Jung's Shadow Concept

This insightful volume is designed as a series of invitations towards living attentiveness, examining how we all make the “other”, through “projection” (blaming and shaming the other outside ourselves), our enemy with whom we prefer not to dialogue.

All of us are faced daily with individual and collective manifestations of the Shadow – all that we fear, despise and makes us feel ashamed. Carl Jung’s concept of the Shadow, emerging as it did from his personal confrontation with the realms of his unconscious self, is one of the most important contributions he made to the understanding of humanity and to depth psychology, that realm where the focus is on unconscious processes. The contributors to this book reframe his concept in the context of contemporary Jungian thinking, exploring how the Shadow develops in an individual’s infancy and adolescence, and its culmination, where collective manifestations of the Shadow are addressed. The book offers a voyage through a series of fundamental Shadow concepts and themes including couples relationships, disease, organizations, Evil, fundamentalism, ecology and boundary violation before ending with a chapter designed to help us integrate the Shadow and hold contra-positions with patience and a tilt towards mutual understanding, rather than being locked in polarities.

This fascinating new book will be of considerable interest to the general public, Jungian analysts, trainees, scholars and therapists both in training and practice with an interest in the inner world.

Christopher Perry is a training analyst and supervisor of the Society of Analytical Psychology, of which he is also the former Director of Training. He is the author of Listen to the Voice Within: A Jungian Approach to Pastoral Care and several articles on analytical psychology and group analysis. He is interested in the interface between psychotherapy and spirituality. He lives in London.

Rupert Tower is a member of the Society of Analytical Psychology. He studied psychology, worked in the Arts, and was an applied social psychologist and director of an international qualitative cross-cultural research consultancy prior to becoming a Jungian analyst in mid-life. He has published articles on social psychology, market research, and Jung’s concept of the Shadow in organisations. He lives and works in Hampstead.