a very simple concept that has been turned into nonsense on stilts by an eccentric pseudo-scientific psychologist/mystic who needed to write some books to make some money?
this ‘shadow’ is nothing but that anachronistic and relatively unevolved part of the neurological and hormonal foundation of the psyche that was suddenly put into conflict with the ‘higher brain’ when modern societies came into existence and demanded moral restraint from the individual. freud covered all this in his psychic apparatus theory and remained mostly reductionist about it… something jung didn’t do, hence, one of the reasons why freud ended his relationship with him. it’s not ironic that freud once said of jung something along the lines of; he’s not aware that his theories are symptoms of his own neurosis.
but basically what’s been done is a kind of clinical vilification of natural drives and desires that come into conflict in a society that, because of how it is arranged, greatly amplifies and augments the circumstances that generate these conflicts. it’s the battle between the id and the super-ego, more or less. in restraining the more anachronistic side of the individual, the individual undergoes a frustrating psychic split as he’s forced to conform to the rules of society.
next comes the systematic distortion of the conscience by wind-bags like peterson and other modern psychologists who’s intention is to vilify and ‘make sick’ those individuals who naturally resist the forces of civil domestication and conformity in modern society. now, the non-aggressive individual who is fully compliant to the sweeping changes and demands made by a modern society responsible for creating social relations jam-packed with new conflicts, is the healthy one.
but this is not to say that all ‘shadows’ are instances of some stronger side of man being hidden away and repressed for the purposes of social conformity. some ‘shadows’ are based in inferiority and ressentiment and can be counted as a manifestation of some kind of vengeful cruelty that’s subconsciously harbored by the individual. take the ‘rapist’ example in peterson’s video. he unequivocally characterizes all rapists as ‘weak’. but while very many (and probably most) modern rapists are expressing a desire to control and hold power over the victim (this to compensate for their feelings of inferiority), some rapists simply just want to get laid and have no desire to humiliate their victims. they aren’t on a quest for power and in no way feel inferior… nor do they secretly despise women.
the shadow of the former type is developed from within an environment that facilitates the production of males who’s natural, anachronistic drive for sex is complicated further… i could even say complimented… by conflicts that constantly impede on his ability to satisfy those drives. while the shadow of the latter type exists independently and free of any sublimated conditioning that’s involved in the creation of the vengeful cruelty that forms the basis of the inferior guy’s ‘shadow’.
this latter type wouldn’t be ‘weak’ as peterson claims, because his id is not ‘broken’ by some super-ego that brings to bear an awareness of inferiority.
such an example could be used to analyze any particular instance of a ‘shadow’ and whether or not it is a center of psychic sickness or health. whether or not it is a product of a natural, anachronistic will unaffected by modern society’s pressure to passively adapt to all the conflicts it creates, or a product of a poisoned conscience that forces frustrated and/or inferior people to endure their psychic split and keep the ‘other’ side hidden… in which case it inevitably finds a way out in expressions of ressentiment and revenge.
some shadows are great, others not so much. to make/keep the shadow - which is really only the ‘id’ - healthy and strong, quite a bit of intellect is needed to sort through the incriminating nonsense that modern psychology has made out of it and refuse to drink the kool-aid they try to sell you.
one very obvious fact is that in an environment where there are multifarious forms of competition… more cases of the ‘sick’ shadow are made possible, because there will be more cases of losers… and losers resent. not to say that these competitions aren’t ‘natural’, of course. only to say that with them come certain kinds of consequences that might not exist in other environments in which no such competition exists.