The person who commits himself to a life and confront the unknown in the world at large with an open mind with a heart of wisdom.
The shadow problem occurs not only within the individual as a conflict between the conscious mode of adaptation and the negative or repressed autonomous aspects of the unconscious.
The social or societal aspect of the shadow problem is analogous to what is experienced in a personal way.
We have seen how certain quaUties which have been unknown to an individual are recognized as hostile and evil when they are brought to consciousness.
Because the ego is not prepared to assimilate them as its own, they are projected onto other people and onto destructive events, which are sometimes termed “accidents.”
Most people feel no particular need to make these projections conscious, although by refusing to do so they place themselves in an extremely precarious state.
If this is true for the individual as microcosm, it is surely true for the nation as macrocosm.
“The psychology of war has clearly brought this condition to light: everything which our own nation does is good, everything which the other nations do is wicked.
The centre of all that is mean and vile is always to be found several miles behind the enemy’s lines .
“This statement written by Jung in 1928 is as applicable today as it was when it was written.
How tragically we watch as the inhumanities of war perpetrated by our own side are justified as being in the long run for the common good, while those of the enemy become a justification for the continuations of our own immorality.
It is only when our own youth return from the war zones, wounded and drug-ridden and sick in their souls that those who stay at home and watch the war from a lounge chair propped up before a television set begin to get the message.
Those who have been there have had the projections stripped from before their eyes; they have had to confront reality in the faces of the enemy, and also in the faces of this nation’s friends.
We, as a nation, need to discover our own shadows.
We can find them in the images we project, if we can only remember that they are our images.
Such recognition can only begin with the indiyiduak’s willingness to recognize his own shadow
Before he does this he is ill-equipped to assign praise or blame to other individuals, much less to nations.
This is not to suggest that social concerns are incompatible With an analytical
approach. Quite the contrar}’.
The person who will be most effective in his strivings toward social justice is the one who is most critical of himself, who takes care to differentiate his own flaws and to take responsibilit} for them before he goes out to correct his neighbor’s.
He will make his impact more effective by setting an example, than by bludgeoning his opponent into submission.
The person who commits himself to a life of continuing confrontation with the unconscious within himself, and also confront the unknown in the world at large
with an open mind, and what is more, with a heart of wisdom.
I am reminded of a phrase quoted to me by a friend which was supposed to have been a remark of Jung’s, although my friend confessed he never could find the source of the quotation and may even have dreamed it.
In any case, I pass it on to you—the old man is reputed to have said, ”Meine Herren,
vergessen Sie nicht das Unbewusste ist ouch draussen [Gentlemen, do not forget that the unconscious is also on the outside]!” ~June Singer, Boundaries of the Soul, Page 226-227
