ashamed<\/em>, 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 \u2026 shadow does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities ” [CW9 paras 422 & 423].1<\/sup> 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.
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhen 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Jung CG. Shadow Definition. In: Read H, Fordham, M., Adler, G., McGuire, W., ed. Hull RFC, trans. The collected works of C.G. Jung <\/em>Vol Vol. 9. 2nd ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; 1969 (Original work published 1948):207-254.<\/li><\/ol>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t