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]]>Another Jungian concept is the shadow. Jung’s original definition was the “shadow is that hidden, repressed, for the most part inferior and guilt-laden personality…” [CW9 paras 422 & 423].1 
The word “shadow” for this concept is now commonly used to mean the negative side of someone’s personality, the parts of themselves of which they are unaware, or their negative or violent traits (though it may be another person’s or culture’s shadow defining as “negative,” as we shall see below). A distinction needs to be made between the shadow and how it is negatively manifested.
Most of the things you hear or read about the shadow commonly use words like negative, denied, ashamed, etc. Wikipedia’s entry on Jung’s concept of shadow has as the first line of the second paragraph, “Because one tends to reject or remain ignorant of the least desirable aspects of one’s personality, the shadow is largely negative.” 
But Jung’s own definition went on to clarify, “If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that … shadow does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities ” [CW9 paras 422 & 423].1 One of his most famous students, Maria Louise von Franz, cited a woman Jungian therapist who worked with some of the hardest criminals in jail and found that their shadows were incredibly positive. 
When Jung described the shadow as “negative,” it was more in the sense of a photographic negative 
or a negatively charged particle in physics 
. Negative for him was a scientific term and not a judgment. It was negative in that it was not lived out or processed. It would be no truer with these words to say that everything one actually did in real life was positive in the sense of good. It is merely positive in the sense of being manifest like the positive image of a photographic negative: it has been brought to light.
- Jung CG. Shadow Definition. In: Read H, Fordham, M., Adler, G., McGuire, W., ed. Hull RFC, trans. The collected works of C.G. Jung Vol Vol. 9. 2nd ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; 1969 (Original work published 1948):207-254.
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]]>The shadow makes itself known through projection 
onto other people or eruption into your behavior. 
These can be dangerous, but are not necessarily so, which is why I hesitate to label the shadow negative as is common today.
How the shadow becomes negative is complicated. I describe archetypes as all imaginable experiences. You, as an individual, can live out only certain of those experiences/archetypes. The ones that you do not live out go into your shadow. They are defined as “not you.” But because you are human, you may equate those that are “not you” with those that are “not human.” The shadow is the source of beliefs such as “I am not X; therefore, no human should be X,” “being X is not good (for me); therefore, being X is not good (for anyone).” The shadow is also the part that says “I do not imagine myself as X; therefore, I must fight vehemently never to become X or let myself be seen as X.” 
We will see later how those patterns live out.
The shadow erupts into your life when it has been repressed so strongly for so long that the only way it can make itself known is in a forceful display. One of the best examples I can remember is the anti-gay senator who was caught soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom. He was so worried about being gay that he outwardly acted like he was anti-gay. The shadow is what chose a very public place and way for him to try to solicit gay sex. His gayness needed to come out, and if he wouldn’t see it, the shadow would make sure he had to see it (as did everyone else). Hitler, for example, was so afraid people would find out that his ancestor was Jewish that he committed genocide against them to prove his non-Jewishness.
How the shadow gets projected onto others is also after being repressed so strongly for so long. In projection, it’s as if a movie playing in the shadow of your mind thinks “I need a big screen on which to project this so I am seen.” Even schoolchildren know this pattern, with the cliched schoolyard comebacks, “Takes one to know one” 
and “I know you are but what am I?” So, in the previous example, the senator denying his own homosexuality projected out onto other gays that they were “bad.” A politician who does not feel secure in his ability to lead, will accuse anyone who says he may not be a good leader of being “a traitor.” They have, in fact, merely voiced his own inner insecurity. 
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What you deny in yourself, you will live out because you are not on guard against it.
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