly, but we can't work with something that we cannot see. I quote: No doubt this also sounds very simple. In reality, however, the acceptance of the shadow-side of human nature verges on the impossible. Consider for a moment what it means to grant the right of existence to what is unreasonable, senseless, and evil! Yet it is just this that the modern man insists upon. He wants to live with every side of himself—to know what he is. End quote.
The shadow, being part of ourselves, is like a living organism that’s always in flux, and some of it has never seen the light of the day. Thus, integrating it is a lifelong process. We can only illuminate parts of it, and as soon as we become aware of these parts, we can integrate or transmute them. Once we expose our fears, we can let them guide us towards bravery. Once we see our aggression, we can channel it into achievement. Once we are confronted with our creativity, we can incorporate it into our daily lives.
From a Jungian perspective, let’s not try to be the light while simultaneously rejecting the darkness. Instead, let's stand between the darkness and the light, without judgment, so we can experience what it's like to be fully human. Thank you for watching.