The Ego and The Shadow

Carl Jung was one of the founding fathers of Psychoanalytic approach and established the Analytic school of thought under it. It emphasizes the importance of the individual psyche and the personal quest for wholeness. Unlike most modern psychologists, Jung did not believe that experiments using natural science were the only means to gain an understanding of the human psyche. He saw as empirical evidence the world of dream, myth, and folklore as the promising road to deeper understanding and meaning. That method's choice is related with his choice of the object of his science. As Jung said, "The beauty about the unconscious is that it is really unconscious. Hence, the unconscious is 'untouchable' by experimental researches, or indeed any possible kind of scientific or philosophical reach, precisely because it is unconscious. 

This article is an attempt to understand the concepts of 'The Ego' and 'The Shadow', taken from 'Aion: Research into the Phenomenology of the Self'; 9th Volume of Collected Works of C.G Jung. 

Not unlike Freud, who saw personality as an interacting tandem of the Id, Ego and Superego; Jung saw 'the psyche' to be made up separate but interacting systems of the ego, the personal unconsciousness and the collective unconsciousness. The first layer called the personal unconscious is essentially the same as Freud’s version of the unconscious. The personal unconscious contains temporarily forgotten information and well as repressed memories. The 'collective unconsciousness', a concept that predominantly set Jung apart from Freud, defines a level of unconscious shared with other members of the human species comprising latent memories from our ancestral and evolutionary past. ‘The form of the world into which [a person] is born is already inborn in him, as a virtual image’.

The 'Ego' represents the conscious mind as it comprises the thoughts, memories, and emotions a person is aware of. The ego is largely responsible for feelings of identity and continuity. The ego usually assumes itself to be the center of the psyche, for it believes it knows everything and comprises the self when in reality, it only makes up part of the self which also comprises of the 'unconscious'. Jung, defines this as, "Anyone who has any ego-consciousness at all takes it for granted that he knows himself. But the ego knows only its own contents, not the unconscious and its contents. People measure their self-knowledge by what the average person in their social environment knows of himself, but not by the real psychic facts which are for the most part hidden from them. In this respect the psyche behaves like the body, of whose physiological and anatomical structure the average person knows very little too."

Therefore, one of the basic necessities for the process of individualization, the overarching goal of Jungian psychology is to differentiate the ego from the complexes in the unconscious which hold more about 'the self'. 

One of the components in our unconscious, as described by Jung, is 'The Shadow'. The shadow comprises hidden or unconscious aspects of oneself, both good and bad, which the ego has either repressed or never recognized. The shadow is composed for the most part of repressed desires and uncivilized impulses, morally inferior motives, childish fantasies and resentments, etc. – all those things about oneself one is not proud of. Jung defines the shadow as "The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real".

These unacknowledged personal characteristics are often experienced in others through the mechanism of projection, which is a defense mechanism where the inferior thoughts and motives in one are defined or seen as moral deficiency in the other person. This creates a veil of protection between the ego and reality. The realization of the shadow is inhibited by the persona, which is how we like to perceive ourselves as well as present ourselves to others. To the degree that we identify with a bright persona, the shadow is correspondingly dark. Thus shadow and persona stand in a compensatory relationship, and the conflict between them is invariably present in an outbreak of neurosis. The shadow in effect comes to comprise our entire unconscious. Jungians maintain that ‘the shadow contains, besides the personal shadow, the shadow of society ... fed by the neglected and repressed collective values.’

The shadow may appear in dreams and visions in various forms, and typically 'appears as a person of the same sex as that of the dreamer'. 

The shadow is not, however, only the dark underside of the personality. It also consists of instincts, abilities and positive moral qualities that have long been buried or never been conscious. An outbreak of neurosis constellates both sides of the shadow: those qualities and activities one is not proud of, and new possibilities one never knew were there.

If we were to analyze the character of 'the narrator' from the book the 'The Fight Club' by Chuck Palahniuk or the character of 'Gollum' from the series ' The Lord of the Rings' written by J.R.R Tolkien or even the classic 'Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' from a Jungian approach, we find that the neurosis in these characters stem from their conflicted 'Shadow'. These characters live their repressed desires and impulsive actions through a character that they manifest. This other character is their unconscious or their shadow. 

  

The overarching goal of Jungian psychology is the attainment of self through individualization. Jung defines "self" as the "archetype of wholeness and the regulating center of the psyche." Central to this process is the individual's encounter with his/her psyche and the bringing of its elements into consciousness. Humans experience the unconscious through symbols encountered in all aspects of life: in dreams, art, religion, and the symbolic dramas we enact in our relationships and life pursuits. Essential to this numinous encounter is the merging of the individual's consciousness with the collective consciousness through this symbolic language. By bringing conscious awareness to what is not conscious, unconscious elements can be integrated with consciousness when they "surface."