Jung’s understanding of the Shadow helps us to make sense of the emotional dimensions of public life. As a child grows, the ego constructed by family, culture, and historical period requires that some parts of the psyche be suppressed, or “amputated,” cut off from consciousness. In many cases, neutral or even positive potentials are cast off along with such impulses as rage, lust, and greed. A child whose family does not encourage musical ability may find her musical interest consigned to shadow; a girl may have ambition contaminated with the “negative” potentials just as a boy may have his tender feelings cut off. These parts of the self instead form the shadow, where the shame or neglect of familial disapproval contaminates all the qualities contained there. Cut off from conscious awareness, these parts of the personality become constellated in projections, often onto those considered “other.”
In this course, you will consider how Shadow projections complicate and contaminate public life, particularly in relation to issues of race and the environment. Shadow projections have burdened minorities with distorted cultural perceptions, and fearful projections onto the natural world have distanced us from a sense of kinship with other creatures and from the healing that nature can offer.