The recent spate of Nazi imagery applied to the Great Unwashed by the super wealthy seems over the top to those of us who consider ourselves sane; however, it may unwittingly reveal the inner workings of their own darkness and evil.
When Tom Perkins equates the current hatred of the super wealthy with the violent persecution of the Jews, he is revealing his Shadow. No one has broken any windows in any of his palatial mansions, yet he feels real fear and strikes out. The Wall Street Journal editorial board embraces his Shadow, revealing their ignorance of their own Shadow.
The shadow, said celebrated Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung...is the unknown ‘‘dark side’’ of our personality–-dark both because it tends to consist predominantly of the primitive, negative, socially or religiously depreciated human emotions and impulses like sexual lust, power strivings, selfishness, greed, envy, anger or rage, and due to its unenlightened nature, completely obscured from consciousness.
Essential Secrets of Psychotherapy: What is the "Shadow"? Understanding the "dark side" of our psyche.
Published on April 19, 2012 by Stephen A. Diamond, Ph.D. in Evil Deeds
A simple teaching tool can help begin the process of acknowledging our own Shadow:
The Shadow Exercise
"Think of someone you know whom you don't like very much. Maybe you even hate this person. On a piece of paper, write down a description of that person. Write down what it is about this individual's personality that you don't like. Be as specific as you can."
When everyone in the class is finished writing, I tell them to draw a box around what they have written - and at the top of the box write "MY SHADOW."
"Consider this," I tell them. "What you have written down is some hidden part of yourself - some part that you have suppressed or hidden. It is what Jung would call your SHADOW. Maybe it's a part of you that you fear, can't accept, or hate for some reason. Maybe it's a part of you that needs to be expressed or developed in some way. Maybe you even secretly wish you could be something like that person whom you hate."
Everyone carries within their unconscious a darkness that we may readily recognize in others but be blinded to in ourselves. The process of evolving as a complete human being involves embracing our own Shadow, understanding our dark places, and integrating it into our conscious selves.
Jung himself supplied a succinct quote of what it means when that process of enlightenment is absent.
Taking it in its deepest sense, the shadow is the invisible saurian tail that man still drags behind him. Carefully amputated, it becomes the healing serpent of the mysteries. Only monkeys parade with it.
Carl Jung, The Integration of the Personality. (1939)