WELCOME TO Module 7

This Jungian Life @ www.thisjungianlife.com

Lisa Marchiano, Jungian Analyst, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Joseph Lee, Jungian Analyst, Virginia Beach, Virginia

Deborah Stewart, Jungian Analyst, Cape Cod, Massachusetts

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Module 7: Shadow in Dreams

THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL EDITED TRANSCRIPT

Joseph: In this module, we’re going to explore Jung’s concept of the shadow and the many ways it can be seen and worked with in dreams. To begin, let’s land a couple of concepts to serve as a map. First, everything we are unconscious of constitutes shadow. All our positive or problematic potential, all elements of anima/animus, the Self–all hidden or simply unknown material. When we begin, it’s as if we live on a small island in the middle of a vast ocean; the beginning of dream work is trying to identify what’s in the water: elements of our shadow. As we pay attention, we can notice that personal shadow will often show up in a dream as a same-sex person who exhibits our negative qualities. They seem distasteful one way or another, and may appear as people in the outer world to whom we have aversion. As we continue to parse out various unconscious experiences imaged in dreams, we can also begin to identify the functional complexes, like persona, ego, and animus/anima, which can be marvelously and frequently pictured in dreams. So the first goal is to admit that we have shadow impulses. Often, that’s a lot for people to face: “gosh, I’m angrier than I knew,” or “I’m more sexually driven than I’ve been able to admit to myself.” The task is to integrate some portion of that disowned energy and find ways express it without causing too much inner or outer tumult. Dreams can be a way to begin that process.

Lisa: That’s a big chunk to get us started. To take one aspect forward, sometimes a shadow figure in dreams is someone in our lives we don’t like. I see this a lot with people who have a person who recurs in dreams. We know that’s likely a shadow figure. Many times that figure represents things that aren’t necessarily negative, but have been disallowed for some reason. For example, a career woman I worked with was strongly identified with her career and worldly achievement. Her sister-in-law, however, was a passionate homemaker who had quit her job to stay home and be with her children. There was some friction between the dreamer and her sister-in-law in waking life, and the sister-in-law turned up in this woman’s dreams, always with a lot of tension. We came to understand this as an aspect of her shadow. There was part of this woman that was a lot more ambivalent than she knew about missing out on domestic aspects of life–time at home, and time with children. Those things were in the shadow for her.

Deb: Shadow is what we have not been able to recognize in ourselves—it may be bright or dark, and maybe we’ve never even known about it, but it makes us squirm. That is shadow and our dreams routinely depict it. Dreams lift something up every night to tell us something we need to know and have not allowed into consciousness. But what we want to do is start to categorize shadow in the way you just spoke of, Joseph: what kind of shadow is this? Is it anima/animus? Is it a complex? We want to define it a little bit more clearly so it’s not big and amorphous, like your image of the ocean.

Joseph: Shadow creation, by the way, is natural and normal–even essential. In infants, young people, and then young adults, there are qualities and behaviors the culture disapproves of and may punish. In order for us to have a happy, reasonable, peaceful life, there are parts of our nature we set aside or even consign to cages, because they are parts that are unacceptable in the outer world.

Deb: We all have ‘uncivilized’ impulses and desires, so for the sake of living with other people and becoming reasonably acculturated, we have to suppress some of those instinctual urges and feelings, which creates shadow.

Lisa: In working with personal shadow and dreams, a good place to start is to look for a same-sex person who might be an antagonist in a dream narrative. If you have a dream with an antagonist—and I think we all do—you can consider whether and how that person might be a shadow figure.

Joseph: An example that comes to mind is a woman who lived a very circumscribed life. She was compliant with conservative religious values, and it disturbed her when she dreamed of a beautiful, provocatively dressed woman wearing bright red high heels. On waking, she felt very judgmental about this flagrant disregard for propriety. The shadow woman was displaying her body and only loose women wear red shoes! Yet that aspect of her own sexuality and sexuality was alive and well, showing up in the dream and ringing her inner bell—loudly!

Deb: Dreams images like these don’t mean the person will enact the behavior, but it’s a call to be aware of those feelings and give them a seat at the table of consciousness. There’s a part of this woman that can wear red shoes, be sexy, beautiful, and even a bit provocative. We all have that in us and don’t necessarily live it in the outer world.

Joseph: We may live in cultures where it would be unacceptable to dress the way the shadow figure did in her dream. Accepting shadow elements is a first step, but I would add that in order to make real progress, there needs to be a place where shadow is lived out. It could be a small, ritualized expression of shadow–she might buy red shoes and wear them at home so she can have the feeling of being a “red shoes woman” without risking cultural criticism and shame. That could be a ritual that’s just enough to give her personal shadow a sense that it’s been honored and respected.

Lisa: Here’s a young man’s dream featuring shadow: I’m out with a friend going downtown. We’re being followed by a homeless guy with no arms or legs. We go into a restaurant and the homeless guy attacks me before I can close the door. He’s biting at my pants leg. I wake up terrified. Sometimes frightening dreams can be shadow dreams, and as this young man and I worked on this dream, unlocking the image of the friend was the key to understanding the dream. The friend was openly ambitious, whereas the dreamer, although very talented, was conflicted about claiming his ambition. It was a family value to be modest and focused on service to others. The thought that he might claim his desire to get an advanced degree or achieve professional distinction was very uncomfortable for him. He was wrestling with this in the background at the time he had this dream. His ambition had been cut off at the knees and was now pursuing him in a way that felt threatening to the dream ego. But it was really a shadow content that wanted his attention and needed to be honored, as you were saying, Joseph.

Deb: It’s really on point that the attacker was a homeless man, since this shadow element did not have a home in the dreamer’s awareness until it bit him. Shadow can also include things that are not human, such as an attacking animal or a disgusting dream image. Again and again, clients bring in dreams of feces, overflowing toilets or urinating publicly. People have dreamed of the devil. These things evoke a lot of feeling and can make the person afraid to relate to his or her dreams because consciousness finds it so appalling or shameful. Shadow can be depicted in very affect-laden images—and the more intense such images are, the more disallowed in consciousness those feelings are likely to be. People have a lot of trouble relating some dreams, especially toilet and feces dreams, even though they are very common. What is that an image of as a feeling–something that’s private, dirty, and unmentionable–yet it’s there?

Joseph: The toilet becomes a symbol of repression because when the toilets are working well, our shadow is excreted, flushed, and disappears from consciousness. Everybody washes hands, leaves the bathroom, and returns to ‘real life.’ But often in toilet dreams, although the toilets have stopped working, they keep getting used. So now the excrement has to be engaged. Shadow is also often imaged in dreams as an animal. I’m smiling and thinking about a family member who, when he was entering puberty, had his first significant crush. He was disturbed and wanted to tell me his dream: I was in the backyard with a girl I had a crush on, and an enormous, hairy, muscular gorilla swung down from a tree, grabbed my girlfriend and swung her up into the canopy. He woke feeling deeply disturbed. As a prepubescent boy, images of aggression, hairiness, muscularity and sexually-driven abduction were all in the unconscious. It made him incredibly nervous to engage that kind of instinctive power consciously.

Lisa: And yet that dream evokes in us a smile of understanding, showing that most of the time, shadow images are simply and altogether human. It’s not hard to imagine that lusty feelings were arising as he was going through puberty. He had his first girlfriend and it felt overwhelming to the ego. He was scared of what he wanted to do…

Joseph: …which was to sweep his girlfriend up in an animalistic way and carry her off. This was very different from the shy, self-controlled boy that he was…

Deb: …which shows that shadow simply balances the psychological ‘scales’—in outer life, he’s shy, but internally he wants to be dominating. Shadow also exists at a cultural level. We all hold some portion of things that are forbidden or evil, like the devil. This kind of shadow is bigger than the personal shadow.

Joseph: For instance, the United States is predominantly a Christian culture. We cannot escape the cultural split between good and evil, attributes given to God or Jesus, and attributes given to the devil. That’s always absorbed by children. Even if we were raised in homes that were not particularly religious, we’re still influenced by that age-old cultural theme. This an essential shadow-making function to some extent, for we would be criminals if we didn’t suppress some things. The laws and morality we live under determine what is good and bad, and that enforces the split between them. I had a series of recurring dreams when I was very young, probably in first grade. In these dreams, I’d be walking around my family home, and would begin to feel that the devil was on the move in the house. No one was there and I would begin to flee, looking around wildly. Then the devil would appear in my room and I would begin to pray fervently to be saved. If my attitude was just right, I would float to the top of the ceiling and the devil would reach up, but I would only feel his nails raking my belly as I was pinned to the ceiling. Then the devil would leave. After a little while, I’d start thinking that maybe he was gone. And then hubris would rise up in me, and I would think that I could fly. I would feel cocky about flying and that I’d outwitted the devil. Then I would immediately start to descend, the whole thing would repeat, and I would wake up in a sweat.

Deb: How horrible to have to wrestle with this awful image as a child—and this dream illustrates shadow as moral conflict in the process of ego development. How are we going to address this? How are we going to integrate it? How can we use that image rather than just pronounce it horrible, disgusting, or scary–any of the things we do to shut it back up beyond a closed door? Or do we have the moral courage to look at it and wrestle it into consciousness? What we do with shadow is the moral issue–the ethical stance that Jung talked about. The ethical stance is how we deal with the terror of the devil, or an inner gorilla swooping down from the tree. Dealing with repugnant affects is important, whether they are our instinctual desires, culturally disallowed feelings, or other feelings that make us squirm.

Lisa: I appreciate lifting up the problem of shadow as a moral or ethical challenge to the ego. It applies to my client who was being pursued by the homeless man in his dream–he had to make his inner conflict conscious. He had to consider that he had innate drive toward ambition and wanted to reach a particular goal, but there was a family value of humility and service, and he had to wrestle with that. His psyche was demanding that he address this conflict and find his own ethical stance.

Deb: That happens to us all the time and is—if we engage it consciously–in the service of differentiation and individuation. What are our family and cultural values? What do we do when we’re confronted with values that place us in conflict with ourselves?

Joseph: The dream maker will often image the emergence of the conflict elegantly. If we’re attending to our dreams regularly, in a given stage of our growth certain shadow figures will suddenly emerge and take center stage, often repetitively, for weeks or months. The Self decides when it’s time to deal with our beasts. It knows when it’s time to eat the shadow—that is, integrate it into consciousness.

Deb: Our dreams give us images to hang our inner quandaries on. The dream will deliver a gorilla swinging down from a tree or an overflowing toilet. We have something specific to work with that is, as Jung said, personified: an image of an animal, a situation, a person, or something else. We work with that to understand the larger issue that it’s presenting.

Joseph: I often feel a sense of urgency when shadow dreams occur because the unconscious is demanding a relationship with the waking personality and creating tension. There’s a cost if it’s alienated, such as an explosion of impulses that is, unfortunately, ubiquitous today. We’ve all seen examples: the congressman drafting legislation to control sexual behavior who is found to have texted shocking sexual images inappropriately, or ministers suddenly caught in a prostitution sting. Because of repression and resistance, shadow explodes into the external world. If we spend years repressing sensuality, for example, one day the shadow knocks the ego out of the driver’s seat and we’re suddenly careening down the road on an unexpected and often tragic journey.

Lisa: It’s important to remember that there is value in the shadow. What’s in the shadow needs to be wrestled with, as we’ve said. Certain instincts have to be molded, or channeled. At the same time, some of what’s in the shadow is content that was disallowed by our family or culture but might be of great value. Reclaiming it in adulthood can be a source of new vitality and growth. This is why working with shadow and dreams can be so helpful, as it was with the client who dreamed of a homeless man: there was something he needed to relate to that had tons of energy–and it wanted to relate to him, too.

Deb: One of Jung’s truths is that gold is found in the shadow. Freud thought we simply have to go through the slag heap of our repressed desires, but Jung discovered there is also telos: psyche is going somewhere. There is something of value buried in the mud, as many a myth tells us, and that’s why we engage shadow. For example, that gorilla in your relative’s dream also has love and desire and lovemaking embedded in it. The dream image of the homeless man may initially be perceived as attacking, but there’s also energy to go forth in the world and claim aggression. That’s part of what we want to discover–the dream’s energy for life. If we shut that energy up behind what we think is a closed door, we’re quite likely to wind up enacting it unconsciously, like the righteous congressman who sexts. It’s all about making shadow conscious so we can use that energy for life in an intentional way.

Joseph: One of the first steps I would encourage everyone to consider is to throw away the frame of good and evil and replace it with allowed and disallowed. That puts you in the driver’s seat. What we allow or disallow puts issues on a human scale and makes it psychologically more useful, versus simply being the recipient of a transcendent force pushing you one way or the other. Shadow is often about acknowledging what has been disallowed, some of which can be rather marvelous. Sometimes people in midlife will say, “I’ve been an accountant all my life, but I’ve always wanted to be a poet.” When the idea of being a poet came forward in high school, there was a negative reaction. The family thought it was ridiculous. The guidance counselor said, “you can’t make a living.” The ego decided to make the practical decision but the inner poet has been waiting in a French garrett with a pen and a beret writing about the agonies of his isolation. In midlife, we realize there’s nothing evil about the poet. There’s nothing disreputable. It’s just that the poet was disallowed and if one were to welcome the poet, most would think it positive.

Deb: It would be a path to finding one’s creative center, to which we all need access. Here is a dream that’s a good example: Someone was stealing wool right off the backs of sheep. It was autumn and the sheep had heavy coats of wool. One of the sheep had a back hip with a cutoff flap of fur hanging down. The woman who owned the sheep was distraught because winter was coming and this left the poor sheep exposed to the cold. She kept saying “thirty years,” and shaking her head, meaning that it had taken the sheep thirty years to grow that wool. For someone to steal a big chunk of it off the sheep’s flank, and so sloppily, ruined the fleece and put the poor sheep in danger of exposure and a valuable commodity was now lost to her. Using what we’ve already talked about and taking it from the beginning, there are three characters in this little drama. There’s the dream ego that observes the scene, the woman who owns the sheep, and the sheep itself, whose flank has been exposed.

Lisa: There’s also the thief ‘off stage.’

Deb: They are all shadow contents. I like your adding the thief who steals the wool so sloppily–plus the woman owner who feels bad for the sheep, and the sheep as innocent victim. It makes for a classic image of being wronged, helpless and innocent—a theme in religion, fairy tales and myth. This is an example of a symbol we can understand from a personal point of view and amplify from an archetypal point of view. But all of these things are in the shadow of the dreamer: the sheep-victim, the distraught owner-caretaker, and the unknown thief.

Joseph: I’m holding a tension: the owner has been tending the same sheep for thirty years and has decided not to shear the wool, as if shearing the wool will expose the sheep to wintery elements and suffer. They might not survive. It seems that sheep must keep their wool. It’s taken thirty years to get it really thick, insulated enough, so the sheep won’t suffer at all. Finally, however, something has gotten active in the psyche, which from the owner’s point of view is a thief, but somebody else might call it a liberator.

Lisa: My knowledge about raising sheep is a little thin, but I believe you have to shear them every year. Letting the wool grow for thirty years would be a real problem for a sheep—not that I’m sure sheep live that long. You are onto something in considering the thief an agent of transformation because this is something that needs to happen. It is happening at the wrong time, however, because you shear sheep in the spring.

Deb: The wool represents a protective covering that protects the sheep from psychic cold. It’s as if this sheep needs a very thick insulating layer–and then our thief comes along and whacks a huge chunk off his rear end. It’s not a thoughtful shearing but at least it’s a protest against the wool that’s just been allowed to grow and grow. The shearing has compensated for that in a way that seems brutal.

Lisa: It makes me think of the way some people have a personality characteristic of being very reluctant to make a change. They fret and fret and get a little obsessive. Isn’t there a phrase about kind of letting the wool grow or something?

Deb: Pulling the wool over your eyes?

Lisa: No, wool gathering, another amplification. Wool gathering means not doing very much.

Deb: Daydreaming. I’m also curious about what has been exposed in the psyche. Something feels to the owner like a life-threatening exposure. I would be very curious to know where this is happening in the dreamer’s life. Where does the dreamer feel something has been ripped off—leaving her, perhaps, bare-assed.

Joseph: Is it ripped off or is there a panel of wool? When I’ve actually seen a sheep sheared, it’s done carefully. It is shaved off and a panel of wool falls off. A good shearer can be talented enough that the entire pelt comes off as one enormous piece.

Deb: The dream says that the sheep had an uncut flap of wool hanging down that left the sheep’s flank exposed–someone stole a big chunk of it so sloppily.

Joseph: Well, it sounds like someone is secretly shearing the sheep, avoiding capture, and is determined to keep doing it.

Lisa: It actually reminds me of the fairytale motif where a thief comes at night and eats the fruit off the branches. The task that begins the adventure is to find and catch the thief. If this is the type of person who has difficulty making a change–somebody who tends to obsess and get fussy about how it happens–sometimes that person has to do a rush-job that literally cuts through the resistance and avoidance. Perhaps both of those psychic energies are in this dream but one is considerably more in the shadow–the thief.

Joseph: There’s a real distinction between the owner and whoever wants the sheep shorn. The owner believes the sheep’s coat is an indispensable protective covering. Then there is a sheep-shearing figure that wants to harvest and liberate the sheep. Apparently, if domestic sheep are accidentally released into the wild for several years, the wool grows into a monstrous matted coat. They can’t move well and overheat. We are responsible for breeding them like this through animal husbandry.

Lisa: So, you have to shear sheep regularly to keep them healthy. We don’t know what might be going on for this dreamer, but I imagine it’s somewhat analogous to a person who has been working and working on a PhD dissertation and feels it still isn’t ready to be handed in because it’s not perfect. Then there’s the part of the psyche–the shadow part or thief–who says, it’s time to cash this in. Let’s just do it.

Deb: It’s time to divest of, or harvest, what’s been growing.

Lisa: There’s a valuable resource that has been languishing too long. And even if it’s not perfect, or even a little sloppy, we need to do it.

Joseph: That’s a great way of landing it. I’m also imagining that the wool around the sheep could be an example of persona.

Lisa: Or a defense…

Joseph:  …like living in a world where the person is constantly defending against the environment. That results in life getting smaller: I don’t really want to go out with friends anymore or watch politics on television. It’s too upsetting. I’m just going to read or go to work. When life gets small and the world seems dangerous, we create an insulating phenomenon. The inner sheep shearer might be taking off those layers and freeing her to go out, meet a new friend or have an adventure in the world–to feel the sun, the wind and risk exposure.

Deb: The dream out-pictures first one attitude–never cut the wool off the sheep. Then it depicts the opposite attitude, represented by the thief–just sloppily hack off a hunk. This poses the question of what an intentional, conscious sheep shearing attitude would look like in the life of the dreamer.

Lisa: The dream is an invitation to develop that, isn’t it?

Joseph: Here’s another dream featuring shadow. The dreamer is a 74-year-old woman who writes: As I’m walking along the street of Regency houses with pillars, I begin to realize I must or seem to have a sword. I slit the top of the dresses of a sleeping woman who’s leaning on one of the pillars of a house. As I realize what I’ve done, I noticed that underneath her dress top, she has a lovely lace petticoat, but I also think she needs to get in shape. She does not wake up. I walk on and I do it again to another sleeping woman leaning on another pillar. I’m still unaware that I have a sword. In fact, do not seem to have it now. Then I have a major realization about what I’ve done. I’m horrified. Walking on, I come to a turning to the left and find myself in an other-worldly place. It’s a bit like stepping into a fairytale. It’s a small harbor type setting with cobbles, beautiful blue turquoise water, and a window hatch type of thing to my left on the wall. I hear someone banging in there, a blacksmith, I think. I look out to the water and see a smallish medieval knight in full silver armor with a rose window patter. embossed on it standing up to his thighs in the translucent blue water. I feel the beginning of a terrible threat and real fear coming over me. It’s very strong. I can’t see any threat, but the feeling is tangible and terrifying. Just then a lovely woman, as if from an Arthurian setting, comes swiftly past me. As she brushes against me, I see the tip of my sword–which I did not know I had–barely touch the hem of her long dress. She does not seem to notice, is very self-contained, continues on down under the water. The place where she goes under is deep, unlike where the knight is standing. I see her under there with her diaphanous veil and medieval clothing going about her business as if in her element. I feel like a clodhopper beside her fragile beauty. As a result of touching the hem of her dress, there is a much stronger sense of fear and imminent threat, and a feeling that now I have to fight. There’s no one with whom to fight. I hear a voice from the hatch say, your sword is ready. And I say, I do not want to fight anyone. He says again it’s ready, and I glimpse it. I see it is a normal human-sized sword but the threat I feel coming at me now from out of the air above the water is so great that I know the sword will be of no use. I say, I don’t want to fight, thinking it’ll be of no use. I have a strong sense of my complete inability to use a sword to fight in any way. I can’t use a sword, besides which there’s no one to fight. Then, as I look up into the clear blue sky, I see hurtling toward me at great speed, direct and focused through the air, an enormously huge sword. It hits me in the solar plexus. I’m shattered and have a major bodily reaction. I wake up, having been pierced by the flying sword.

Lisa: It’s a long dream, but it has such a clear storyline that it’s almost like listening to a fairytale. The dream ego keeps refusing the sword. She’s horrified at slitting the top of dresses belonging to some sleeping women. Then she’s terrified of a threat, even though she can’t see one. Then, next to the lovely, beautiful woman, she feels like a clodhopper. When presented with a sword, she says, no, I don’t want to fight, until finally a sword comes flying out of the air and pierces her. A sword is for cutting, discriminating, dividing, discerning. It’s something used intentionally as a weapon of war. It requires skill and aggression–and the dream ego denies having any of those qualities: I don’t have that. I don’t want that. I’m scared of it. It’s horrifying. Finally, here comes the shadow, saying, here I am—stop refusing me! It pierces her in the solar plexus, the center of the body. This is a great example of what shadow can do. It will come back to us, knock on the door, then knock more loudly, and become a blacksmith banging away, presumably making her sword. Finally, the shadow will insist penetrating us in a most undeniable and alarming way if we have not been able to pay attention to its milder messages.

Joseph: I think both Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz wrote that when a creative potential in the psyche is consistently refused, it becomes a poison in the psyche and turns against us. That is sobering, because the sword has been identified as carrying all of those qualities you just mentioned, Lisa, and the dream ego repeatedly refuses to engage it, insisting that there’s no enemy and she doesn’t need a sword. That’s a defense, because having a psychological sword, learning how to wield it, and having it at the ready makes sense. She might never need it, but it’s a skill to own it and become competent with it. Finally, since the dream ego refused to engage the sword energy, it attacks her.

Deb: She’s denying her aggressive energy. Swordsmanship is a skill, not a bar-room brawl. It takes training, discipline and consciousness to master. Swordsmanship is an image of how to harness aggression and use it intentionally.

Lisa: Yes, and we know from the dream that she’s being willfully unaware of her aggression. Since she has repressed the knowledge that she can be aggressive, she causes damage in the beginning unwittingly by slitting the dresses of the sleeping women. Her aggression is there, and she’d better become aware of it and use it consciously. This dream also feels like a classic refusal of the call, and reminds me of Jonah and the whale. Jonah was called to prophecy but wanted to avoid his divine mission. He got on a ship to escape, but there were problems at sea. The sailors realized Jonah was the cause and threw him overboard, and as most of us recall, he was swallowed by a whale. This indicates that refusal of the call can bring about dissent from the psyche. That happens at the end of this dream, when she is attacked by the giant sword.

Joseph: I’m struck by the surges of terrible threat and fear that rise up in the dream ego. That can be our reaction to the approach of the instinctual that the ego finds inadmissible. In this case, it’s about the dreamer owning her capacity for aggression. As it rises, it causes a kind of panic which makes the dream ego think she’s just anxious, but her body is feeling aggressive and swordlike.

Lisa: We have one last example of a shadow dream. The dreamer is a 49-year-old woman. I dreamed there was an adversary, a woman, and we were struggling. I closed in on her, wrapping my hands around her throat. I strangled her harder and harder crushing the life out of her, until I heard all of the bones in her throat snapping. I crushed her throat until I heard the very last one pop, and then she was gone. In this dream, some part of the psyche has really been ‘disappeared.’

Deb: Some part of the psyche has not only been disappeared but killed in a very particular way–strangled. That leads me to wonder what the throat represents, and what it means to strangle someone rather than another way to kill. We say, I could have rung his neck. The connection between the head, thinking function, and body–our instincts, physical sensations and processes–is the neck. And that connecting link seems to have been severed violently. We can practically hear all the little bones snapping and being crushed.

Lisa: Initially, the dream states there was an adversary. We know we are in shadow territory right away because that’s what the shadow often feels like–an adversary. But I’m curious about how we know this person is an adversary. I would want to know what this adversary looked like, her role, the room they were in, etc. to get a sense about what characterizes an adversary in the dreamer’s psyche.

Joseph: We can imagine that the other woman is so unacceptable that she is disallowed, so the dream ego’s only attitude is to kill her. There’s a powerful feeling tone in this dream. The dream ego is enjoying the strangulation, tracking every little moment until the final bone pops and the job is complete. It evokes a feeling of utter annihilation. The most unacceptable parts of our psyche call forth the most aggressive, murderous responses.

Deb: I wonder if she has killed her own aggression and voice. Something has been silenced. It’s so unacceptable that it has to be crushed. What on earth could that be but the shadow? It has a way of vividly presenting us with the exact thing we don’t want, which makes me think the adversary is her own disallowed, contrarian truth that must be strangled.

Lisa: I had the same wondering about this dreamer’s relationship to her aggression. I’ve had the experience of working with someone and worrying about how strong that person’s ego is–if it’s sturdy enough, for example, to relate to the unconscious. But occasionally someone has such a rigid ego–or strong, robust ego–that it can repress other important parts of the psyche. I wonder if we’re looking at that here.

Joseph: The dream ego has so much power, at least in this moment. Maybe it’s less powerful in other environments, but here it’s a tyrant. Since she’s strangling a woman, I wonder what her relationship is to her own femininity.

Deb: Since the adversary is a woman, it automatically puts us in shadow territory. One of the rules of thumb of dream interpretation is that a same sex figure as the dreamer/dream ego is usually a shadow image. This seems like a classic shadow dream. There is a woman who’s an adversary, but we don’t have any backstory—why? What heinous thing has adversary done? It seems that anyone who opposes the dream ego—for any reason or no reason—will be annihilated, and the dream ego has power to ‘disappear’ opposition, meaning it suppresses or represses parts of the psyche.

Lisa: At this point, a relationship with this part of the psyche does not seem possible.

Joseph: The modern attitude is that the ego is supreme—as if we should be able to live a fully ego-directed life, and anything that interferes with the ego’s goals is obstructive and should be strangled. I think this is aligned with the concept of coaching, and finding ways to enforce the ego’s desires. Then the unconscious becomes a kind of donkey to be driven. There are all kinds of techniques: if you’re over-sleeping, you need to do this. If you find yourself getting off-task, do that. There are ways to slap that donkey back into line to achieve the goal you’ve determined. The ‘you,’ of course, is always the waking mind, the ego. This process is presented with a kind of euphoric optimism and positivity in workshops that use a lot of music, elation, applause and certainty to reinforce the message that you’re the engine of your success and can have anything you want. People get very energized and are greatly encouraged to strangle any irrational part of the psyche that isn’t on board.

Deb: If something is strangled, it can’t speak–it has no voice. If I were working with this dreamer, I might be interested in backing this dream all the way up to the beginning: there was an adversary, a woman, and we were struggling—over what? What did you say to one another? I would love to give this adversary a voice. But I agree that the dream ego is currently so forcefully and rigidly opposed to this aspect of shadow that a relationship is not likely. We want a relationship with shadow, and hope this dreamer will have one in time.

Lisa: And dreams can help us get that.

 © This Jungian Life 2021 all rights reserved throughout the universe in perpetuity, in any and all media now known or hereinafter devised.

 

By Deborah Stewart

Shadow is perhaps both the most all-encompassing, yet elusive of Jung’s concepts. It is all that is excluded from consciousness, from the personal unconscious to anima and animus and the vast contents of the collective unconscious. Shadow is all that we have forgotten, never known, or can never know. We cannot lift all the contents of the vast unconscious into consciousness.

 What we usually mean when we talk about shadow, however, is the personal shadow–all that we have rejected, suppressed or denied and makes us squirm. Shadow confronts us with parts of ourselves that are at odds with our professed values and positive self-image. For the most part, shadow contents of the personal unconscious can be accessed by consciousness. Moreover, these shadow elements would serve and enrich us if they were acknowledged.

There are three main avenues by which we can become aware of shadow elements: dreams, relationships, and stories. Let’s walk briefly through them.

 Dreams

Dreams show us our shadows repeatedly and vividly. Shadow images compensate for a one-sided attitude in waking life, and carry an affective truth not in consciousness. For example, an ambitious man who cannot acknowledge his insecurity may dream of being exposed: he is giving a business presentation naked. Or a sophisticated young woman dreams of a simpering salesperson imploring her to buy cheap costume jewelry. Abandoned animals, embattled old ladies, and strange babies—not to mention being late for a time-sensitive event–are all images of shadow.

The most basic and compensatory function of dreams is to tell us something we don’t know. This means that all dream contents are essentially shadow. Anima / animus, mythological themes, and dreams with images of the Self are deeper layers of shadow. What we usually mean when we refer to shadow, however, is a dream content that is unrecognized or denied by ego and evokes a feeling that the waking mind finds upsetting, as in the examples above.

 Relationships

Shadow, of course, is hardly restricted to dreams, and most of us are well attuned to the shadows of family members, friends, and colleagues. Everyone knows Aunt Adelaide has a mean streak and that the 80-year-old man across the street still identifies as a linebacker for Notre Dame. Our supervisor’s snappish shadow breeds resentment, but we recognize the office manager’s kind shadow behind her gruffness. Shadow can be dark or bright.

 It’s easy to see shadow in others, but if you want to see your own shadow, Jungian analyst and scholar James Hollis says that all you have to do is think of someone you dislike. His or her annoying characteristics are likely to be shadow aspects of yourself. Gulp.

 Stories

Shadow is also visible in fictional characters, myths and other forms of imaginative expression. Villains—on the screen and in the news—give us a good look at shadow in all its permutations and consequences. We are forever as intrigued by others’ shadows as we are ready to deny our own.

Let’s look at the first chapter of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, which is much more than a fanciful story for children. Its many rich examples of shadow make the tale deeper, darker–and all the more delicious. This book is free online, available to download or copy from Project Gutenberg—and I invite you to revisit this tale.

 An Annotated Peter Pan, Chapter One 

All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, “Oh, why can’t you remain like this forever!” This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.

We will see that Mrs. Darling is persona-possessed (and rather a ninny), but in the very first paragraph of this children’s classic, shadow has entered the tale. Mrs. Darling delighted in her toddler daughter, but Wendy will have to forgo her role as a narcissistic extension of her mother for the realities of selfhood. Mrs. Darling’s shadow is easy to miss–it seems like a simple human moment–except that growing up makes Wendy less lovable.

 Of course they lived at 14 [their house number on their street], and until Wendy came her mother was the chief one. She was a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth. Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, though there it was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner.

Yes, Mrs. Darling was “a lovely lady, with a romantic mind” if only you overlook her withholding shadow. Worse, her kiss–emotional availability–is tantalizingly visible, so little Wendy is effectively gaslighted. Mrs. Darling’s shadow is also imaged as a secret, shrunken soul inside the last tiny box—if you can get there. Barrie realizes that the crucial, cruel element of shadow is failure to recognize it. We also see in Mrs. Darling that, as Jung said, persona and shadow are in a compensatory relationship to one another. If persona is over-developed and the source of one’s identity, shadow will exert its force equally strongly in the other direction—bright, shiny persona begets dark, hidden shadow.

 The way Mr. Darling won her was this: the many gentlemen who had been boys when she was a girl discovered simultaneously that they loved her, and they all ran to her house to propose to her except Mr. Darling, who took a cab and nipped in first, and so he got her. He got all of her, except the innermost box and the kiss. He never knew about the box, and in time he gave up trying for the kiss…

Adorable Mrs. Darling projects an anima image that captivates suitors. No one pursued an actual relationship with the future Mrs. D.—it was all about who got there first, so Mr. D. “got her”–except for her encapsulated soul.

 Mr. Darling used to boast to Wendy that her mother not only loved him but respected him. He was one of those deep ones who know about stocks and shares. Of course no one really knows, but he quite seemed to know, and he often said stocks were up and shares were down in a way that would have made any woman respect him.

It’s hard to miss Barrie’s satire here—Mr. Darling’s superficiality is showing, and so is Barrie’s disdain. Perhaps all satire is rooted in shadow—naming it in others and safely releasing contempt.

 Mrs. Darling was married in white, and at first she kept the books perfectly, almost gleefully, as if it were a game, not so much as a Brussels sprout was missing; but by and by whole cauliflowers dropped out, and instead of them there were pictures of babies without faces. She drew them when she should have been totting up. They were Mrs. Darling’s guesses.

Wendy came first, then John, then Michael. For a week or two after Wendy came it was doubtful whether they would be able to keep her, as she was another mouth to feed. Mr. Darling was frightfully proud of her, but he was very honourable, and he sat on the edge of Mrs. Darling’s bed, holding her hand and calculating expenses, while she looked at him imploringly. She wanted to risk it, come what might, but that was not his way; his way was with a pencil and a piece of paper, and if she confused him with suggestions he had to begin at the beginning again.

   “Now don’t interrupt,” he would beg of her. “I have one pound seventeen here, and two and six at the office; I can cut off my coffee at the office, say ten shillings, making two nine and six, with your eighteen and three makes three nine seven, with five naught in my cheque-book makes eight nine seven—who is that moving?—eight nine seven, dot and carry seven—don’t speak, my own—and the pound you lent to that man who came to the door—quiet, child—dot and carry child—there, you’ve done it!—did I say nine nine seven? yes, I said nine nine seven; the question is, can we try it for a year on nine nine seven?”

   “Of course we can, George,” she cried. But she was prejudiced in Wendy’s favour, and he was really the grander character of the two.

   “Remember mumps,” he warned her almost threateningly, and off he went again. “Mumps one pound, that is what I have put down, but I daresay it will be more like thirty shillings—don’t speak—measles one five, German measles half a guinea, makes two fifteen six—don’t waggle your finger—whooping-cough, say fifteen shillings”—and so on it went, and it added up differently each time; but at last Wendy just got through, with mumps reduced to twelve six, and the two kinds of measles treated as one.

   There was the same excitement over John, and Michael had even a narrower squeak; but both were kept, and soon, you might have seen the three of them going in a row to Miss Fulsom’s Kindergarten school, accompanied by their nurse.

Mr. Darling’s parental anxiety is relegated to shadow; instead, keeping children is a financial matter. Let’s hope he budgeted enough for treatment of childhood illnesses lest he have to put one of his children into an orphanage (and would surely profess regret). A shady historical note: when the first orphanage opened in Florence, Italy it was quickly overloaded with unwanted children. Many died, but this and subsequent orphanages were considered “humane”—a collective collusion in denying shadow. Like many, the Darling children were ultimately expendable.

 Mrs. Darling loved to have everything just so, and Mr. Darling had a passion for being exactly like his neighbours; so, of course, they had a nurse. As they were poor, owing to the amount of milk the children drank, this nurse was a prim Newfoundland dog, called Nana, who had belonged to no one in particular until the Darlings engaged her. She had always thought children important, however, and the Darlings had become acquainted with her in Kensington Gardens, where she spent most of her spare time peeping into perambulators, and was much hated by careless nursemaids, whom she followed to their homes and complained of to their mistresses. She proved to be quite a treasure of a nurse. How thorough she was at bath-time, and up at any moment of the night if one of her charges made the slightest cry. Of course her kennel was in the nursery. She had a genius for knowing when a cough is a thing to have no patience with and when it needs a stocking around your throat. She believed to her last day in old-fashioned remedies like rhubarb leaf, and made sounds of contempt over all this new-fangled talk about germs, and so on. It was a lesson in propriety to see her escorting the children to school, walking sedately by their side when they were well behaved, and butting them back into line if they strayed. On John’s footer [soccer] days she never once forgot his sweater, and she usually carried an umbrella in her mouth in case of rain. There is a room in the basement of Miss Fulsom’s school where the nurses wait. They sat on forms, while Nana lay on the floor, but that was the only difference. They affected to ignore her as of an inferior social status to themselves, and she despised their light talk. She resented visits to the nursery from Mrs. Darling’s friends, but if they did come she first whipped off Michael’s pinafore and put him into the one with blue braiding, and smoothed out Wendy and made a dash at John’s hair.

The Darlings were poor “owing to the amount of milk the children drank”—evidently in unimaginable quantities—so a stray dog served as nursemaid. Nana is the shadow of the status-conscious Darlings and the “careless nursemaids” of other children. Devoted, conscientious, low-status Nana is a fine example of “bright” or “golden” shadow—valuable qualities overlooked or derided by family, culture—and the other nursemaids. Nana offers her charges a New/found/land of integrity and care. Dark or bright, shadow is perceived—if it is perceived at all—as intolerable.

 No nursery could possibly have been conducted more correctly, and Mr. Darling knew it, yet he sometimes wondered uneasily whether the neighbours talked. He had his position in the city to consider.

   Nana also troubled him in another way. He had sometimes a feeling that she did not admire him. “I know she admires you tremendously, George,” Mrs. Darling would assure him, and then she would sign to the children to be specially nice to father. Lovely dances followed, in which the only other servant, Liza, was sometimes allowed to join. Such a midget she looked in her long skirt and maid’s cap, though she had sworn, when engaged, that she would never see ten again. The gaiety of those romps! And gayest of all was Mrs. Darling, who would pirouette so wildly that all you could see of her was the kiss, and then if you had dashed at her you might have got it. There never was a simpler happier family until the coming of Peter Pan.

Mr. Darling has an inkling of shadow, which in the Darling family consists of even the tiniest shred of distressing emotion. Of course, as is the way with shadow, he projects it onto others: the neighbors and Nana. Mrs. Darling, ever on her shadow-suppressing job, promptly quashes her husband’s flickering moment of awareness. We might imagine that Liza, “such a midget she looked,” was in fact a ten-year-old child denying her age for the sake of a job. “There never was a simpler happier family,” founded (except for Nana) on denial in the service of persona–until Peter Pan appeared. What compensatory aspects of psyche will Peter serve?

 Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her children’s minds. It is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake (but of course you can’t) you would see your own mother doing this, and you would find it very interesting to watch her. It is quite like tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on earth you had picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you wake in the morning, the naughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out your prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.

Some of Mrs. Darling’s shadow is downright sinister: the force in the psyche that suppresses and represses shadow—that is, any angry, sad, greedy, needy, or even unconventional thoughts her children might have. How many of us have had our “naughtiness and evil passions”—our dislikes and truths—”corrected” by adults?

 I don’t know whether you have ever seen a map of a person’s mind. Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, and your own map can become intensely interesting, but catch them trying to draw a map of a child’s mind, which is not only confused, but keeps going round all the time. There are zigzag lines on it, just like your temperature on a card, and these are probably roads in the island, for the Neverland is always more or less an island, with astonishing splashes of colour here and there, and coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with six elder brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose. It would be an easy map if that were all, but there is also first day at school, religion, fathers, the round pond, needle-work, murders, hangings, verbs that take the dative, chocolate pudding day, getting into braces, say ninety-nine, three-pence for pulling out your tooth yourself, and so on, and either these are part of the island or they are another map showing through, and it is all rather confusing, especially as nothing will stand still.

   Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John’s, for instance, had a lagoon with flamingoes flying over it at which John was shooting, while Michael, who was very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it. John lived in a boat turned upside down on the sands, Michael in a wigwam, Wendy in a house of leaves deftly sewn together. John had no friends, Michael had friends at night, Wendy had a pet wolf forsaken by its parents, but on the whole the Neverlands have a family resemblance, and if they stood still in a row you could say of them that they have each other’s nose, and so forth. On these magic shores children at play are forever beaching their coracles [simple boat]. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more.

   Of all delectable islands the Neverland is the snuggest and most compact, not large and sprawly, you know, with tedious distances between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed. When you play at it by day with the chairs and table-cloth, it is not in the least alarming, but in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes very real. That is why there are night-lights.

The children’s shadows contain all kinds of things, for in the unconscious all things exist: flamingoes, wigwams, pet wolves–even homicide, though that would be too harsh for Barrie. Shadow consists of things we have never known (knowledge and experiences that never came our way), things we have forgotten (your third-grade teacher’s name), and, of course, primitive affects and images, especially rage and powerlessness. Shadow develops in primary relationships, especially mother-child, as the child encounters the negative aspects of Mother and his or her rage. No child can afford to face his hatred of Mother – he needs her too badly. Mrs. Darling’s invasion of her children’s minds depicts the reaction formation defense: the devouring aspect of Mother makes a U-turn into “nice.” Shadow denied, as it is in the Darling family, is likely to erupt in outbursts or nightmares—which is, as Barrie knows, “why there are nightlights.” Peter’s upcoming compensatory role is becoming clearer.

 Occasionally in her travels through her children’s minds Mrs. Darling found things she could not understand, and of these quite the most perplexing was the word Peter. She knew of no Peter, and yet he was here and there in John and Michael’s minds, while Wendy’s began to be scrawled all over with him.

‘Peter’ is a personified image with a mythological referent that Barrie enjoys making plain: Pan, god of instincts, and his later iteration, Dionysus, god of the bacchanal. “Peter” illustrates the capacity of the collective unconscious to generate images from the universal substrate of human experience that Jung called the collective unconscious. The ruthless suppression of shadow in the Darling household needs to be counteracted by an equally powerful “other” of archetypal dimensions: Peter Pan. Peter promises badly needed revelry, freedom and access to the imaginal realm.

 At first Mrs. Darling did not know, but after thinking back into her childhood she just remembered a Peter Pan who was said to live with the fairies…when children died he went part of the way with them, so that they should not be frightened. She had believed in him at the time, but now that she was married and full of sense she quite doubted whether there was any such person…

   [Wendy] explained in quite a matter-of-fact way that she thought Peter sometimes came to the nursery in the night and sat on the foot of her bed and played on his pipes to her. Unfortunately she never woke, so she didn’t know how she knew, she just knew…

Then Mrs. Darling dreams of Peter…and while she was dreaming the window of the nursery blew open, and a boy did drop on the floor…[Mrs. Darling] started up with a cry, and saw the boy, and somehow she knew at once that he was Peter Pan, [and] he was very like Mrs. Darling’s kiss. He was a lovely boy, clad in skeleton leaves and the juices that ooze out of trees but the most entrancing thing about him was that he had all his first teeth. When he saw she was a grown-up, he gnashed the little pearls at her.

What is going on here? (Let’s agree to ignore the implications of skeleton leaves.) Mrs. Darling has been sewing and snoozing in the nursery, the symbolic location of her early psychic roots. As her children, especially Wendy, connect with the Peter Pan aspect of their psyches, it unleashes Mrs. Darling’s long-buried connection with imagination and her shadow. She has long since split this aspect of herself off except for that inaccessible “kiss” on the right-hand corner of her mouth—and has turned a blind eye and deaf ear to her feelings, instincts, and capacity to play. The unconscious tends to reciprocate our attitude toward it, so Peter signals his animosity. He knows that Mrs. D. has been abducted by all things repressive and conventional. Persona and shadow are always in a compensatory relationship; persona-identified Mrs. D. and primal Peter are so far apart that they are adversaries. In the story, as in psyche, shadow will out one way or another, so as we all know, the Darling children will fly off to romp in Neverland.

 This concludes the first chapter of Peter Pan. You may download the rest of the book and read on, your psychological eye attuned to the subtext. Writers, visual artists, and musicians have long had access to the realities we call psychology, but it took Freud and Jung—and many others—to give us specific language and theory.

 Copyright © 2021 This Jungian Life.  All rights reserved in all domains.

 

1. In the following dream, we might imagine that the wolf is an image of shadow. What kind of shadow content might this be? What might the dream be saying about this dreamer’s relationship with shadow?

I was lying in my bed at night, with the window directly behind me. Although I could not see backwards, I could nevertheless clearly see that an enormous, lone, black wolf was at the window, looking intently in on me. It showed no anger, agitation, aggression, or any emotion, just an intense stare. It was a beautiful animal. I started shouting at it to go away. I called out “Help!” “Help!” But the wolf stayed there, staring at me with eyes that glowed ever brighter, like blue fire. My bedroom window is about 10 feet off the ground, and I wondered how it could be suspended there so comfortably. Then, with its teeth, it slowly and methodically began to remove the iron burglar bars from my window frame. “Shoot it!” I screamed. “Shoot it!” then the sound of my own voice woke me.

 2. Select one of your own dreams that features a character or image that evokes a negative judgment or feeling. How might this be an image of shadow? What is your conscious relationship with this content? What is the dream seeking from you?

I was in the basement of my childhood house and there were animals that I had to take care of. (In my dream, my childhood house was inversed with the house of my childhood neighbor) When my dream started to be more vivid, I realized I’ve forgot about some kittens that were hidden by their mother in a corner. When I’ve visited the kittens (3), they were dead. I took one and I noticed there was still life in him so I massage him and I was able to reanimate him. When he woke, he (and also myself) was in distress, he crucially needed to drink and eat. I ran upstairs with him in my hands and went in the kitchen and I gave him water, I also poured milk in the water. The kitten became transparent and milky like a fetus, he was still in distress (survival mode), there was a algid run down on his forehead. My father arrived and was looking in the fridge, we argued and in the chaos the kitten fled on the ground in search of food and my father accidentally stepped on him. There was only goo and blood left on his shoe. I dropped on my knees and screamed, like a mournful mother, it was a very animal and primitive scream. My father told me to never give up and still try to make my best. I woke up.

Main feelings in the dream: Distress, terror, instinct

Context and Associations: The same day I visited my father. He wanted to bond with me but I was very distant, even if I wanted, I couldn’t bond with him. I knew about runes but I didn’t know the name nor the signification of the algid.