JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Shadow Boxing

Digesting Jung 6 — Learning the ropes for sanity’s survival

Shadow boxing — image by author using Imagine AI

“The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality . . . . To become conscious of it involve recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real.” Carl Gustav Jung, CW 9ii, paragraph 14

Most of us see ourselves as people wearing the white hats, as if in a cowboy movie. Where there is wrong being done, it is by other people, not innocent people such as ourselves. We want to be perfect people — super moms and dads, crusaders for the planet and the disadvantaged.

But we know better and it bugs the shit out of us. Just outside the edge of our awareness, we catch rare glimpses of a shadowy figure, the problematic not-so-nice guy or gal. Just catching a glimpse of that shadowy self, we double down and protest louder and longer about being blameless.

The last thing I wanted to do as a parent was to wound my children. Yet, like every parent everywhere and every time, it just happened. Such innocent children victimized by the shadow aspect of ourselves that emerges when least expected.

It’s a good thing that we catch ourselves often enough that soon these glitches fall into a forgotten past for the children, and deep into the depths of…