“This Thing of Darkness I Acknowledge Mine”

Last night, listening to several parents of young children talking it became apparent that they were so concerned to get everything right, to be effectively perfect, that any thought or action that fell below the line was met with severe disapproval. This got me thinking, what had happened to the understanding of what Jung calls the ‘shadow’ in this generation? Judging upon what we witnessed it has been forgotten or lost.

This idea about our shadow is brilliant because it has within it the kindness of acceptance. Jung disagreed with Freud who believed that a primitive and dark self lurked within the subconscious and it was this, which he called the ‘it’, that was the container or location of our unacceptable and therefore repressed sexual and violent desires. In contrast Jung said that within the unconscious was simply everything within us that we were unconscious of. This might include expressions of sexuality and aggression that society or our family would not allow but it also included behaviours, emotions, thoughts and even wholly positive things such as buried gifts and creativity that were waiting for expression. In fact it was a whole treasure trove of possibilities and even the tricky stuff might have a use if judiciously handled. Aggression transmuted into self-assertion for instance has a place sometimes, especially for someone habitually meek.

‘Handled judiciously’ - what does this then mean? All of us have thoughts and emotions that we realise should not be said out loud and certainly not acted upon. When they are about our family and friends and also people just seen on the streets they are particularly kept under wraps. Especially when these contravene current sensitivities about gender identity, size and weight and women’s appearance etc. they become ultra taboo and can lead to serious retaliatory reactions by those that are at the vanguard of their repression. However, the fact is that we do think and feel them and so the issue becomes given that this is so what do we do with these contents of our mind?

Nature gives us two options. Repress or express. If express is off the menu that just leaves repression but as Freud observed, whatever is repressed finally surfaces and when it does, it does so in a particularly ugly and destructive fashion. Here think of the sentiments now finding expression in far right politics. However, Buddhism, and also secular mindfulness, gives us a third option that I wonder whether the perfectionist parents that I started this piece with might benefit from. Here, oddly, a BT television advert from some years ago perfectly conveys this point. Situated within a vast auditorium seating millions of people, a young woman walks to the centre and says, ‘Sometimes I am so tired I have bad thoughts about my baby’. And half the audience, all the women, stand up and loudly applaud her. BT’s point is that communication is important but there is more here. This young woman could admit the difficult shameful emotions she was feeling and this not only nullified them it also gave the gift to others to do the same. The young woman was a bodhisattva and witnessing her act of bravery and goodness made me weep.

So finally, has this insight now been integrated into our society? Well yes and no. Our teaching about the first and second arrow obviously works well here. The mind will always throw up weird and dark stuff but the point is what do we do with it - not how do we stop it. Taking responsibility and making wise and compassionate decisions about our shadow is the important bit, not pretending we don’t have one. Similarly, the practice of ‘loving our monsters’ is equally important. The contents of the shadow are actually just emotions. When we recognise them as such, locate their sensations within our body and learn to remain mindfully present with them - rather than identified or fearfully pushing them away - we have a way to integrate our shadow into consciousness and thereby make it safe. It’s not the emotion that’s the problem, it’s our repressive reaction towards it that does the damage. This all said, it is also obvious that our society is going through a period of puritanical repression. It’s not good enough to be able to take responsibility for our own mind, that mind must not be allowed to have the thoughts and emotions that are deemed unacceptable. To me this seems a great cruelty. It places us at war with ourselves. We are returned again to the shame of an earlier time when the only expression left for the shadow was physically in the form of hysteria or in projection where those that exhibited what we repressed were persecuted, imprisoned, disenfranchised and destroyed. Things we are seeing again right now in terrifying proportions.

NW. 23 August 2025 With thanks to Prospero in Shakespeare's play, The Tempest.