Shadow (psychology) - Merger With The Shadow

Merger With The Shadow

According to Jung, the shadow sometimes overwhelms a person's actions; for example, when the conscious mind is shocked, confused, or paralyzed by indecision. 'A man who is possessed by his shadow is always standing in his own light and falling into his own traps ... living below his own level': hence, in terms of the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 'it must be Jekyll, the conscious personality, who integrates the shadow ... and not vice versa. Otherwise the conscious becomes the slave of the autonomous shadow'.

Individuation inevitably raises that very possibility. As the process continues, and 'the libido leaves the bright upper world ... sinks back into its own depths...below, in the shadows of the unconscious', so too what comes to the forefront is 'what was hidden under the mask of conventional adaptation: the shadow', with the result that 'ego and shadow are no longer divided but are brought together in an — admittedly precarious — unity'.

The impact of such 'confrontation with the shadow produces at first a dead balance, a standstill that hampers moral decisions and makes convictions ineffective...tenebrositas, chaos, melancholia'. Consequently (as Jung knew from personal experience) 'in this time of descent — one, three, seven years, more or less — genuine courage and strength are required', with no certainty of emergence. Nevertheless Jung remained of the opinion that while 'no one should deny the danger of the descent ... every descent is followed by an ascent ...enantiodromia'; and assimilation of — rather than possession by — the shadow becomes at last a real possibility.