Tonight's guest Debbie Ford offers a transformative workshop called The Shadow Process(1), which seeks to put her clients in touch with all aspects of themselves. It was the pioneering psychotherapist Carl Jung who labeled the shadow as one of the four archetypes that he believed serve as an unconscious blueprint for our existence.
In Jung's view, the shadow "is an expression of the base, antisocial desires of which we are ashamed and attempt to bury in the unconscious: it is the inner terror that we feel might impel us to dark deeds should we ever lose control," writes David Fontana in the The Secret Language of Symbols(2).
Jung struggled with his own inner shadow and depicted it in his Red Book painting (left). He personified it "as some cloak-and-dagger figure cowering against the far corner of the walls," writes Laurens van der Post, who added that the placement of the figure indicated that Jung "had this aspect of himself 'cornered' at last."
--L.L.(3)
1. http://www.integrativecoaching.com/information/default.asp?NavPageID=16312
2. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0811804623/ctoc
3. http://archive.coasttocoastam.com/info/about_lex.html