Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 087477618X ISBN 13: 9780874776188

Publisher: Tarcher, 1991

Synopsis

Now updated with a new epilogue--an essential read for anyone interested in Shadow Work

Cheating... lying ... jealousy ... blaming ... greed ... shame… These forbidden feelings and behaviors erupt from the dark, denied part of ourselves-the personal shadow. But they erupt with a purpose: They are trying to tell us their secrets.

Meeting the Shadow is a landmark collection of 65 wide-ranging essays by thought leaders – including Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Ken Wilber, James Hillman, Susan Griffin, Harville Hendrix—on the dark side of human nature as it appears in families, intimate relationships, sexuality, work, spirituality, politics, therapy, and creativity. It presents tools for Shadow Work that enable us to make a conscious relationship with the shadow, defuse negative emotions, release guilt and shame, achieve a genuine self-acceptance, and heal our relationships.

Although we think of the shadow as containing only darkness, as Jung stated, its essence is "pure gold.”

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. –C.G. Jung

About this title

About the Author

Connie Zweig, Ph.D., is also author of Romancing the Shadow; Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path; The Inner Work of Age; and a novel, A Moth to the Flame: The Story of Sufi Poet Rumi. Her Podcast, Dr. Neil’s Spiritual Awakening to Non-Duality, posts on all platforms. 

Jeremiah Abrams worked as a Jungian therapist in Northern California and retreat leader in Ubud, Bali, until 2022.

Reviews

Zweig, former executive editor of Brain/Mind Bulletin, and Abrams, a Jungian therapist, offer a provocative collection of more than 60 brief pieces (most of them extracts from longer works) exploring the "shadow," the part of the unconscious self that a conscious mind sees as undesirable and tries to define as the "other." Christine Downing considers how a person might project the shadow self onto a same-sex sibling, while Maggie Scarf describes the ways in which husbands and wives can do the same thing: one spouse, for instance, expressing anger for the spouse who shuns the hostile feelings, turning an "intrapsychic problem" into "interpersonal conflict." Jerome S. Bernstein looks at this phenomenon in collective terms: the U.S. sees its darker self in the Soviet Union and vice versa. Many of the contributors note the dangers of ignoring one's own shadow, and the volume concludes with texts that discuss ways of coming to terms with it. Ken Wilber suggests that people should try to recognize and play out aspects of their rejected selves in order to heal "the split between persona and cap is correct/pk Shadow."
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Tarcher
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 087477618X
• ISBN 13: 9780874776188
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 335
• Editor: Connie Zweig, Jeremiah Abrams