I was fortunate to have
as a mentor a story editor who was a Jungian. We had a number of
discussions about the Jungian concept of the shadow and its
importance to writers, which I hope to capture here. But first let me
just point out the Shadows that feature in my Healer’s Shadow
trilogy are not Jungian shadows. Are you sometimes surprised and
ashamed by your own behaviour? Do you say “I don’t know what came
over me. It was so unlike me…”? Do you sometimes take an
immediate dislike to a complete stranger? Now don’t lie – of
course you do, we all do.
So what’s happening?
And how is this relevant to the storyteller’s art? What is
happening is that your shadow is showing itself. According to Carl
Jung, who coined the phrase: Everyone carries a shadow, and
the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the
blacker and denser it is. As children we learn (and are taught by
our parents and society) that certain behaviours are unacceptable and
these we repress – jealousy, prejudice, anger, greed, certain
sexual fantasies. They haven’t gone away, they have been thrust
into the subconscious and form our shadows. They stay in the dark
waiting to burst forth. They do this in our dreams, at times of
stress and as projections on to others. So when we say, “It was so
unlike me,” alas that isn’t true, it is like us, because our
shadow is part of us, but we are blind to it.
Firstly
the tension between the subconscious shadow and our conscious
projected selves is at the heart of drama. The shadow could be said
to be the hero’s fatal flaw. Remember that the shadow emerges at
times of stress and inevitably that means that it will appear when
our protagonists are under pressure. These outbursts put the
protagonist in danger, as it does for example, with a heroine who
keeps falling for dangerous men. Or at the very least they will
result in the protagonist hurting those who love her. An
understanding of the shadow helps us to create fully formed
characters and to place them in danger. In some books the conflict
between the shadow and the conscious self is externalized – most
obviously in Jekyll
and Hydeand The
Wizard of Earthsea.
Secondly
the encounter with the shadow is part of the story structure. Jung’s
analysis of myths and fairytales, which informed his development of
the shadow, was further developed by Joseph Campbell in his seminal
book The
Hero With A Thousand Faces and
this in turn was popularized in Christopher Vogler’s. The
Hero’s Journey is
divided into a series of key stages, in which the encounter with the
hero’s shadow is core. The reasons for this are various. Maturity
requires an acknowledgement of the shadow within us, so facing the
shadow is part of the hero’s maturation. The shadow can contain not
only negative aspects but also one’s true potential and so the hero
gains the treasure that he seeks. Furthermore our antagonist and our
protagonist are linked psychologically. As one can project on to
others elements of one’s own shadow, so an antagonist is likely to
display elements of the protagonist’s shadow, and when the hero
confronts the antagonist he is confronting his own shadow at least in
part.
Thirdly I have spoken
so far only about the individual’s shadow, but civilizations also
have shadows. These collective shadows express themselves through
wars and persecutions of minorities. We carry within us a mix of our
personal shadow and the collective darkness. It is the reason why we
can behave so out of character when in a group. If your novel is
concerned with such matters, it helps to understand this. The shadow
then is central to conflict in any story. I was hugely excited when I
discovered this truth and I hope this post helps you understand the
shadow better.
A version of this
article first appeared on the now defunct Indie Exchange website.
