Shadow: Concept by C.G Jung

Dear readers,

It is with great pleasure that I write on this blog by my dear friend Felipe, explaining one of the main concepts of Analytical Psychology by our master Carl Gustav Jung.

But what is SHADOW anyway?

The shadow is formed from childhood when we are learning what is good and what is evil. When evil appears, we have to hide it, because we are punished or we will hear a sermon… so we cannot be ourselves, but be what they want us to be.

It’s those repressed desires or what went unnoticed and we didn’t develop. Everything we would not like to be, but especially what we hate.

It’s like a bag in which you keep everything you can’t let go otherwise society won’t accept you. But one hour everything that is stored in the bag can appear… The shadow, at times, is like an autonomous personality, with opposite tendencies to what we do.

The shadow is not only composed of what has been repressed or repressed: the shadow is also composed of qualities, instincts, reactions that are appropriate, as well as realistic perceptions and creativity. These qualities that could belong to the personality are feared or felt to be wrong.

Example: When you’re tired or under some kind of pressure, it seems that another personality usually comes into action, doesn’t it? When we are driving our car and are closed by another car and the driver still curses us and makes obscene gestures, we are faced with the truth of how our behavior is and the desire to do who knows what with the driver.

Read Also: Impulsivity: 5 basic forms of impulsive behavior

In short:

Shadow would be like looking at your own back, that is, you don’t see it. We see our shadow in others, in this phenomenon that we call “projection”, when I put in the other what is mine, but I don’t accept it. Everything we deny and keep inside us, but we don’t know it.

The shadow is the personification of the psychic part that we deny in ourselves and that we project onto others.

One of the goals of psychotherapy – of therapy with a psychologist – is personality integration: integrating what seems inferior and has been pushed aside, excluded from our lives so that we can broaden our experience and take responsibility for it.

Bruno Ricardo Pereira Almeida

FSP (Faculdade Sudoeste Paulista)