Recently I posted a new video to YouTube called “The Truth About Shadow Work.” The popular usage and current trend for an interest in shadow work has veered from what the term originally meant in Jungian practice. So you can watch the video here were I explain some about what Jung developed with his theory of the shadow and the unconscious. I also talk about some of the pitfalls and dead ends that come from shadow work and casual dream work. I speak to this both from my years of training in archetypal pattern work, dream work, Jungian theoretical research in grad school, personal analysis, and now with my ongoing training at the CG Jung Institute in Zurich in their Psychoanalysis training program.
The transcript is below:
Introduction to Shadow Work
So the other day I was having a conversation with my husband and explaining some Jungian concept that I was excited about. And I realized how much easier it was to be able to have a conversation that got me excited because I realized that that was a Jungian concept as well. So if we’re thinking about logos, or thought or learning, that’s considered a masculine energy. And so that’s just about the idea. But when we’re communicating, when we are in relationship, when we are sharing, that’s related to eros and is in general considered a feminine idea. So, And that was one of the really big things with Maria Louise von Franz is that she had a high level of eros of being able to interconnect people and get them to understand and feel like everyone was on the same page in a sharing and heartful sort of way. So because of that, I wanted to be able to have a conversation about some of these concepts rather than feeling like I’m talking to a blank screen or talking to myself. So that’s what we’re going to do today.
Origins of Shadow Work in Jungian Psychology
So what I want to talk today about is about shadow and shadow work. This is something that I keep bringing up in the last couple of weeks, maybe the last couple of months. And it is a concept that has gotten a lot of popularity and viral attention recently. And most of the people I come across in the general population don’t understand what it actually is.
The shadow was a concept that was formulated by Carl Jung and his idea of the concept is not connected with the common usage. The common usage of how it’s been presented in social media or when I have friends that use it or clients is that shadow is something that you don’t like about yourself. It may be a bad habit it may be negative self-talk or something that you consider impermissible or not acceptable by the general population or something that you hide or that you’re shameful of.
I would say that that is not what shadow actually is. So when Jung started using this term, what he was saying was that if consciousness is light, the things that you can see, the things that you’re aware of, then the things that fall outside of the light and are in the dark, they’ve fallen in shadow. So it’s literally the things that you are not consciously aware of. If I know I have this bad habit, whether it be a negative way, I talk to myself, feelings of guilt, a bad habit. If I’m aware of it, it’s not shadow.
Common Misconceptions about Shadow Work
So how did Carl Jung become aware of these shadow aspects if they weren’t things that were consciously knowable? They aren’t usually consciously aware of by the person that has them, but they’re these kind of pitfalls or stumbling blocks or something that’s triggering. And usually the people in your life are aware that you do it. It’s just, you aren’t aware of it, so if I act in a really emotional way when I’m triggered about something, or if I always feel like there is somebody out to get me, and maybe it’s one person in this situation, but it’s another person in another situation that I’m projecting on, that would be an example of shadow, where there’s this kind of paranoia because there’s a part of me that’s out to get me that wants to be able to fight against something.
Does that make sense? Yes, it does. So other than asking your family and friends, maybe, maybe it is asking your family and friends, I was wanting to become aware of these issues.
The Importance of Integrating Positive Aspects
In general, I have found that when people start to ask those kinds of questions of their families and friends, it turns into arguments. It’s the part of yourself that you are very sensitive about and don’t want to look at. Your ego consciousness isn’t comfortable with it. It feels very foreign and alien. People immediately get defensive when you go on this type of line of thinking.
So the subject will start to feel like they’re being attacked. Yes. Yes. Because their ego feels attacked. Your consciousness feels attacked because it’s part that the ego has shoved out of consciousness. So in order for the ego to be able to protect itself and say, no, that’s not me. This comes up in dreams all the time where the ego has a particular orientation to what’s going on. And the rest of the dream is trying to say something else. And the ego is at odds with it. And it’s kind of like responding in a stressed out sort of way to protect itself, but it’s in contrast with the dream because the dream is bringing up the unconscious aspects that are outside of the ego consciousness.
Pitfalls of Casual Dream Work
So didn’t Carl Jung develop this through his practice of psychotherapy as something that should be dealt with in psychotherapy? Because being so complicated that it has to be something other people see in you that you’re defensive about if they bring it up. But it can also come up in the context of therapy and dream analysis. That would lead me to think that shadow work is not something people should be tackling as individuals without the aid of a therapist. I would agree with that. I’ve done most of my useful shadow work with the aid of an analyst’s perspective, because they’re being able to see it from a larger standpoint because they’re outside of my ego consciousness, as well as being informed by the dreams.
The Value of Proper Guidance in Shadow Work
That are also continuing to give us a broader context than the ego consciousness and there’s something about the therapeutic relationship where there’s an agreement that the therapist is going to bring in things to broaden consciousness and it’s done in a very secure, slow manner so that people can kind of wrestle with difficult things rather than feeling like there’s this thing attacking my ego and it’s going to swallow me whole if you’re trying to do something like that on your own. A lot of times when we have things like trauma histories negative things that happened in our childhood. Our ego is really trying to not deal with that. So, if you’re seeing a pattern that keeps coming up in your life over and over again, that’s something that’s related to trying to work out this aspect that’s unconscious by projecting it onto other people in the world.
So going through that in therapy, you’re able to start seeing what that pattern is and broadening that perspective.
What Do You Think of the Current Trend?
So what do you think of the current trend of people attempting to do shadow work via self-help books and the guidance of people who don’t have actual mental health degrees? I think it’s terrifying. And I think what we found from how some people are responding to this is they’re opening up material that they don’t have the support that they need to be able to process it.
Potential Dangers of Unsupervised Shadow Work
One of the main things that we do in depth therapy is we are looking at the symbolism in the dream and how the order of the dream is. That is unraveling and unfolding. And we’re also looking at how much the client is consciously aware of it or not, as well as how the ego in the dream is responding to things of how much the client can handle.
At any given time, and we’re always assessing the ego strength of the client, the resiliency of the client, how stressed is the client to be able to adjust how much support they get, how much we are challenging the client, so that the client doesn’t become completely overwhelmed, or have something that is potentially very dangerous to a person.
Final Thoughts on the Truth about Shadow Work
You could open Pandora’s box, not have the proper support and actually make your condition worse. Absolutely. Especially when there are aspects in there that you weren’t aware of. A good example is people said, Oh, well, my childhood wasn’t that bad. I think I was mostly happy. And then you realize that some of the patterns you’re playing out in your current relationships are actually because of negative, unspoken rules in your family, or weird family dynamics between your parents with each other or your parents with you that are influencing this, but you haven’t seen it directly and you don’t realize how traumatic it actually was and how much influence it’s having on your life now, so that if you’re not ready for that, it can be not just an existential crisis but, you know, the, the concept of having a nervous breakdown over it.
So I, I don’t think it’s the kind of thing that should be done outside of a therapeutic context. I mean, Jung was experimenting on himself to some extent because there was no Jung to analyze Jung. And from that, he came up with the idea that thinking is hard. And that’s why most people judge. He had an incredibly great mind and was able to do things at his own peril that most of us can’t do and that’s why it was set up to be done in psychotherapy.
I think that’s all I’ve got for now. Thanks for listening and I’ll be sure to share when I have more topics to pontificate on. Thanks.
If you’re are interested in doing some depth work, dream work, doing some integration of the shadow, and getting long term healing of unconscious patterns of behavior that just keep showing up in your life, read more about how I work. You can also schedule a chat with me for us to get into specifics of how to work with me, in person or online.