Glossary: The Shadow

“Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions.”

- Jung


All the traits and personal qualities that are split off from the ego and left in the personal unconscious because they are incompatible with the way the ego sees itself, or wishes to see itself. Corresponds with Freud's unconscious. This can be the result of actively repressing qualities that one sees as undesirable in some way (weak, repellent, or reprehensible), or it can simply be the natural result of compensatory qualities being pushed down into the unconscious by the development of their opposites, as with one's dominant and inferior functions.

The shadow, along with the animus/anima, are common sources of projection; the more one denies a particular quality, the more one will hate it in others... and, at the same time, the more one will unconsciously act out those very qualities one despises (unconsciously to you, but others around you will be very aware of your acting out.)

One of the first tasks of individuation is to gather back to ourselves all the dismembered parts that we projected out into the world, onto others. Only when this task is complete can we progress to the more difficult ask of integrating the animus/anima.

But he who goes into the one and not also at the same time into the other by accepting what comes toward him, will simply teach and live the one and turn it into a reality. For he will be its victim. When you go into the one and hence consider the other approaching you as your enemy, you will fight against the other. You will do so because you fail to recognize that the other is also in you. On the contrary, you think that the other comes somehow from without and you think that you also catch sight of it in the views and actions of your fellow men which clash with yours. You thus fight the other and are completely blinded. But he who accepts what approaches him because it is also in him, quarrels and wrangles no more, but looks into himself and keeps silent.

- Carl Jung, Red Book

All we deny, fear, or hate in ourselves collects in the shadow, which appears in dreams as a frightening figure of the dreamer's gender (because it's part of his or her ego). "Realization of the shadow" means growing fully, emotionally conscious of the shadow's contents, a moral problem evaded by people whose respectable conscious selves deny the shadow and project it into personal, family, or cultural scapegoats. The shadow is often contaminated by inferior function/attitude, anima, etc., identification with the shadow produces a kind of amoral, inflated craziness.

- Craig Chalquist, PhD, "A Glossary of Jungian Terms"

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. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real.

- Jung, "The Shadow," CW 9ii, par. 14

There is no generally effective technique for assimilating the shadow. It is more like diplomacy or statesmanship and it is always an individual matter. First one has to accept and take seriously the existence of the shadow. Second, one has to become aware of its qualities and intentions. This happens through conscientious attention to moods, fantasies and impulses. Third, a long process of negotiation is unavoidable...

Responsibility for the shadow rests with the ego. That is why the shadow is a moral problem. It is one thing to realize what it looks like - what we are capable of. It is quite something else to determine what we can live out, or with.

- Daryl Sharp, M.A., "Jung Lexicon"

If you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw all his projections, then you get an individual who is conscious of a pretty thick shadow. Such a man has saddled himself with new problems and conflicts. He has become a serious problem to himself, as he is now unable to say that they do this or that, they are wrong, and they must be fought against… Such a man knows that whatever is wrong in the world is in himself, and if he only learns to deal with his own shadow he has done something real for the world. He has succeeded in shouldering at least an infinitesimal part of the gigantic, unsolved social problems of our day.

- “Psychology and Religion” (1938). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.140

When people learn to know their shadow and to live their shadow a bit more, they become more accessible, more natural, more roundly human. People without shadows, who are perfect, inflict an inferiority on their surroundings, which irritates others. They act in a manner superior to the "all-too-human". That's why one is relieved when something nasty happens to them. "Aha!" we say, "Thank God, he's only human."

- Marie Louise von Franz

Taking it in its deepest sense, the shadow is the invisible saurian tail that man still drags behind him. Carefully amputated, it becomes the healing serpent of the mysteries. Only monkeys parade with it.

- The Integration of the Personality (1939)