The Jungian Shadow: Its Phenomenology,
Detection and Conscious Integration.
As
individual attention is habitually and excessively focused on the façade of the
persona, the deeper, neglected aspects of the personality continually sabotage
the individual’s conscious intentions (Jung, 1959, p. 123). In order to account
for these frustrations, while also avoiding their true source, the shadow is
conveniently projected onto other people (Bennett, 1966, p. 119), resulting in
what can often be perceived as threatening and unfriendly circumstances
(Wilber, 1979, p. 82). Whether the shadow manifests as a war protester who
covertly bombs public buildings, a novice guitarist who practically deifies
Eddie Van Halen, or as a pro-life extremist who assassinates abortionists, it
always represents the very qualities that the persona claims to lack. As such,
attentive detection and conscious integration of the shadow would seem to offer
a genuine solution to taming the darker aspects of humanity, as well as
harnessing its highest potentials, especially if willingly practiced by a
growing percentage of the world population.
This essay explores a
first-person, phenomenological approach to detecting and integrating the
shadow, as well as a third-person, structural view of development that is
believed to occur as a result of shadow integration. Drawing from both
first-person experience and logical argument, based upon insights in both
transpersonal psychology and Buddhist mindfulness practice, it is theorized
that the cultivation of compassionate yet intentional awareness is capable not
only of detecting the presence of the shadow, but also of gently confronting
and integrating it into the personality in a manner which develops a more
deeply attuned sense of self with the world at large, with no inherent need to
deny any aspects of the self and therefore no need to project any of these
aspects outside of the experienced self.
The Phenomenology of Shadow Recognition
The
first sign of shadow projection appears as a strong emotional reaction to
anyone or anything in the environment (Wilber, 1979, p. 94). More precisely,
the first-person experience of such affect feels visceral, impulsive and
automatic, more like an unconscious reflex than a conscious, intentional
response (Bennett, 1966, p. 119). The instinctive reflex arising out of such
affect then projects the source of the feeling outwardly onto some other
person, thing or situation, often in the form of emotionally pungent criticism
and blame (1966, p. 119). It is this very tendency, in fact, which can serve as
the prime indicator that the shadow is in play. By becoming mindfully aware of
the people to whom the persona is positively or negatively attracted, in addition
to the outwardly focused perceptions which accompany such attraction, it is
possible to recognize the shadow (Welwood, 200, p. 208).
Integrating the Shadow through Conscious Awareness
“I
looked, and looked, and this I came to see:That
what I thought was you and you,Was
really me and me” (Wilber, 1979, p. 95).
As is by now evident, the
contents of projection are the secret characteristics—the ‘its’—which the
persona refuses to acknowledge. And ending this externalization of the personal
contents of consciousness is what Jung’s former mentor, Freud, was pointing to
when he proclaimed, “where id was, there ego shall be” (Freud, 1965). Here Freud
is literally saying, "Where it was, I shall come to be.” Just as Ged, the
lead character in LeGuin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, purposely faces and
intimately embraces his own formerly destructive shadow (1975), so also is the
shadow integrated by consciously addressing the persona with its own antithesis
(Wilber, 1979, p. 100), so that what was formerly a problematic ‘it’ now
becomes an integral part of the ‘I’, where it may now bestow its once hidden
wealth upon the experience of the personality (Jung, 1959, p. 270).
As
previously mentioned, shadow projection is accompanied by the presence of
pronounced affect (Jung, 1959, p. 38), which in turn can act as the very signal
for a return to, and cultivation of, mindfulness. By deliberately diving into
the felt experience of this affect, while simultaneously acknowledging its
source to be interior and not exterior to the self, it is possible to come face
to face with the projected contents of the personal unconscious.
Shadow Integration and the Development of the Ego
As Jung indicated, once
the shadow has been adequately befriended and integrated into the personality,
development of the experienced self expands and unfolds (Jung, 1959, p. 340).
Developmental theorist Susanne Cook-Greuter’s model of ego development,
interestingly, seems to mirror Jung’s sentiments, though her conception of ego
differs slightly from Jung’s. While the stages of development in the first
two-thirds of her model depict the ego as differentiating itself in the
direction of greater levels of autonomy, the last third of her stage-model—the
postconventional stages of development—views the ego as growing toward higher
levels of unity and integration with the ground of being itself (Cook-Greuter,
2004, p. 5). This higher integration involves a progressive dissolution of
subject-object duality, so that all opposites are eventually absorbed and
embraced (2004, p. 28). The shadow, of course, qualifies as one of the
opposites to be enfolded into the unified ego, making its detection and
integration absolutely essential, in this view, to human development toward
more encompassing levels of wholeness and wellbeing (2004, p. 25).
References
http://ieric2010.hubpages.com/hub/Carl-Jung-and-the-Shadow-An-Introduction
Bennett,
E. A. (1966). What Jung Really Said. New York: Schocken.
Cook-Greuter,
S. (2004). 9 levels of increasing embrace. Retrieved from http://www.
cook-greuter.com
Freud,
S. (1965). New Introductory Lectures on
Psychoanalysis.
London: Hogarth Press.
Jung,
C.G. (1959). The Archetypes and the Collective
Unconscious.
Sir Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, Gerhard Adler, William McGuire (Eds.), The
Collected Works of C. G. Jung (Volume 9, Part 1). Princeton, NJ:
PrincetonUniversity.
Ladner,
L. (2004). The Lost Art of Compassion:
Discovering the Practice of Happiness in the Meeting of Buddhism and Psychology. New York: HarperOne.
LeGuin,
U. K. (1975). A Wizard of Earthsea. New York: Bantam.
Welwood,
J. (2000). Toward a Psychology of Awakening:
Buddhism, Psychotherapy, and the Path of Personal and Spiritual Transformation. Boston: Shambhala.
Wilber,
K. (1979). No Boundary: Eastern and Western
Approaches to Personal Growth. Boulder: Shambhala.
Williamson, M. (1996). A
Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles. New York: Harper.
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