Is Carl Jung's Idea of the Shadow Useful?

Jack Cummins

Carl Jung wrote, 'Everything now depends on man: immense power of destruction is given into his hand, and the question is whether he can resist the power to use it,' Answer to Job (1954).

The book Answer to Job was written as Jung's own reinterpretation of the Biblical book of Job. The Biblical book itself looked at the endless suffering of Job, an innocent man enduring suffering. Jung's perspective on suffering has a different slant because the focus is upon the wrath of the shadow aspect of our personality.

He speaks about 'divine savagery and ruthlessness' in human behaviour. This argument is based on his concept of the shadow which refers to aspects of the self which are repressed in the socialisation process. He believes that aspects which we repress are not necessarily bas intrinsically but become so because they are forced underground. For example, we may repress anger.

This work of Jung is complex and it goes on to consider the Biblical myth of Jahweh in the Old Testament as a wrathful God demanding vengeance in contrast to the forgiving Christ of The New Testament. Jung goes on to view the Book of Revelation as pointing to a possible future of destruction but his whole emphasis is upon how it is likely that humanity will bring their own destruction. In other words, it is the dark God with us.

Jung was writing in 1954 and was able to see the infernal possibilities of nuclear war. He pointed to the need for us to be aware of the opposites within, especially good and evil, as a means of self awareness in order for people to be more conscious of their destruction potential.

Of course there are many criticisms of Jung from within the Christian tradition and from many perspectives. In particular, his own bias against Jews at the time of the Second World War raises grounds for considerable criticism. Perhaps this was Jung's own shadow coming into play.

But from a philosophical point, what I wish to ask is does his idea of the shadow and the capacity for destruction have any relevance for our understanding of human nature? Could it be of relevance for us in understanding our own destructive potential, including the personal, such as suicidal tendencies and other forms of destruction including alcohol and drug addiction.

Jung's ideas could also be useful for considering political agendas. I wonder if considerations of the shadow could be useful for world leaders in the current world. Of course, Jung is saying that we all have a shadow side. This actually means that we should not just project the shadow onto those in power, blaming them alone, which is so easy to do.Ultimately, Jung is asking us to see ourselves more clearly, including our capacity for negative and positive potential. Should this outlook be part of the philosophical agenda in the contemporary world?

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Jack Cummins

I see that no one has responded to this thread so far. I don't know whether it is because Jung's thought is regarded as psychology or out of date and irrelevant for philosophy. Also, perhaps the focus on his book Answer to Job may have been rather obscure and it may have seemed like an aspect of religious debate. Even though it was about the problem of evil it was intended as a debate about the future of humanity.

I would welcome feedback, including criticism. In the light of that, I could continue discussion on this thread, or perhaps create better threads.

Pinprick

I’ll bite. I’m only peripherally aware of Jung and his ideas, so if I seem to be misunderstanding or misconstruing his ideas, let me know.

He speaks about 'divine savagery and ruthlessness' in human behaviour. This argument is based on his concept of the shadow which refers to aspects of the self which are repressed in the socialisation process. — Jack Cummins

I’m not seeing what “argument” you’re actually presenting or talking about. Simply that humans have the potential to be savage and ruthless? Or is it that if our shadows were not repressed we would not become savage/ruthless?

But from a philosophical point, what I wish to ask is does his idea of the shadow and the capacity for destruction have any relevance for our understanding of human nature? — Jack Cummins

Well, I think by now the fact that humans can be evil, for lack of a better word, is rather obvious. So, no I don’t think an understanding of Jung’s shadow archetype is necessary to realize this. Also, “human nature” is a loaded term. From what I’m aware, whether or not it even exists is still being debated, as is it’s definition. If you’re sort of equating human nature with human potential/capability, then I don’t think there’s much interesting about that, as we are basically only limited by physics and creativity.

Could it be of relevance for us in understanding our own destructive potential, including the personal, such as suicidal tendencies and other forms of destruction including alcohol and drug addiction. — Jack Cummins

I could see it being used as a scapegoat for negative behaviors, but I don’t know what other practical value it has. If I come to the conclusion, for example, that I’m a drug addict because I have repressed fear, anger, etc. I don’t know what recognizing and accepting this leads to. What does this imply or entail? That I shouldn’t repress these feelings? How do I do that?

TheMadFool

'Everything now depends on man: immense power of destruction is given into his hand, and the question is whether he can resist the power to use it — Jack Cummins

How true! I wonder what the context was? Nuclear Power?

Jung was writing in 1954 and was able to see the infernal possibilities of nuclear war. — Jack Cummins

There's my answer.

I share Jung's sentiment on the issue but my view on the matter is worse than his. Perhaps the global attention, sharp focus, on the atomic bomb, led Jung to make a bogey-man of nuclear power, not without reason of course. The real threat, however, is a process that had been set into motion nearly two centuries ago - unchecked, fast-paced industrialization whose engines ran/run/will run on fossil fuel. The danger of a nuclear winter pales in comparison to the specter of climate change for two reasons: 1) unlike a nuclear war or a major globe-encompassing reactor accident, things yet to happen, factors causing climate change were activated quite a long time ago, 2) while the dangers of a major nuclear misadventure or accident remain, by and large, fictional, the effects of climate change are being felt in real time. In short, it's too late to consider the question "...whether he can resist the ~~power~~ temptation to use.."...the "immense power of destruction..." Jung believes "is given into his hands" Humans have succumbed to the temptation, the whole nine yards of it, and, at this point, we're just waiting for the ax to fall even though the danger here - rapid and unchecked industrialization - isn't what Jung had in mind when he spoke those words.

Jung is saying that we all have a shadow side — Jack Cummins

This doesn't seem to be news and if it is then its old news. Established traditions both in the east and west, maybe even in the south, Africa, have viewed the universe, everything in it, including us and our psyche to be split into two, each half being the opposite of the other and every event being simply an outcome of this power struggle between the yin side and the yang side. Jung, if I remember correctly, was well-acquainted with the I-Ching and Daoism, the right place to start, the go-to guy, if one wishes to affirm and reinforce dualistic thinking. Care to expand on what this Jungian shadow is? Is it what rubbed off on Jung after his interaction with eastern philosophy or is it distinctly western in character and flavor?

Jack Cummins

↪Pinprick

I read your reply and I am left wondering if it is true or not that it is obvious to everyone that they have capacity for evil. But I am talking about each of us owning our own dark side. There are so many people who wish to project evil onto other while claiming to be good.

Anyway, I thank you for your feedback because it is helpful to know why many might disregard Jung's idea on the shadow as irrelevant.I also noted your suggestion that it is questionable whether human nature exists at all. I am not aware of this being debated currently on the site so I plan to start a discussion on that because I think it is an important question, also widening up the topic from the focus upon Jung.

Jack Cummins

↪TheMadFool

Thank you for taking the time to read my thread and comment on it. I can see why some might regard Jung's whole approach and writings as rather unnecessary but I have found his views on the shadow central to my own philosophical development, so I just wrote a thread wondering if any other people found this too. I chose to focus on Answer to Job because I have a copy in my room and because this work is one in which he spells out his picture of the shadow in a dramatic way.

Of course, the book was written a long time ago, before I existed, and you are right to describe the current world conditions as far worse than the basic threat of nuclear war. That is one of the reasons why I think that his ideas on the shadow are relevant. Perhaps the more philosophical and political minded thinkers are aware of the dangers facing us but I think that many people choose to be blind, going about their mundane lives. If nothing else, I am hoping that the whole Covid_19 fear and havoc will enable people to wake up and question in a deeper way. The problems, especially poverty, are far from over.

I probably developed an interest in Jung as a result of trying to fathom my way out of knots imposed on me by being brought up in a strict Roman Catholic way. I am still busy integrating my shadow.

However, I don't think that refusal to take on board the shadow is the mere domain of the religious. I think that people who preach are those who try to deny the shadow. For example, one of my current housemates, who is a qualified dietitian, 'tut tuts' every time I make a cup of coffee and keeps recommending what I should eat, when I am not even convinced that I eat a particularly unhealthy diet. I don't really want to eat green leaves for breakfast and replace my coffee with ghastly herbal infusions. The point I am making here is that certain people impose moral judgements from the standpoint of certain inflated views. In terms of those who stand as moral judgements it is as if they have inflated consciousness of the raw dynamics of living. They cannot bear to confront the opposites within

I do recognise that the whole idea of opposites is within other traditions outside of Western culture, and my reading of Jung has led me in this direction as well.

unenlightened

I think that many people choose to be blind, — Jack Cummins

Jung wrote a lot, and I have read a little. If I understand it aright, then whenever one makes an identification - in Jung's case for example maybe, as a psychoanalyst, or in my case maybe as a philosopher, the process of identification creates a shadow, to which one is necessarily blind.

The civilised man is blind to his own savagery, the pacifist to his own violence, the deal-maker to his deal breaking, the philosopher to his irrationality, the virtuous to their vices. These shadows are deleted from "me" and therefore projected onto "other".

Where it gets more interesting is in its transpersonal aspects. War is not a matter of personal identity, but of mass identity, and therefore mass projection; not 'me' but 'us'.

Hey, any relation to the engine manufacturer?

Jack Cummins

↪unenlightened

Yes, you seem to understand the psychology of projection of the shadow aspect of the psyche. It does create a form of blindness and perhaps the philosophers wish to remain blind, discussion soliptism.

I wrote the thread in order to create discussion of mass identity, because I think that cultural issues are an important matter. But apart from American politics there is not much discussion of the world. I am not wishing to undermine American politics but it is not the only country in the world.

You ask if I am related to an engineer and I am not as far as I know. But I like steampunk fiction writing and art so I get round to creating my own engines in some form when I get tired of writing comments and threads on this site.

unenlightened

I wrote the thread in order to create discussion of mass identity, because I think that cultural issues are an important matter. — Jack Cummins

You might want to look at Reich's The Mass Psychology of Fascism. This sort of stuff is not much considered these days, because it does not sit well with the desperate consumer - one could say it is the "shadow psychology" of rampant individualism...

I would even say that any psychology remains true only to the extent that it is neglected or rejected. This is because whatever the current popular theory is becomes incorporated into the mass identity, and so changes that psyche which it it is a theory of.

Jack Cummins

↪unenlightened

I am not sure about your statement that 'any psychology remains true only to the extent that it is neglected or rejected.' This seems to give in to the sway of popular opinion beyond truth itself. This seems to go against the whole pursuit of philosophy, the distant cousin of psychology.

However, what you go on to say, 'whatever the current popular theory is becomes incorporated into the mass identity, and so changes that psyche which it is a theory of,' is rather interesting. It seems to hint that psychological theory has a self fulfilling prophecy. No wonder the world is upside down we could say, it could be that the ideas we have internalised collectively shape us.I think that you are saying something very important here.

This would probably be true on a personal level too. I began reading Freud and Jung so it surprising that I keep stumbling across the terrain of the subconscious and the shadow. Of course I am just one person who entered into this world view by picking books from library shelves, zooming into a popular perspective. But of course it is becoming a buried tradition with the cognitive behavioral and neuroscientists winning.

But we better be careful what models of thought we allow to get onto the popular platforms as you say because they shape our path by becoming part of our psyches, as you say. I would imagine that this applies to philosophy as well as psychology.

unenlightened

It seems to hint that psychological theory has a self fulfilling prophecy. — Jack Cummins

Almost. I'm saying it has a self refuting prophecy. I'll try and explain very briefly.

In most science, the situation is that the objects of enquiry do not adopt the theory we have about them; they ignore it and are unaffected. Atoms neither follow nor resist atomic theory, they just carry on regardless of what anyone thinks about them, and if the theory is good, it describes what they do and otherwise not. But when for example Freud studied hysteria and sexual repression in women, his theories became so well known that sexual repression could not survive the way he described it. Once the unconscious symbolism of trains in tunnels and collapsing factory chimneys becomes conscious, psyche simply cannot function that way any more. Eventually we have the sexual revolution, and now there is no such thing as hysteria, but instead we have an epidemic of anorexia. Anorexia is as it were, the shadow of female sexual liberation that replaced the sexual repression that had hysteria as its shadow.

In the same way, the more you, personally, become aware of your 'shadow', the less it can function in the usual way, because it becomes incorporated into your self and part of your normal repertoire of behaviour. Psychological theory resides in psyche, in the conscious, and theorises the unconscious to explain itself to itself, and it needs to do this because it finds its own image of itself to be in contradiction to its behaviour. In Eastern psychologies this tends to be called dismissively,'polishing the mirror'( in the attempt to perfect the image of self). It is opposed to enlightenment, which is abandoning the image entirely.

Jack Cummins

↪unenlightened

Your reply was interesting and I can see why you say that once we are consciously aware of our shadow it functions differently.

In my own experience I have found that the more you experience the shadow the deeper it gets. I got into nu metal music when I explored the depths of my own shadow imagery while studying art therapy. This led me into a gothic underworld journey. But that was my relationship with my shadow and others may have very different experiences.

One strange thing I also experienced was that when I had some Jungian psychotherapy, in which my therapist was especially interested my dreams, I almost stopped dreaming. But I was having all kinds of experience in daily life and it was as the language of my unconscious was manifesting in waking life rather than confined to the night life of dreams.

I was also interested in your inclusion of the whole issue of anorexia nervous as an aspect of the shadow of female sexual liberation. I have worked briefly in an eating disorder unit and the disorder is predominantly in females, although some teenage boys are beginning to develop it as well. Anorexia is a good example of the shadow because so many people who develop wrestle with perfectionism. Jung spoke of the whole emphasis on perfection as a key component in psychic development, leading to shadow problems. Of course, in anorexia and bulimia the concern is about having a perfect body, which can in some ways be seen as a shadow aspect of the present liberal acceptance of sexuality.

Anyway, I am not sure if I have really delved into your thought that psychological theory is self refuting rather than being a self fulfilling prophecy, but it is all fascinating. Perhaps my shadow self is creating a block in my thinking around this. But what I would certainly say is that psychological views, especially the psychoanalytic ones have not yet been able to captivate the unknown aspects of the psyche at the present time and perhaps will never be able to do so.

Is Carl Jung's Idea of the Shadow Useful?

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