The Shadow Aspect

A Jungian concept that refers to dark aspects of ourselves that we don't recognize and haven't accepted or integrated as being some part of ourselves.  As we grow and our personalities develop, the shadow develops side-by-side with the ego; it is part of the maturation process.  Aspects of ourselves that adults teach us are innappropriate or not to be expressed are disavowed and move from ego to shadow.  Shadow is understood as being both personal (pertaining to an individual) and collective (pertaining to a nation or culture).  One of its values is that those aspects of ourselves which we have learned to neglect or suppress also make it possible for us to cultivate their opposing strengths and virtues.

Every person's psyche is motivated toward wholeness or integration.  This can only happen when shadow aspects of our personality are once again recognized and accepted as equally important parts of all our developmental experiences.  In fairy tales this is most often expressed when "ugly" or misshapen characters (guess who?) turn out, in the end, to have been transformed princes or princesses, who can only become their true selves after someone loves them.

Often our first recognition of the shadow, if we are an observant adult, occurs in seeing qualities that we dislike most about ourselves being expressed in someone else.  We don't recognize them as an aspect of ourselves, rather our experience is usually one of not being able to tolerate some aspect of that "different" or "difficult" person (see projection).

When shadow aspects are released (expressed alchemically as transforming lead to gold), energy that was used to keep them hidden from the ego often provides or supports a great burst of creative energy.

We Were Once A Fairytale: Kanye West and Spike Jonze

Kanye West is an artist whose career has an amazing amount of content that puts his identity and his therapy as the content.  This video is a little difficult to watch because of the level of immaturatiy that he portrays of himself.  The clip ends with an amazing scene in the club's bathroom showing Kanye cutting out part of his inner-something (shadow) and he watches it use a little knife to slice itself open and then die on the counter.  It is very much a modern day adult fairytale.

The Last Shadow Puppets: My Mistakes Were Made For You

Adele: Rolling In the Deep

This song has permeated Pop culture with a phenominal amount of momentum. It's very accesible and no doubt an indication of the current 'Spirit of the Age'.  I particularly like the video.  There is a shadow character that becomes obscured by a powder that is upset.  In the context of individuation, I'm excited to see such a creative representation of the shadow.  The cups being thrown against the wall are also a powerful image of the counter-intuitive feeling of breaking the will towards integration of the psyche or as a physical transferrence of anger to manifest the feelings of destruction.

Olafur Eliasson: Your Engagement Has Consequences

Silhouette: The Art of the Shadow

In his book The English Face, the late Sir David Piper asserts that a silhouette "is not reall a portrait at all; in its basic form it is made by tracing the shadow-- it is not merely a portrait of one's shadow, it is virtually the actual shadow, stilled and fixed on paper.

Uta Barth: The Long Now