Shadow: the Jungian concept - Psychology

By Doctor Maurizio Capezzuto - www.psicologodiroma.com -

In order to achieve a good psycho-affective balance, it is important that the person be able to express his or her potential, that he brings his plan, his life project to fruition. Personally I am very attached to a phrase and I hope that it can really be an incitement to "" being ":" The first duty a person has is towards himself ". Believing that there is a tendency that directs man to this direction, I wonder so "it is then that pushes him to alienate himself from himself. What" is that process of individuation that Jung speaks of?

Many people spend their entire life trying to find their own path and many others still avoid it, because? Often behind this avoidance there is the fear of taking on one's responsibility, of one's life. In the instant in which I act, I do my utmost so that I can be, so that I become the creator of my destiny, become the creator of myself. the courage to undertake new and unknown paths. Venturing on undefeated roads is not easy as I will no longer have reference points, all that was my cognitive cultural baggage, now no longer makes sense, and what were my points before of reference now no longer have any value and I can only rely on my strength. Only the one who succeeds in the heroic enterprise will eventually find the treasure. As Marcel Proust said: "I met two roads in the woods and I chose the one less traveled by, here because I'm different ". This explains why in the narratives the figure of the hero is always accompanied by a sense of loneliness. This also helps to explain why we are more prone to regret than to remorse. Regret allows us to delude ourselves that in reality we could not choose and that if we had not found ourselves in this or that "other situation we would have chosen differently, then when there is no real foothold, then we turn to bad luck. In other words, we could say that regret makes it easier to use that mechanism called projection. This defense mechanism allows us to see evil outside of us, giving us the illusion of possible de-responsibility. Furthermore, in psychotherapeutic relationships, it is known that the onset of guilt is often one of the elements that blocks the process of identification. It seems that the sense of guilt arises as a brake on action, as a real obstacle to action. Often we are called to make crucial decisions for our life and we realize that if we take that path that is unknown to us, dark, but which despite this has a very strong appeal on our soul, we should inevitably distance ourselves from everything up to now. at that time they were our beliefs. This implies not only a restructuring of our cognitive apparatus, but also makes us fear that we may lose the love of the people we care about. As Sabina Spielrein said: "Death as the beginning of becoming" and it is actually only after a true and our psychic death that we could truly be reborn. The process of individuation is like a complex conquest of dynamic structures which always implies the risk of deconstruction. The dignity of man consists, among other things, in the assumption of this risk. An essential aspect in the individuation process is also the Jungian concept of Shadow.
The Shadow can be defined in this case as the set of undeveloped functions and attitudes of the personality. I say in this case because when we talk about Shadow we can refer to three meanings:

1) Shadow as part of the personality.

2) Shadow as an archetype *.

3) Shadow as an archetypal image.

n psychoanalysis the archetype can be defined as one universal form of thought with emotional content.

However, since this is a vast and complex topic, it needs to be treated in a specific article, here I will only try to mention it. The Jungian doctrine of the "s" symbol hinges on the dialectical activity that synthesizes opposites. For Jung, the configuration of the psyche offers itself to our observation as the coexistence of polar opposite aspects I and not I, conscious and unconscious, positive and negative, etc. of the psyche. It must be taken into account that the "Shadow is negative because there is a positivity with which it confronts. The profound unjustified antipathies, for example, are almost always the fruit of the projection of one's own Shadow. The recognition of this projection. constitutes the royal road for the recognition of one's own Shadow.Often in therapy it is noted how the subject by refusing his Shadow condemns himself to live a partial life. As Jung observes, the Shadow abandoned to the negative is forced, so to speak, to have an autonomous life without any relationship with the rest of the personality. with the reconnaissance and integration of the Shadow. A page by Jung contained in an essay is illuminating in this regard.

A man possessed by his own Shadow constantly stumbles upon his mistakes. Whenever possible, he will prefer to make an unfavorable impression on others. In the long run, good luck is always against him, since he lives below his own level and, in the best of cases, reaches only what does not belong to him and does not concern him. If there is no obstacle to stumble upon, he will build one for himself and then firmly believe that he has done something useful.

In the "Psychic Energetics, Jung provides an image of the psyche as a multiple energetic current which in the meantime can exist as there are poles or potential differences within which the energy itself is established. Only in this way does the energy that was previously dispersed in the unrecognized or rejected Shadow become available to the "I. The" Shadow is that which of us cannot be resolved in collective value, it is opposed to any universal value. It goes without saying that the true individuality, the unrepeatable singularity, whose modern prophets are Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky, resides in the "Shadow. In the instant in which man accepts the Shadow in his own psychic dynamics he accepts to individualize himself. From the point of view of a collective morality, the integration of the Shadow allows the foundation of an individual ethics in which universal values ​​are pursued as they are continuously related to the individual, or rather to the individual element of the personality.