Today, flipping between my Excel macro and the 'Net like zapping channels in my sofa I went googling for "Shadow", not the pulp hero (extra points if you know who I'm talking about, and yes, the movie counts too) but the Jungian's Archetype definition, this is what I've found:
"The Shadow, is a psychological term introduced by the late Swiss psychiatrist, Dr. Carl G. Jung. It is everything in us that is unconscious, repressed, undeveloped and denied. These are dark rejected aspects of our being as well as light, so there is positive undeveloped potential in the Shadow that we don't know about because anything that is unconscious, we don't know about."
- from http://www.shadowdance.com/shadow/theshadow.html
Now, while I kept reading this article (now in my lunch time) I came to this:
"We will feel highly uncomfortable when we are around someone that is carrying a part of our Shadow. As I said before, and it bears repeating, there will often be a repulsive element to it. We will be repulsed by that person and whatever they stand for. It will feel like whoever they are is totally against our principles, moral values and ideals and we will be highly critical of their actions or way of being in the world."
So I began thinking of whom I feel like this, a couple of names crossed my mind, but only one stood: the Muppet. Now, although I don't exactly feel repulsed by him (I just feel sorry for him), I have noticed (as some times many of you have in other ocassions) that sometimes we (and I include myself, just keep reading) need to talk about this guy, it's either to have a quick laugh, or to make a comparison, or to just call the attention of the group (and no, the muppet is not getting married, as far as I know).
Why is this? why is someone in a group that is the end of everyone's jokes? Sometimes people make jokes about others, but these people keep getting them even from people they don't even know?
I kept reading the article and found this:
"Projection and Denial
Projection is an unconscious psychological mechanism. We all project onto other people parts of ourselves that we disown, that we deny. We will usually not identify with the projected quality or characteristic at all. It's them. It's not us."
Or as the writer ends this chapter: "as the 12-steppers say, 'if you spot it, you got it'."
I read in another article that women like Marilyn Monroe corresponded to the Feminine archetype, and that could explain their success as bombshells, actresses, models, what-have-you. Maybe these people are close to the (making this up) "Buffon" archetype? maybe these people reflect parts of us we don't like about ourselves?
I know, or think I know, why this happens I'm my specific case, but anyway these questions are deemed necessary not for one person, but for everyone we meet.
Finally, some pointers (and please, these are not "answers"):
"So notice. Notice who comes into your life that irritates you or pushes your buttons. It's usually something that is so unconscious within yourself, that it's impossible to see that it's about yourself. If it indeed is a part of your own Shadow, in time you are going to see how it's going to start repeating in patterns."
So check yourself before you wreck yourself,
César X.- Know thyself.
P.D.: "No one does this overnight. Shadow work is a life-long retrieval process and it takes years of patient inner dialogue with oneself to understand and even admit to ourselves that Shadow work is even realistic and necessary." - from http://www.shadowdance.com/shadow/theshadow.html
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