The Shadow Aspect

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."
Carl Gustav Jung
"There is no coming to consciousness without pain."
Carl Gustav Jung

The shadow or "shadow aspect" is a part of the unconscious mind which is mysterious and often disagreeable to the conscious mind, but which is also relatively close to the conscious mind. It may be (in part) one's link to animal life, which is superseded during early childhood by the conscious mind; afterwards it comes to contain thoughts that are repressed by the conscious mind. According to Jung, the shadow is instinctive and irrational, but is not necessarily evil even when it might appear to be so. It can be both ruthless in conflict and empathetic in friendship. It is important as a source of hunches, for understanding of one's own more inexplicable actions and attitudes (and of others' reactions), and for learning how to accept and integrate the more problematic or troubling aspects of one's personality. (from the wiki).


The shadow is the most clearly recognizable of the characteristic archetypes. Becoming conscious of your shadow means accepting that the dark aspects of your own personality really exist. This acceptance forms the basis of all self-knowledge, and usually finds a lot of resistance. The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. Through a thorough investigation of the dark character aspects and inadequacies respectively, that form the shadow together, seems that these posess a an emotional nature or a certain autonomy. That's why they have an obsessing influence, and we can even become posessed by it. Emotion is namely not an action we perform, but an occasion that happens to us. Affects or emotion usually show up on those matters we are least adjusted to. At the same time they reveal the reason of the lesser adjustment, namely a inadequacy and a lower level of the personality at that specific point. On this deeper level with it's barely or not at all controlled emotions we behave more or less as a primitive human. We are then not only a victim of our emotions without any will of our own, but also remarkably little capable of a moral judgement.
While now the shadow with the help of insight and good will can be fitted somewhat into the conscious personality, there are also, as experience learns us, certain traits that stubbornly resist any moral control, and seem as good as uninfluencable. In the rule these resistances are weaved in with projections, that are not recognized as such. Insight in the own projections means a moral achievement that surpasses the common average. While the characterisstics ofthe shadow can be recognized without too much trouble as properties belonging to one's own personality, insight aswell as will are lacking with the confrontation of the projections. The origin of the emotions that guide the projection seem without a doubt to rest with the other (on whom one projets).
The projecting is namely as known not the conscious human, but the unconscious. A projection is encountered - not made by ourselves. The effect of projections is the isolation of the human his environment, seeing as he does not have a real realtionship with it, but only an illusionary. Projections change the environment in its own, but unknown insight. They lead because of this in last instance to an auto-erotic or autistic situation, wherein one dreams a world - the reality of the world however remains unreachable. The feeling of incompleteness and the even worse feeling of sterility that are the effect of this, are in their turn again explained through projection as evilwillingness of the environment, and thanks to this vicious cycle the isolation increases. The more projections are shoved between the subject and his environment, the harder it becomes for the I to see through his illusions. It is often tragic to see how a man, often in a very transparent manner, ruins his own life and that of others, while he can't see for all the money of hte world that the entire mess came from the greatest part out of himself, and again and again is fed and maintained by him. That is by the way not the not the work of his consciousness, cause that complains and curses about a unfaithfull world, that keeps retreating itself. The guilty is on the contrary an unconsicous factor, that spins world and self-hiding illusions. This fantasy world is indeed a cocoon that causes the concerning human to be totally encapsulated.
The shadow can be seen through and realized with a little self-criticism easily - for as so far it is of a personal nature at least. In other words: It is in our capabilities to know the relative-evil of our nature.
Adapted from Carl Gustav Jung: "I and Self: The I - The self. Christ, a symbol of the self."

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."
Carl Gustav Jung
"People will do anything, no matter how absurd to stop from facing their souls."
Carl Gustav Jung

"The foundation of all mental illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering."
Carl Gustav Jung

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