The Left Hand of Darkness: Aspects of the Shadow and Individuation

This Paper looks at the shadow from the point of view of its value, and explores what the shadow actually does in the inner economy of the psyche. It had its origins, firstly, in the analysis of two patients who were left-handed, and, secondly, in a visit to a very unusual Egyptian temple which amplifies what I observed clinically.

This temple at Komombo in Upper Egypt is striking because it is in two halves, each being the mirror image of the other. While the right half is dedicated to Horus the hero, the left is devoted to the crocodile god Sobek, the arch destroyer, the two sides being identical and equal. Perhaps Sobek was worshipped by the ancient Egyptians to propitiate him and so avert disaster, Horus being worshipped in his turn to mitigate the evil power of Sobek; or we might guess that Sobek was worshipped to balance the ego-like character of Horus with compensatory unconscious forces. Again, they could have been worshipped as inseparable and equally important counterparts, the structure of the temple suggesting that relationship, which evokes that between opposite good and bad valences of an archetype, or the relation between ego and shadow. The right and left halves of the temple seem to link interestingly with right- and left-handedness.