The Shadow

Lamont Cranston

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!

I doubt that the writer had in mind anything other than the fictional crime fighter when he penned those now-famous words, but around the time radio listeners began to hear them, Carl Jung wrote

Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.¹

This shadow, or shadow self, is part of the unconscious mind comprised of repressed weaknesses, shortcomings, instincts; everything that is undeveloped and denied. One of the psychological mechanisms of the unconscious is projection: whatever we disown or deny is projected onto other people; whatever we feel is too negative to express—anything that runs counter to our highest ideals—is projected onto the outside world. Jung also wrote that if we don’t recognize and acknowledge our ownership of these projections,

(t)he 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.²

In other words, consciously or unconsciously, we create our own realities.

In the introduction to Up from the Deep, I list the events that completely and forever changed my life: the losses and betrayals that led to six years of homelessness and heroin addiction that almost cost me my life, resulting in a lengthy hospitalization and my recovery in a Sixth Street hotel. The title Up from the Deep refers to the deep psychological transformation that was catalyzed by these experiences. The breakthrough that changed everything came with the stark realization that I, and I alone, had always been the architect of my life.

1. Jung, C.G. (1938), Psychology and Religion
2. Jung, C.G. (1951), Phenomenology of the Self

“The Shadow” © 2008, Mark Ellinger

~ by tobymarx on 13 February 2009.