Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

by Connie Zweig

we see the shadow mostly indirectly, in the distasteful traits and actions of other people, out there where it is safer to observe it. When we react intensely to a quality in an individual or group—such as laziness or stupidity, sensuality, or spirituality—and our reaction overtakes us with great loathing or admiration, this may be our own shadow showing. We project by attributing this quality to the other person in an unconscious effort to banish it from ourselves, to keep ourselves from seeing it within.

So the personal shadow contains undeveloped, unexpressed potentials of all kinds. It is that part of the unconscious that is complementary to the ego and represents those characteristics that the conscious personality does not wish to acknowledge and therefore neglects, forgets, and buries, only to discover them in uncomfortable confrontations with others.

“Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.”

Facing and assimilating our shadows forces the recognition of a totality of being consisting of good and evil, rational and irrational, masculine and feminine, as well as conscious and unconscious polarities.

a man must come to terms with his grievances and guilts—his view of himself as victim and as villain

in denying his feelings, in nullifying his own judgments and evaluations; in repudiating his own experience, the child has learned to disown parts of his personality.