I kept starting and stopping this very short book because every time RJ referred to the obvious lessons of religion, or God, or referred to some kind of bias about male or female behavior, I got exasperated. "It's the NINETIES, my good man, just where are your modern sensibilities?" I would think, and toss the book carelessly aside. Yet despite all of his rather patriarchal ideas about archetypes, there are still wisdoms about the dark side (read: the parts of us we'd rather not acknowledge, and it's ok to leave sin out of the conversation) to be gleaned here.

This short book is quite an interesting read about psychological awareness; in particular, the undesirable aspects of our personality and the role these plays in shaping our human consciousness - individual and collective.

The book introduces the reader to the dichotomous process by which we navigate culture and reality, and how this inevitably develops our psychological disposition. All experience is filtered through either the ego or the shadow. The ego is best described as what we are and know about consciously whereas the shadow is that part of us we fail to see or know. These opposing aspects of our psyche have innate cultural connections to the concepts of right and wrong respectively.

We sort our characteristics, feelings and experiences among the ego and the shadow in order to uphold the ideals, morals and ethical principles of society. However, it is an "inexorable law that no characteristic can be discarded... all our characteristics must appear in this inventory. Nothing may be left out" (p. 10-11). This means that every characteristic, principle, ideal and experience must be filtered through either the ego (that which we are and use to inform our persona or projection of self), or the shadow (that which we mistakenly suppress or ignore), no matter how good or evil, right or wrong.

These two aspects of the psyche must then remain balanced in order to maintain psychological equilibrium. Allowing one to overwhelm the other tends to result in a fragmented mind and the manifestation of unproductive or undesirable thoughts. Drawing good, right and just power exclusively from the ego and ignoring our shadow is just as detrimental to our psychological wellbeing as drawing solely on the evil and wrongful aspects of the shadow.

Owning your shadow, that is to say understanding and embracing the dark side of your psyche, can help to alleviate these psychological tensions. We achieve this by allowing our shadow to surface through non-destructive and non-offensive means. For some this might involve listening to gory true crime podcasts or reading romance novels, cursing regularly, playing contact sport or listening to extreme music genres. Understanding your shadow and approaching it consciously works to cease manifestations of negative thought and sets us upon the path to achieve tranquillity of mind and ultimately, equilibrium.

لم يعجبني الكتاب
الكتاب لم يرق لي
لم استسغ الكتاب
لم اجد الكتاب جيدًا
الكتاب لم يترك لدىّ انطباعاً حسناً


مارأيك؟ هل ستستمر في قراءة مراجعتي هذه لو أنني واصلت تكرار هذه العبار لصفحتين مثلاً؟ لا أعتقد ذلك، وأجد قرارك صائبًا لأنني للتو انتهيت من كتاب فعل هذه الفعلة دون تحرج. ألقى فكرته في مستهل الكتاب ثم أخذ يعيدها بطرق مختلفة، نفس الفكرة تصول وتجول دون تعمق كافٍ وبلا تفاصيل وافية تدعم الفكرة وتفسرها وتطورها.

فكرة الكتاب جيدة، لا أنكر ذلك. موضوع التعامل مع الجوانب السلبية في حياتك وشخصيتك بدلاُ من إنكارها أو كبتها أو النفور منها هو موضوع يستحق البحث. لكن الفكرة الجيدة لا تكفى لخلق كتاب كامل، أكتب مقالاً، فصلاً، ألق محاضرة...لكن كتاب؟؟

اخترت الكتاب على أساس أنه ينتمي إلى علم النفس ورجوت الله إلا يقع في نطاق تطوير الذات. ولكن عندما قرأته منه بضع صفحات تمنيت أن يصبح كتاب تنمية شخصية بدلاً من أن يكون ثرثرة لا جدوى منها. وهكذا فلم يستطع الكتاب أن يكون كتاب علم نفس ولا كتاب تطوير النفس، هو فقط مقال طويل يسد النفس.

هو قصير ولكن ذلك لا يشفع له، فقد قرأت هذا العام كتاباً ممتازاً وقصيراً ويناقش نظرية عملية في علم النفس وهو :بحث الإنسان عن المعنى. توقعت من هذا الكتاب شيئاً مماثلاً لكنه لم يأت على مستوى توقعاتي.

نجمتان للفكرة ولبعض أجزاء من المحتوى، ولأن الكاتب لم يطل أمد الثرثرة لأكثر من مائة وثمانية عشر صفحة.

loc. 315: “Jung used to say that we can be grateful for our enemies, for their darkness allows us to escape our own.
“Heaping abuse [on those who abuse us] does great damage - not only to others but to us as well, for as we project our shadow we give away an essential ingredient of our own psychology. We need to connect with this dark side for our own development, and we have no business flinging it at others, trying to palm off these awkward and unwanted feelings. The difficulty is that most of us live in an intricate web of shadow exchange that robs both parties of their potential wholeness. The shadow also contains a good deal of energy, and it is the cornerstone of our vitality. A very cultured individual with an equally strong shadow has a great deal of personal power. William Blake spoke about the need to reconcile these two parts of the self. He said we should go to heaven for form and to hell for energy - and marry the two. When we can face our inner heaven and our inner hell, this is the highest form of creativity.”

loc 333: “Goethe’s FAUST, perhaps the greatest example in literature of the meeting of ego and shadow, is about a pale, dried-up professor who has come to the point of suicide because of the unlivable distance between his ego and his shadow … Faust meets his equally impossible shadow, Mephistopheles, who appears as his lordship, the devil. The explosion of energy at the meeting is extreme. Yet they persevere and their long, vivid story is our best instruction in the reception of ego and shadow.”

loc 366: a lengthy quote from Jungian analyst and Episcopal priest Jack Sanford:
“The ego is … primarily engaged in its own defense and the furtherance of its own ambitions. Everything that interferes with it must be repressed. the [repressed] elements … become the shadow. Often these are basically positive qualities.
“There are, in my view, two ‘shadows”: (1) the dark side of the ego, which is careful hidden from itself and which the ego will not acknowledge unless forced to by life’s difficulties, and (2) that which has been repressed in us lest it interfere with our egocentricity and, however devilish it may seem, is basically connected to the Self.
“In a showdown God [Self] favors the shadow over the ego, for the shadow, with all of its dangerousness, is closer to the center and more genuine.”
Hence the maddening preference shown to the prodigal son while the dutiful son is sidelined … excellently expressed in Tennessee Williams’ play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

If I'd realized I was picking up a book that was going to frame everything heavily in Christian mythology and philosophy, I might have read this differently. As it was, the Christian good/evil dichotomy was so distracting that I didn't find a lot of good value in the information about one's shadow. Will continue looking for a better book.

It is pretty good, if you are into Jungian psychology. I'd prefer to hear a bit more about why he thinks what he says is true, instead of just stating it as true, for example, the reason for the difference in the shape of the cross in western Europe vs. the shape of the cross in Eastern Europe.

In any event, it does a good job of making you less scared of your shadow side and more willing to express it.

This book was amazing to me, mainly because of its insistence that the way to God is to embrace paradox. In other words, one should not think in terms of exclusive contradictions, but rather in terms of the mandorla--the shared space between seemingly opposed principles.

فکر کنم صفحه ای از کتاب نبوده که کلمه سایه توش نیومده باشه. درحالیکه توضیح کاملا دقیقی از مفهوم سایه داده نشده و گاهی در معنای ناخودآگاه و گاه در معنای بخش سرکوب شده و خفه شده امیال و افکار اومده. نیمه دوم کتاب که بحث دربارهرابطه و عشق و نقش تضاد میشه جالب تره وبعضا نکات خوبی داره ولی در نهایت سهو از کتاب روان شناسی خارج میشه و با انداختن همه چی به گردن مذهب و اتکا به خدا بحث رو پایان میده. در کل نه تجریه و تحلیل عمیقی توش بود نه راه حل روشن و علمی ای

While I did get a greater understanding of the shadow I really got sick of the Christian framework. It was kind of cool to understand the role the church plays in helping people integrate and look at their shadow but after a while it got tiresome and more than a little bit boring. Clearly I wasn't the target demographic for this preachy little tome.

Also, the author does not understand the difference between romantic love and infatuation. Anyone who uses Tristan and Isolde for their example (and boy was that horse dead when the author finished beating it) are to be trusted about as much as a teenager using Romeo and Juliet for example. Telling people that falling in love is just us putting ourselves on others shows a real lack of understanding of romantic love, which is based on fully understanding the other person, not infatuation where you just put all the things you want on the other person whether it fits or not. Does this author have bad luck with relationships to throw so much garbage at them or is he just clueless? Oh, wait, I don't actually care.

Over all I learned a little bit but was mostly annoyed at the book's many assumptions and overly condescending tone.

As with Johnson's other books it's very accessible for someone, who's not well acquainted with Jungian psychology. But personally i feel that it lacks depth.

This was an interesting little book. The concept of the shadow as used here does not necessarily mean things that are evil in the sense of being actively malevolent - the invitation to 'Come to the Dark Side,' as it were. It is referring to the parts of your personality that have been suppressed due to socialization, those parts of you that are not up on public display but are hidden down there in the dark. Henry Hyde to your Doctor Jekyll. The effect of excessive alcohol consumption on people is evidence that we have a Henry Hyde lurking inside of us. Alcohol doesn't alter our behaviour so much as it - among other things - dampens the activity of the part of the brain that inhibits our behaviour, the pre-frontal cortex. Basically, it shows us some of the things we are capable of when the shackles of restriction and control are thrown off. It also demonstrates that there are very obviously many aspects of our shadow side that should never see the light of day. One of the best analogies I have heard used to describe people who have no concept of their shadow is that of a domesticated animal - someone whose concept of their own goodness is shallow because they have completely failed to comprehend their capacity to do things that are not good - in essence, a dog that has no realization that once upon a time it was a wolf and is therefore shocked if some day some aspect of that manifests itself. If I could encapsulate what this book is trying to say with a popular idiom, it would be this: 'Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.' By owning your shadow you are acknowledging some of the positive attributes of the shadow side and then attempting to integrate them into your personality in order to direct them towards positive outcomes.

Since we are all different people with different upbringings, the parts of us we are suppressing may be different, but here is an example: Suppose we have been socialized in such a way that we are led to believe that being angry is bad and because of this we continually suppress our anger. That may be a very good thing. After all, we don't want people buying enough munitions to arm a small country and then shooting up the local mall because they feel life has handed them a raw deal. Anger is disruptive both internally - it plays havoc with our emotional equilibrium - and externally - it plays havoc with our lives and the lives of those we interact with when it manifests itself. There is a concept in psychology know as valence whereby we assign an emotion as good or bad not based on effect but on affect. If we like how it feels (love, happiness, laughter) we would class it has having positive valence and if we don't like how it feels (sorrow, anger, dissapointment) we would class it as having negative valence. However, valence and effect are two different things. I might feel happy after I inject a needle full of heroin into my arm (positive valence) but that does not mean that injecting a needle full of heroin into my arm is a good thing (negative effect). The opposite is also true - something can have negative valence and positive effect. While many people would ascribe anger as having negative valence that does not mean feeling anger is necessarily wrong and it doesn't mean it can't be put to positive effect. There are two things to consider: 1) What are we angry about? and 2) How is that anger manifesting itself? The first question brings reason to bear upon our emotional state. Anger at injustice is a perfectly reasonable response. The second question has to do with control. Are we just lashing out at the world around us blindly or are we taking all of that emotional energy, harnessing it, and redirecting it away from a destructive end towards a constructive one? Emotions and desires are all potential monsters. The question is: are we serving the monster or is the monster serving us?

Anger is only one example. One might also think of how we are taught (and rightly so) to be nice to other people. Might that lead to some people automatically conflating being nice with being good? There are some situations where doing the thing that you believe to be morally correct may entail at the very least being construed by opposing parties as the opposite of nice. In a situation like that, one can imagine that the bark of the shadow harnessed in a controlled manner might be a corrective to a default position to give in for the sake of niceness. Which is to say, it is bringing you more into a state of balance because you were inclined to be agreeable about some things that you perhaps should not have been agreeable about (that is, you have the mistaken idea of agreeableness is in and of itself a virtue because it has positive valence). Having to set some hard boundaries with someone might be an example where this attribute might be useful. This would be very different from someone who is being deliberately nasty or taking pleasure in being cruel.

This seems to me to be what is meant by owning your shadow, coming to grips with all of the dark, potentially destructive aspects of who you are, integrating them into your personality in a healthy way instead of suppressing them, and then directing them towards positive ends.

I choosed this book since I'm interested with one of Jung's ideas, the shadow self and how this hidden sides of us affect our lives in enormous ways.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Despite so many great reviews here on Instagram—they didn't mention which parts or at least the reason why they liked this book aside from statement like "Great book I recommend to everyone and blablabla"—I wouldn't recommend this to anyone unless the person knows nothing, even the slightest idea about this particular topic.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Why?
- Repetitive stories that were so uncalled for. They only emphasize one thing, that it's highly important to acknowledge our shadows which we probably already knew.
- Highly biased. Seems like the writer has his own agenda, telling on his view alone with his beliefs in Christianity with no scientific researchs apart from citing few Jung's ideas—if that what he meant by being 'scientific'.
- It feels like the writer just want to convince himself with some ideas that support his perspectives alone.
- I didn't expect him to tell me how to merge or acknowledge my shadows, but at least give me some deep insights which he failed to deliver. Subtle how-to's wouldn't hurt though.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Fortunately, this book is somewhat meditative (others might see it boring) if we don't expect anything and it can be finished in one sitting.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
As for me, in my opinion, we would learn more about the subject from Youtube or if we're strong-willed, just straight go to Jung's books.