Meeting the Shadow

The author offers exploration of self and practical guidance dealing with the dark side of personality based on Jung's concept of "shadow," or the forbidden and unacceptable feelings and behaviors each of us experience. Zweig, former executive editor of Brain/Mind Bulletin, and Abrams, a Jungian therapist, offer a provocative collection of more than 60 brief pieces (most of them extracts from longer works) exploring the "shadow," the part of the unconscious self that a conscious mind sees as undesirable and tries to define as the "other." Christine Downing considers how a person might project the shadow self onto a same-sex sibling, while Maggie Scarf describes the ways in which husbands and wives can do the same thing: one spouse, for instance, expressing anger for the spouse who shuns the hostile feelings, turning an "intrapsychic problem" into "interpersonal conflict." Jerome S. Bernstein looks at this phenomenon in collective terms: the U.S. sees its darker self in the Soviet Union and vice versa. Many of the contributors note the dangers of ignoring one's own shadow, and the volume concludes with texts that discuss ways of coming to terms with it. Ken Wilber suggests that people should try to recognize and play out aspects of their rejected selves in order to heal "the split between persona and cap is correct/pk Shadow."