The Shadow Knows

The Shadow Knows

According to Jung, our shadow represents the darker or less conscious aspects of oneself. He contends that “the shadow is a living part of the personality and therefore wants to live with it in some form” (Jung, 1969, p. 20) It begs the existential question, how does one live with oneself? Especially the shadow, those parts of ourselves we would rather not confront; those often-painful parts that we would rather avoid, rather repress. Shadow material is shaped by introjections of unhealed parents, family members, social, and personal experiences. It is a repository for the faulty, reactive decisions that we have made about ourselves, that mold our shadow content, feed our unhealthy cognitions, and ignite our complexes (Jung, et al., 1976). It is through our complexes that the shadowy saboteur emerges, often taking the form of anger. Addressing unhealed anger is an opportunity to mitigate the potential for sabotage.

Dreams provide an invaluable opportunity to explore the unconscious and are therefore an essential component of depth psychology. While the dreamer’s egoic motivations are suppressed in sleep, like a theater of the mind, an unbiased “reel of complexes” illuminates the dreamer’s psyche (Jung, 1969). Dream interpretation serves to interpret and ultimately defuse the moderating effects of our shadow content and complexes. Dream analysis conveys key insight into our inhibitions, defenses, compensations, and sabotage patterns. Dreams are the map of soul, and psyche contains the blueprint of our dreams; With practice, we can decipher the key.

References

Jung, C. G., Campbell, J., & Hull, R. F. (1976). The portable Jung. Edited, with an introduction, by Joseph Campbell. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. (Fifth printing.).

Jung, C. G. (1969). The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (H. S. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire, Eds.; Second edition, Vols. 9, Part I). Bollingen Foundation.