The Shadow

Relative Evil, Absolute Evil

Earliest record
1912The earliest dated printing is the 1912 "Neue Bahnen der Psychologie", printed complete from the German in the second edition of CW 7: §438 has "this shadow-side of the psyche" — Schattenseite, an ordinary German noun for the dark side of a thing, not yet the technical term. The companion appendix, "The Structure of the Unconscious" (1916, §§442-521, from Jung's own German manuscript), never uses the word. "Identification with the shadow" stands at §41 of the essay the Collected Works prints as "On the Psychology of the Unconscious" — but that is the fifth edition, Über die Psychologie des Unbewussten (Rascher, Zurich, 1943), of a book first issued in 1917 as Die Psychologie der unbewussten Prozesse and retitled in 1926, revised both times ("fairly extensive alterations", made "particularly in the chapters on types and on the unconscious"; "a thorough revision"); its footnote defining the shadow cites Toni Wolff's essay of 1935. The connected treatment is later and firmly dated: a Zurich lecture of 1948, printed in Aion in 1951.

Jung's 'identification with the shadow' (CW 7 §41) is a 1943 revision. Baynes's 1928 translation of the 1926 text has only 'this shadow side of the mind'.

C. G. Jung, On the Psychology of the Unconscious (5th edn, 1943), CW 7 §41 and prefaces of 1936 and 1943; Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, trans. H. G. and C. F. Baynes (London, 1928), p. 23.

Jung's term for the dark side of the personality that a person does not see as his own.

More context

Jung gave the shadow one short chapter of Aion (1951), seven paragraphs from a 1948 lecture. He splits it in two. The personal shadow yields to "a little self-criticism". The shadow that appears "as an archetype" meets "the same difficulties as with anima and animus". To look into "the face of absolute evil" is "a rare and shattering experience". Integration is Jung's own word for the first stage of analysis, yet he allows assimilation only "to some extent".

Light

Jung calls recognising the shadow 'the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge', and warns it takes 'considerable moral effort'.

Shadow

Jung says 'there is little hope that the subject will perceive this himself', so denial can never count against the theory.

Sources5 sources

Primary source

  • C. G. Jung, On the Psychology of the Unconscious (Collected Works 7), 1943, prefaces to the first (1917), second (1918), third (1926), fourth (1936) and fifth (1943) editions; §§27-29, §§41-42 and §103 n. 5; second-edition appendices, §438 and §§442-521The essay the Collected Works prints is the fifth edition, Über die Psychologie des Unbewussten (Rascher, Zurich, 1943), of a book first issued in 1917 as Die Psychologie der unbewussten Prozesse and retitled Das Unbewusste im normalen und kranken Seelenleben for the third edition of 1926; behind it stands the 1912 paper 'Neue Bahnen der Psychologie'. Jung's preface of April 1925 records 'fairly extensive alterations and improvements, particularly in the chapters on types and on the unconscious'; his 1943 preface records 'a thorough revision'. The printed text therefore cannot date Jung's shadow vocabulary to 1917: §41 has 'identification with the shadow' and §§27-29 'this shadow-side of the psyche', but only in the revised text, and the footnote in which Jung defines the shadow as "the 'negative' side of the personality" (§103 n. 5) cites Toni Wolff's 'Einführung in die Grundlagen der komplexen Psychologie' from the 1935 Festschrift, so that footnote cannot predate 1935. The second-edition appendices carry the unrevised early texts and can be dated: 'New Paths in Psychology' (1912), translated from the published German, has 'this shadow-side of the psyche' at §438; 'The Structure of the Unconscious' (§§442-521), translated from Jung's unpublished German manuscript of the 1916 Zurich lecture and first printed in French as 'La structure de l'inconscient', Archives de psychologie XVI (1916), 152-79, does not use the word shadow at all.
  • C. G. Jung, The Fight with the Shadow, 1946, Broadcast talk, BBC Third Programme, 3 November 1946; first published (in English) in The Listener (London), XXXVI (1946), no. 930, pp. 615-16; reprinted in Collected Works 10, Civilization in Transition, §§444-457Jung gave a talk broadcast by the BBC in 1946 which applied the shadow to Germany and to nations rather than to a patient. It was delivered and first printed in English, not translated from German.
  • C. G. Jung, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self (Collected Works 9ii), 1951, Part I, ch. II 'The Shadow', §§13-19 (pp. 8-10). German: Aion: Untersuchungen zur Symbolgeschichte (Psychologische Abhandlungen VIII), Rascher Verlag, Zurich, 1951 — Jung's part 'Beiträge zur Symbolik des Selbst', ch. II 'Der Schatten', pp. 22-26; trans. R. F. C. Hull, Bollingen Series XX, Pantheon Books, New York, 1959; 2nd edn, Princeton University Press, 1968 (record)Jung's connected treatment of the shadow runs from §13 to §19 over three pages. §13 names the shadow, the anima and the animus as the archetypes 'most clearly characterized from the empirical point of view', calls the shadow 'the most accessible of these, and the easiest to experience', and allows as exceptions 'those rather rare cases where the positive qualities of the personality are repressed, and the ego in consequence plays an essentially negative or unfavourable role'. §14: 'no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort' and 'This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.' §16: 'Although, with insight and good will, the shadow can to some extent be assimilated into the conscious personality, experience shows that there are certain features which offer the most obstinate resistance to moral control' - these being bound up with projections, whose recognition is 'a moral achievement beyond the ordinary', and of which 'there is little hope that the subject will perceive this himself'. §42 makes 'the integration of the shadow, or the realization of the personal unconscious' the first stage in the analytic process.
  • C. G. Jung, Aion (Collected Works 9ii), 1951, §19, and the second footnote to §13 (record)§19, verbatim: 'With a little self-criticism one can see through the shadow - so far as its nature is personal. But when it appears as an archetype, one encounters the same difficulties as with anima and animus. In other words, it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil.' The same paragraph rules that the source of a projection 'is no longer the shadow - which is always of the same sex as the subject - but a contrasexual figure'. The footnote to §13 reads: 'The contents of this and the following chapter are taken from a lecture delivered to the Swiss Society for Practical Psychology, in Zurich, 1948. The material was first published in the Wiener Zeitschrift fur Nervenheilkunde und deren Grenzgebiete, I (1948): 4.' The German behind chapters II and III first appeared as "Schatten, Animus und Anima", Wiener Zeitschrift für Nervenheilkunde und deren Grenzgebiete, I:4 (June 1948), 295-307, from a lecture to the Schweizerische Gesellschaft für praktische Psychologie, Zurich, 1948.

The tradition itself