shadow work's shadow
The deeper the darkness, the brighter love’s light.
One of my pet hates in the therapy world is when unnecessary splits are left cleft, often inflamed by tribalism. In mind-centric circles, embodied knowing can be unremembered, neglecting important sources of insight and healing. For some body-based practitioners, interpretation is “too heady” as if felt experience can’t also be thought about. Splits such as these certainly exist, but tightly holding to any one side is reductive, and limits the range of movement in integrative practice.
We need psychological splits. Sometimes they protect us from something unbearable. Sometimes they help us cope with environmental conditions which can’t be tolerated at a certain developmental stage. But when they go on too long, or are solidified as identity (or dogma), they can become problematic.
surface shadow vs. developmental depths
As psychological mindedness has proliferated - and let’s be clear, this is very much a good and consciousness raising thing - “shadow work” has become a therapeutic holy grail. And yet, I feel curious about the assumption that shadow work happens at an individualised and accessible level. My clinical experience says something different: what we find through self-examination is only the beginning.
The truth is shadow work reveals itself progressively through layers of consciousness, and the work can last as long as a lifetime. Accessible personality insights though profound, or dare I say gratifying, can leave the deeper developmental structures untouched. Not because surface insights aren’t valuable, but because they can create the illusion of completion when we’ve only begun to map the territory.
Through my work I’ve begun to see some generalisations in the way shadow might be encountered. At the surface level, we might recognise our tendency toward people-pleasing or our hidden anger. Deeper, we encounter the early relational patterns that created these adaptations. Deeper still, we meet the familial and cultural templates we inherited unconsciously. At the deepest levels, we sense archetypal and cosmic inheritances that connect us to collective human experience. And although these levels sound linear in the way I’ve described them, the true experience of discovery is anything but.
As I’ve become more engaged in the Jungian world, I’ve been curious about a particular tension around Jung’s own legacy. Most notable is the systematic de-emphasising of Jung’s mystical side - initiated by Jung himself, then perpetuated by Jungian institutions attempting to maintain empirical credibility in academic circles.
This split is slowly being reintegrated, particularly since the Red Book’s publication in 2009, which unequivocally centred the mystical aspects of Jung’s life and work. But the underlying question remains: what do we make of Jung’s period of psychosis?
One camp argues this was unresolvable trauma - in particular infantile rage he couldn’t process - that prevented him from integrating destructive shadow, undermining the psychological foundations of his broader philosophy. Another sees it as the archetypal infusion that became the raw material of his life’s work.
To me: both arguments hold weight. We can learn from the developmental wounding he was arguably unable to resolve, while also gaining from the cosmic wisdom he accessed through direct archetypal experience. The split dissolves when we stop choosing sides.
beyond shadow eradication
Reflecting on this discussion got me thinking about different ways of seeing shadow. I’ve found Avgi Saketopoulou’s thinking around traumatophilia especially useful in this regard, not least as trauma is often in shadow, until it is examined. Saketopoulou suggests that the goal of “healing” trauma can disregard what happens when we become open and interested in trauma and its consequences, and that identities and meanings made from trauma, might be a form of transformation. I am onboard with this perspective to a large degree, in particular in that it centers a co-created therapeutic relationship as the meaning making vehicle, rather than societal expectations or a (possibly conservative) theoretical paradigm. At the same time - and in my experience, an open mindedness toward what is not yet known, what one might call a respect of shadow, is also required. Depending on the depth of shadow awareness, something which seems core and even desirable at a certain level, might actually be ripe for revision, or even anti to authentic individuation at another.
An example to illustrate these levels: consider a male client who comes to therapy wanting to resolve toxic masculine traits. One approach might be to encourage him toward empathy and reflection. A depth perspective offers a twofold approach. First, to truly understand the power hungry anger which grips his psyche in those “toxic” moments, whilst simultaneously looking for the powerless wounded part which makes that response necessary. Working this way, the masculine core can be unpicked — it’s good and it’s bad discerned. The reconciled psyche then has an awareness of toxicity which had been in shadow, but also a self acceptance, which shores up confidence and autonomy.
the shadow of therapeutic certainty
Alongside individual shadow, our groups, paradigms, modalities and institutions also have their own. Some, in my view the more ethical ones, make intentional efforts toward understanding shadow. Not that we can ever eradicate it, but we can be curious and attempt to move toward it. I have written before about the need for ongoing personal development work for therapists, and I guess I am coming around to that again in this post. Stints of working deeply, along with necessary breaks from such work, are vital if we are to continue understanding our own undesired content. The link being, we tend to be drawn to groups which have collective shadow where our own shadow can hide.
This sort of deep self examination work is limited if we do it alone, or, do it in a philosophic or political echo-chamber. Ego creates shadow, and so does a group. And, if we rely on that like minded vehicle as the agent of change, how can we expect for the shadow to really be revealed?
This requires us to think broadly about our development, to look outside of our own paradigms and institutional bubbles, and to be ever wary for when we, our colleagues or institutional dogma becomes too certain about rightness.
More globally, in this era of metacrisis, a sociocultural re-examination is being called for. That, I would argue, is clear. Activism is certainly a necessary part of that examination, but every activism contains a shadow. This might be a grandiosity about one’s own centrality to change, or an unconscious identification with a movement’s supremacy. If we’re inclined toward decolonisation, we might ask where is the colonist inside of us? Where is our own misogyny, and greed? Where does our cultural supremacy reside? If we can stay present to how these parts play out in our own psychic lives, our stance towards others often changes dramatically.
beyond healing toward loving
As I was working on these ideas, a Richard Rohr reflection arrived with synchronous timing. He wrote: “The divine notion of perfection isn’t the exclusion of imperfection, but the inclusion of imperfection. That’s divine love.”
If we are to love ourselves - and our clients - fully, how can we not admit to ourselves that which we find difficult, shameful, or unacceptable? When we do this, we let in not only the light of self-acceptance, but something far more nourishing: the recognition that our wholeness includes our brokenness.
This is shadow work as spiritual practice rather than psychological repair project. The more shadow we unearth, the more light we allow to enter. Not everyone has the same appetite for this discovery, nor the same resources to enter that journey. But we, as healing professionals, have an obligation to consider the full magnitude of possibilities when working with clients.
We have to know shadow most deeply so we can know our light most fully.
the ever-deepening spiral
Shadow work isn’t a destination but an ever-deepening spiral through developmental levels. What seems like core authentic material at the personal level might reveal ancestral patterns at deeper examination. What feels like profound archetypal insight - even divine awareness- might still require grounding through developmental repair if it is to exist ethically in the world.
Each revelation doesn’t invalidate previous truths but adds layers of complexity and, paradoxically, simplicity. The angry activist discovers their inherited colonial patterns. The empathic therapist encounters their familial legacy of emotional caretaking. The spiritual seeker meets the developmental wounds that drove their transcendent seeking.
This is why, across all levels, integration trumps elimination. The goal isn’t to become someone without shadow, but someone who can dance with shadow consciously at whatever level it appears. Not someone who has transcended their developmental history, but someone who is always learning to more fully love their whole story - personal, familial, intergenerational and cosmic.
Perhaps this is what Jung meant when he spoke of individuation: not the creation of a perfect self, but the integration of all selves. Not the elimination of darkness, but the marriage of light and shadow in service of something larger than either alone.
In the end, the deepest shadow work might be learning to love what we cannot fix - in ourselves, in our clients, and in our world. This isn’t resignation but recognition: that wholeness was never about perfection, but about the courage to include everything that is.