Shadow self

Rekha Sahay

 

The shadow self – The shadow is the unknown dark side of the personality.  It refers to the portion of our psyche that we want to know that we are not ( Ex-The primitive, negative, socially or religiously depreciated human emotions and impulses like sexual lust, power strivings, selfishness, greed, envy, anger ), but  a part of us fears that we  are. It may be positive or negative. In short, the shadow is the “dark side” of the personality.  Whatever we deem evil, inferior or unacceptable and deny in ourselves becomes part of the shadow.

 

Understanding one’s shadow can be helpful because there may be a lot of defensive behaviour  due to  shadow self. According to Jung, the shadow, in being instinctive and irrational, is prone to psychological projection, in which a perceived personal inferiority is recognized as a perceived moral deficiency .

15 thoughts on “Shadow self”

    2. Do you want me to guide you
      On the roads trodden, sometimes paved by me, in the ancient past?
      And you want me to do it,
      For the sake of you being able to balance yourself on your way?
      And that too after I came to know that all it ends in, is an illusion of satisfaction, a mirage of being successful?
      And not the real success, which lies in the truth lying naked in our hearts,
      And not the satisfaction which sublimes in the closed eyes.

      And you want me to suffocate in the air that I inhale?
      With the thought of being corrupt in my own definitions, as they hold today.

      Knowing well that I am capable of
      Making you a master of the techniques you practice
      I hereby submit myself to my ‘self’,
      And not to the ‘aura’ of ‘belief’ of being better..

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