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An ever-deepening self-awareness seems to me as probably essential for the continuation of a truly meaningful life in any age, no matter how uncomfortable this self-knowledge may be.
The above is a statement by Jung when he was interviewed on his 85th birthday and is included in Chapter 4 (p. 83) by Chris and Ewa Robertson on ageing as social construct.
Their chapter focuses on the experience of the Shadow as a kind of haunting, which requires us to face it, explore it and meet the challenge of painfully
charring away our outer skin in order to find meaning in living. For me, this lies at the heart of what this book requires us to do.
This is a publication that is ambitious in its remit, ranging from the very particular of the clinical encounter, to the theoretical, aesthetic, cultural and contemporary global and socio-political contexts, even including a “toolkit” for prising it out into the open. This extensive scope, though, is understandable given that the Shadow inhabits the personal, collective, and all spheres of life.
The intolerance of uncertainty and illusion of control and omnipotence with the subsequent defences of denial, splitting and projection are explored in depth by a number of writers including the late Coline Covington. Running through the core of this book is an emphasis on early developmental trauma or the unmitigated experience of terror in infancy and the relationship to individual or collective “mindlessness”. As Malcom Rushton states in Chapter 13, “… in severe trauma, any potential for thinking is on life support.” But what of the hidden light? That is where the book offers the transformational aspect of the Shadow, as to meet it creates doubt, and it is this doubt “that is our slim window of hope”—Rushton, again.
This book, then, is important in that it tackles big subjects, from climate change and neo-liberalism, through to sexual boundary violations and the lack of diversity in our analytic institutions—organizations that can too often ge