According to Jung, the shadow, in being instinctive and irrational, is prone to projection: turning a personal inferiority into a perceived moral deficiency in someone else. Jung writes that if these projections are unrecognized "The projection-making factor (the Shadow archetype) then has a free hand and can realize its object--if it has one--or bring about some other situation characteristic of its power."
These projections insulate and cripple individuals by forming an ever thicker fog of illusion between the ego and the real world.
he 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's appearance and role depend greatly on the living experience of the individual. Interactions with the shadow in dreams may shed light on one's state of mind. A conversation with the shadow may indicate that one is concerned with conflicting desires or intentions.
I notice that my wife cycle depend how she awake. For example she can be bad one in the morning. After nap she can be old self. Shadow influence.
If 'the breakdown of the persona constitutes the typical Jungian moment both in therapy and in development', it is this which opens the road to the shadow within, coming about when 'Beneath the surface a person is
suffering from a deadly boredom that makes everything seem meaningless and empty ... as if the initial encounter with the Self casts a dark shadow ahead of time'.
"The shadow personifies everything that the subject refuses to acknowledge about himself" and represents "a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well". If and when 'an individual makes an attempt to see his shadow, he becomes aware of (and often ashamed of) those qualities and impulses he denies in himself but can plainly see in others — such things as egotism, mental laziness, and sloppiness; unreal fantasies, schemes, and plots; carelessness and cowardice; inordinate love of money and possessions — ... painful and lengthy work of self-education".
The dissolution of the persona and the launch of the individuation process also brings with it 'the danger of falling victim to the shadow ... the black shadow which everybody carries with him, the inferior and therefore hidden aspect of the personality' — of a merger with the 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'
We begin to travel [up] through the healing spirals...straight up'. Here the struggle is to retain awareness of the shadow, but not identification with it. 'Non-identification demands considerable moral effort...prevents a descent into that darkness'; but though 'the conscious mind is liable to be submerged at any moment in the unconscious... understanding acts like a life-saver. It integrates the unconscious' - reincorporates the shadow into the personality, producing a stronger, wider consciousness than before. 'Assimilation of the shadow gives a man body, so to speak', and provides thereby a launching-pad for further individuation. 'The integration of the shadow, or the realization of the personal unconscious, marks the first stage of the analytic process...without it a recognition of anima and animus is impossible'. Conversely 'to the degree to which the shadow is recognized and integrated, the problem of the anima, i.e., of relationship, is constellated ', and becomes the center of the individuation quest.
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