Carl Jung on the Shadow – Anthology
If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Par 423.
The shadow can represent the whole of the unconscious – that is both personal and archetypal contents – or just the personal material which was in the background and not recognised, not wanted. ~E.A. Bennet, Conversations with Jung, Page 55
Very often certain apparently impossible intentions of the shadow are mere threats due to an unwillingness on the part of the ego to enter upon a serious consideration of the shadow. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 233-235
Either you begin your life with the shadow (putting the wrong foot forward) and later on you continue with your real personality, or vice versa. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 301-302
Death is a faithful companion of life and follows it like its shadow. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 34.
When you don’t acknowledge that you have such qualities [The Shadow], you are simply feeding the devils. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis, Page 53.
If you get rid of qualities[of the Shadow] you don’t like by denying them, you become more and more unaware of what you are, you declare yourself more and more non-existent, and your devils will grow fatter and fatter. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis, Page 53.
Hence the optimistic assumption of psychotherapy that conscious realization accentuates the good more than the overshadowing evil. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 253-254.
Assimilation of the shadow gives a man body, so to speak; the animal sphere of instinct, as well as the primitive or archaic psyche, emerge into the zone of consciousness and can no longer be repressed by fictions and illusions. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 452
The shadow is a living part of the personality and therefore wants to live with it in some form. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 44.
The anima and animus have tremendous influence because we leave the shadow to them. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis, Page 53.
The fact is that if one tries beyond one’s capacity to be perfect, the shadow descends into hell and becomes the devil. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 569.
To be fully aware of the shadow would be an almost superhuman task, but we can reach a certain optimum of consciousness; we should be aware to a much higher degree than we are now. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 237.
We have to discover our shadow. Otherwise we are driven into a world war in order to see what beasts we are. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 235
So the Self is part of the collective unconscious, but it is not the collective unconscious; it is that unit which apparently comes from the union of the ego and the shadow. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 754
So whatever comes from behind comes from the shadow, from the darkness of the unconscious, and because you have no eyes there, and because you wear no neck amulet to ward off evil influences, that thing gets at you, possesses and obsesses you. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1265.
What is light without shadow? What is high without low? You deprive the deity of its omnipotence and its universality by depriving it of the dark quality of the world. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 967
Our shadow is the last thing that has to be put on top of everything, and that is the thing we cannot swallow; we can swallow anything else, but not our own shadow because it makes us doubt our good qualities. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1090.
Where is a height without depth, and how can there be light that throws no shadow? There is no good that is not opposed by evil. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 271.
The son became a thief, and the daughter a prostitute. Because the father would not take on his shadow, his share in the imperfection of human nature, his children were compelled to live out the dark side which he had ignored. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, Pages 156-163
We can speak of the conscious ego as the subjective personality, and of the shadow self as the objective personality. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 139
The serpent leads the psychological movement apparently astray into the kingdom of shadows, dead and wrong images, but also into the earth, into concretization. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 102
Inasmuch as the serpent leads into the shadows, it has the function of the anima; it leads you into the depths, it connects the above and the below. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 102
A man who is possesses by his shadow is always standing in his own light and falling into his own traps. ~Carl Jung, CW 9.1, Para 222
One cannot avoid the shadow unless one remains neurotic, and as long as one is neurotic one has omitted the shadow. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 544-546
The shadow is the block which separates us most effectively from the divine voice. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 544-546
Therefore Elihu in spite of his fundamental truth belongs to those foolish Jungians, who, as you suggest, avoid the shadow and make for the archetypes, i.e., the “divine equivalents,” which by the way are nothing but escape camouflage according to the personalistic theory. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 544-546
If God is only good, everything is good. There is not a shadow anywhere. Evil just would not exist, even man would be good and could not produce anything evil. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 518-519
Recognizing the shadow is what I call the apprentice piece, but making out with the anima is the masterpiece which not many can bring off. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 481
It is equally obvious that every insight into what I have called the “shadow” is a step along the road of individuation without one’s being obliged to call this an individuation process. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 468-469
Therefore Elihu in spite of his fundamental truth belongs to those foolish Jungians, who, as you suggest, avoid the shadow and make for the archetypes, i.e., the “divine equivalents,” which by the way are nothing but escape camouflage according to the personalistic theory. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 544-546
Just as a person refuses to recognize his own shadow side, so, but all the more strongly, he hates recognizing the shadow side of the nation behind which he is so fond of concealing himself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 430-433
But he [Rilke] doesn’t have what it takes to make a man complete: body, weight, shadow. His high ethos, his capacity for abnegation, and perhaps also his physical frailty naturally led him towards a goal of completeness, but not of perfection. Perfection, it seems to me, would have broken him. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 381-382.
Even the saints cast a shadow. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 253-254.
There is need of people knowing about their shadow, because there must be somebody who does not project. They ought to be in a visible position where they would be expected to project and unexpectedly they do not project! They can thus set a visible example which would not be seen if they were invisible. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 163-174
When Christ withstood Satan’s temptation, that was the fatal moment when the shadow was cut off. Yet it had to be cut off in order to enable man to become morally conscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 163-174
But becoming Man, he becomes at the same time a definite being, which is this and not that. Thus the very first thing Christ must do is to sever himself from his shadow and call it the devil (sorry, but the Gnostics of Irenaeus already knew it!). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 133-138
As a matter of fact, our society has not even begun to face its shadow or to develop those Christian virtues so badly needed in dealing with the powers of darkness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 133-138
Our society cannot afford the luxury of cutting itself loose from the imitatio Christi, even if it should know that the conflict with the shadow, i.e., Christ versus Satan, is only the first step on the way to the far-away goal of the unity of the self in God. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 133-138
As a rule the shadow appears only in the singular. If it occasionally appears as a duality this is, so to speak, a “seeing double”: a conscious and an unconscious half, one figure above the horizon, the other below. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 116-117.
It is indeed no small matter to know one’s own guilt and one’s own evil, and there is certainly nothing to be gained by losing sight of one’s shadow. When we are conscious of our guilt we are in a more favorable position – we can at least hope to change and improve ourselves. ~Carl Jung, CW X, Para 440.
The darkness which clings to every personality is the door into the unconscious and the gateway of dreams, from which those two twilight figures, the shadow and the anima, step into our nightly visions or, remaining invisible, take possession of our ego-consciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 222.
When sacrifice is demanded it frequently implies the acceptance of our shadow- side. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.
The Bible says, “Whosoever shall say “Racha” to his brother is guilty of hellfire.” If we substitute “shadow” for “brother” and implicate the dark brother within, we open out this biblical word into new perspectives. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.
“What ye have done to the least of your brethren ye have done unto me.” The least of me is my inferior function which represents my shadow- side. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.
Christ himself associated with tax collectors and whores and accepted the thief crucified beside him. “I am the least of my brethren and my own shadow.” ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 13.
This man [Jung] did in fact accept the shadow and. . . this acceptance brought problems and tensions but also aliveness, reality, integrity, and depth of being. ~Elizabeth Howes, J.E.T., Page 120.
My shadow is indeed so huge that I could not possibly overlook it in the plan of my life; in fact I had to see it as an essential part of my personality and accept the consequences of this realization, and take responsibility for them. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 276-277.
That the imitation of Christ creates a corresponding shadow in the unconscious hardly needs demonstrating. The fact that John had visions at all is evidence of an unusual tension between conscious and unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Par 717.
That the imitation of Christ creates a corresponding shadow in the unconscious hardly needs demonstrating. The fact that John had visions at all is evidence of an unusual tension between conscious and unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Par 717.
If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Par 423.
The ancients always thought of coming events as having shadows cast in front of them. Here we have an animal killed, a mythological animal in fact—that is, instinct. ~Carl Jung, Introduction to Analytical Psychology, Page 153.
A man who is possessed by his shadow is always standing in his own light and falling into his own traps. Whenever possible, he prefers to make an unfavorable impression on others. . . ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 222f.
In this way things repressed and forgotten come back again. This is a gain in itself, though often a painful one, for the inferior and even the worthless belongs to me as my shadow and gives me substance and mass. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 59.
How can I be substantial without casting a shadow? I must have a dark side too if I am to be whole; and by becoming conscious of my shadow I remember once more that I am a human being like any other. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 59.
First and foremost, however, it is not always possible to bring the patients close enough to the unconscious for them to perceive the shadows. On the contrary, many of them and for the most part complicated, highly conscious persons are so firmly anchored in consciousness that nothing can pry them loose. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 60.
After all, the essential thing is not the shadow but the body which casts it. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 64.
Shadow pertains to light as evil to good, and vice versa. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 64.
For, if the unconscious is held to be nothing more than a receptacle for all the evil shadow-things in human nature, including deposits of primeval slime, we really do not see why we should linger longer than necessary on the edge of this swamp into which we once fell. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 67.
If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 423.
Depression is not necessarily pathological. It often foreshadows a renewal of the personality or a burst of creative activity. There are moments in human life when a new page is turned. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, par. 373.
Nobody who finds himself on the road to wholeness can escape that characteristic suspension which is the meaning of crucifixion. For he will infallibly run into things that thwart and “cross” him: first, the thing he has no wish to be (the shadow); second, the thing he is not (the “other,” the individual reality of the “You”); and third, his psychic non-ego (the collective unconscious). ~Carl Jung, CW 16, par. 470.
Affects occur usually where adaptation is weakest, and at the same time they reveal the reason for its weakness, namely a certain degree of inferiority and the existence of a lower level of personality. ~Carl Jung, “The Shadow,” Aion, CW 9ii, par. 15.
There are people indeed who always project the blame, but I hold this to be incorrect! The fruit comes to him from the mother, through the friend, the shadow; this means that if he goes out into the world with his shadow, fruit will come to him. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XII, 1Feb1935, Pages 180
There are, it is true, cases of people who are living below their own value where the shadow is the superior instead of the inferior part of the personality. Such people are apparently very modest but there is a lot of cunning in their modesty. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 113.
As we are considering man’s psyche, the ego in the conscious and the shadow in the unconscious are both masculine but on the lower floor it is different. There man meets his other side which is feminine. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 114.
You can protect your anima by Yoga exercises which only procure a conscious thrill, but you can protect her by catching the unconscious contents that well up from the depths of yourself. Try to see your fantasies are, no matter how disreputable they seem to be; that is your blackness, your shadow that ought to be swallowed. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 95-97.
A point exists at about the thirty-fifth year when things begin to change; it is the first moment of the shadow side of life, of the going down to death. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 223.
It does not seem exactly probable to me that when Christ cuts off his shadow this is an immediate visionary experience, but chiefly a philosophical idea very drastically expressed. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 553-554.
Seventy or eighty per cent of the population today belong to the middle ages, so that very few people are really adapted to this year 1934, and of those few the majority have forgotten their shadows which trail behind their well-adapted personas! ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 68.
My consciousness is like an eye that penetrates to the most distant spaces, yet it is the psychic non-ego that fills them with non-spatial images. And these images are not pale shadows, but tremendously powerful psychic factors. . . . ~Carl Jung, Freud and Psychoanalysis, CW 4, pp. 331 f.
If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 423.
With a little self-criticism one can see through the shadow-so far as its nature is personal. But when it appears as an archetype, one encounters the same difficulties as with anima and animus. In other words, it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil. ~Carl Jung; CW 17; The Shadow; Page 338; par. 19.
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. ~Carl Jung; The Integration of the Personality.
Through the Christ crucified between the two thieves, man gradually attained knowledge of his shadow and its duality. This duality had already been anticipated by the double meaning of the serpent. Just as the serpent stands for the power that heals as well as corrupts, so one of the thieves is destined upwards, the other downwards, and so likewise the shadow is on one side regrettable and reprehensible weakness, on the other side healthy instinctively and the prerequisite for higher consciousness. ~Carl Jung; Aion; Page 255; Para 402.
Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. ~Carl Jung; The Philosophical Tree; CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P.335
This meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one’s own shadow. The shadow is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well. But one must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is. ~Carl Jung, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, vol. 9, pt. 1 p. 21
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. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge. Carl Jung; Aion; CW 9; Part II; Page 14.
It is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not just of a few little weaknesses and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism. The individual seldom knows anything of this; to him, as an individual, it is incredible that he should ever in any circumstances go beyond himself. But let these harmless creatures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster; and each individual is only one tiny cell in the monster’s body, so that for better or worse he must accompany it on its bloody rampages and even assist it to the utmost.
Having a dark suspicion of these grim possibilities, man turns a blind eye to the shadow-side of human nature. Blindly he strives against the salutary dogma of original sin, which is yet so prodigiously true. Yes, he even hesitates to admit the conflict of which he is so painfully aware. ~Carl Jung; On the Psychology of the Unconscious; CW 7; Two Essays on Analytical Psychology; Page 35.
Empirical psychology loved, until recently, to explain the “unconscious” as mere absence of consciousness-the term itself indicates as much-just as shadow is an absence of light. Today accurate observation of unconscious processes has recognized, with all other ages before us, that the unconscious possesses a creative autonomy such as a mere shadow could never be endowed with. Carl Jung; CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East; Page 14.
Rationalism and superstition are complementary. It is a psychological rule that the brighter the light, the blacker the shadow; in other words, the more rationalistic we are in our conscious minds, the more alive becomes the spectral world of the unconscious. ~Spuk: Irrglaube oder Wahrglaube? ; Foreword by C. G. Jung; In CW 18: P. 10.
No, the demons are not banished; that is a difficult task that still lies ahead. Now that the angel of history has abandoned the Germans, the demons will seek a new victim. And that won’t be difficult. Every man who loses his shadow, every nation that falls into self-righteousness, is their prey…. We should not forget that exactly the same fatal tendency to collectivization is present in the victorious nations as in the Germans, that they can just as suddenly become a victim of the demonic powers. ~Carl Jung; The Postwar Psychic Problems of the Germans.
To confront a person with his shadow is to show him his own light. Once one has experienced a few times what it is like to stand judgingly between the opposites, one begins to understand what is meant by the self. Anyone who perceives his shadow and his light simultaneously sees himself from two sides and thus gets in the middle. ~Carl Jung; Good and Evil in Analytical Psychology; CW 10; Civilization in Transition; Page 872.
We carry our past with us, to wit, the primitive and inferior man with his desires and emotions, and it is only with an enormous effort that we can detach ourselves from this burden. If it comes to a neurosis, we invariably have to deal with a considerably intensified shadow. And if such a person wants to be cured it is necessary to find a way in which his conscious personality and his shadow can live together. ~Carl Jung; Answer to Job; CW 11; Psychology and Religion: West and East; Page 1.
In contrast to the meditation found in yoga practice, the psychoanalytic aim is to observe the shadowy presentation — whether in the form of images or of feelings — that are spontaneously evolved in the unconscious psyche and appear without his bidding to the man who looks within. In this way we find once more things that we have repressed or forgotten.
Painful though it may be, this is in itself a gain — for what is inferior or even worthless belongs to me as my Shadow and gives me substance and mass. How can I be substantial if I fail to cast a Shadow? I must have a dark side also if I am to be whole; and inasmuch as I become conscious of my Shadow I also remember that I am a human being like any other. ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Page 35.
Good does not become better by being exaggerated, but worse, and a small evil becomes a big one through being disregarded and repressed. The Shadow is very much a part of human nature, and it is only at night that no shadows exist. ~Carl Jung; Carl Jung: “A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity (1942) In CW 11; Psychology and Religion: West and East. Page 286.
To establish a really mature attitude, he has to see the subjective value of all these images which seem to create trouble for him. He has to assimilate them into his own psychology; he has to find out in what way they are part of himself; how he attributes for instance a positive value to an object, when as a matter of fact it is he who could and should develop this value.
And in the same way, when he projects negative qualities and therefore hates and loathes the object, he has to discover that he is projecting his own inferior side, his shadow, as it were, because he prefers to have an optimistic and one-sided image of himself. ~Carl Jung; [Definitions,” CW 6, par. 813.]
As soon as people get together in masses and submerge the individual, the shadow is mobilized, and, as history shows, may even be personified and incarnated. Carl Gustav Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Collected Works, 9i, par.478
The shadow, the syzygy, and the Self are psychic factors of which an adequate picture can be formed only on the basis of a fairly thorough experience of them. Just as these concepts arose out of an experience of reality, so they can be elucidated only by further experience ~Carl Jung; CW 9/2, par. 63.
When a woman realizes her shadow the animus can be constellated. If the shadow remains in the unconscious the animus possesses her through the shadow. When she realizes her animus, mystical generation can occur. Sarah was Abraham’s legitimate wife, but Hagar, the dark one, had the procreative animus. Out of darkness the light is born. ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 30.
If the encounter with the shadow is the “apprentice piece” in the individual development, then, that with the anima is the “masterpiece.” ~Carl Jung, CW 9, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, Page 29.
The realization of the shadow is the growing awareness of the inferior part of the personality. ~Carl Jung, CW 8; On the Nature of the Psyche, Page 208.
The shadow is something very evasive. I don’t know mine. I study it by the reaction of those around me. We depend on the reflection of the mirror of our entourage. When it is not good, self-criticism is in order. ~C. G. Jung, Emma Jung and Toni Wolff – A Collection of Remembrances; Pages 51-70.
In the shadow we are exactly like everybody; in the night all cats are grey-there is no difference. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1090.
The devil knows what is beautiful, and hence he is the shadow of beauty and follows it everywhere, awaiting the moment when the beautiful, writhing great with child, seeks to give life to the God. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 289.
The image of God has a shadow. The supreme meaning is real and casts a shadow. For what can be actual and corporeal and have no shadow? ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 230.
Like plants, so men also grow, some in the light, others in the shadows. There are many who need the shadows and not the light. The image of God throws a shadow that is just as great as itself. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 230.
When the month of the Twins had ended, the men said to their shadows: “You are I,” since they had previously had their spirit around them as a second person. Thus the two became one, and through this collision the formidable broke out, precisely that spring of consciousness that one calls culture and which lasted until the time of Christ. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Pages 314.
I am no longer alone with myself, and I can only artificially recall the scary and beautiful feeling of solitude. This is the shadow side of the fortune of love. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Introduction, Page 196.
