You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In his essay ‘The psychology of the unconscious’, Jung defined the shadow as ‘the “negative” side of the personality, the sum of all those unpleasant qualities we like to hide, together with the insufficiently developed functions and the contents of the personal unconscious,’ (Jung 10, par. 103).
Two basic aspects of the shadow emerge from this definition: it denotes on the one hand what is not known, and, on the other, what is not liked. But of course there is an area of overlap: we tend to hide what we dislike, and then it becomes unknown, unconscious, along with functions that are unknown because they are not yet developed.
Jung does not make clear what he means by ‘unpleasant’, what is the nature of the dislike we feel for the shadow. Traditionally the shadow seems to have been linked to guilt, even to sin—that is, those aspects of ourselves about which we feel guilty are consigned to the shadow. I am suggesting, however, that an area of the shadow which has been neglected is that which is linked to shame.
In this paper I hope to discuss some of the differences between guilt and shame, and to explore the links between the shadow, shame, and early defences such as splitting, omnipotence and illusion, together with problems of separation. By ‘separation’ I mean, in an everyday sense, the capacity to be a person in one's own right, without undue dependence on others, and also the ability to achieve an inner separateness from illusions and idealisations. Indeed, the two go together.
‘Shadow’ is both a familiar word and one which is richly suggestive of images and feelings. It also has ambiguities which most of us have known from early childhood: there can be few who have not at some time been afraid of the creatures lurking unseen in the shadows, or of