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

by Connie Zweig

According to Jungian analyst Liliane Frey-Rohn, this dark treasury includes our infantile parts, emotional attachments, neurotic symptoms, as well as our undeveloped talents and gifts. The shadow, she says, “retains contact with the lost depths of the soul, with life and vitality—the superior, the universally human, yes, even the creative can be sensed there.”

it’s common to meet the shadow at midlife, when one’s deeper needs and values tend to change direction, perhaps even making a 180-degree turn. This calls for breaking old habits and cultivating dormant talents.

Depression, too, can be a paralyzing confrontation with the dark side, a contemporary equivalent of the mystic’s dark night of the soul. The inner demand for a descent into the underworld can be overridden by outer concerns, such as the need to work long hours, distractions by other people, or antidepressant drugs, which damp our feelings of despair.

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. C. G. JUNG

dealing with shadow and evil is ultimately an “individual secret,” equal to that of experiencing God, and so powerful an experience that it can transform the whole person.

Jung’s lasting contribution was the development of a magnificent vision of the human capacity for consciousness.