The Shadow
Umbra
The side of the personality one does not wish to be.
The Shadow: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
Jung’s name for everything in a person that the conscious personality does not acknowledge: the traits, desires, and capacities pushed out of sight because they do not fit the picture one has of oneself. In myth and tale it usually appears as a figure of one’s own sex: a dark companion, a pursuer, a brother or a rival.
The shadow is not simply evil. It holds what has been refused, and much that is refused is vital. Jung called its recognition the first step of self-knowledge, because what is not seen within is met outside, projected onto others.
The Shadow: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
The dark twin runs through myth and literature: Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, Faust and Mephistopheles, Jekyll and Hyde, and the doubles of Hoffmann and Dostoevsky. Folk belief gave the shadow a life of its own, and the man who sells his, like Chamisso’s Peter Schlemihl (1814), loses his place among the living.
In the Press’s Books
The press’s treatise The Wisdom of Catastrophe builds on the same recognition: what is refused in oneself is seen in the enemy.
From the Sources
Jung writes that because human nature also abounds in shadows, the insight gained in analysis is often painful, the more so the more one has neglected 'the other side'; and that some take it too much to heart, forgetting that they are not unique in having a shadow side.
“…but also abounds in shadows, the insight and understanding gained in practical analysis is often somewhat painful, all the more painful, of course, the more one has previously neglected the other side (which is the rule rather than the exception). Hence there are some who take the newly-won insight very much to heart, too much so in fact, forgetting that they are not unique in having a shadow side.”
C. G. Jung, M.D., LL.D., Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 'The Relation of the Ego to the Unconscious', Part I, Chapter II, 'Phenomena resulting from the Assimilation of the Unconscious', p. 143. Authorized translation by H. G. and C. F. Baynes; London: Bailliere, Tindall and Cox, 1928 (Internet Archive OCR text). The text, read in part
In Nietzsche's chapter 'The Shadow', Zarathustra's shadow tells him that it has pushed with him into all that is forbidden, the worst and the furthest, and that its one virtue is to have had no fear of any prohibition.
“With thee have I pushed into all the forbidden, all the worst and the furthest: and if there be anything of virtue in me, it is that I have had no fear of any prohibition.”
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, Fourth Part, Chapter LXIX, 'The Shadow'. Translator: Thomas Common (Project Gutenberg eBook #1998). The text, read in part
Each passage is quoted from the text named, which the press fetched and read, and was checked word for word against a fresh copy of it; the link opens that copy. Passages are given as printed, without the editors’ footnote numbers, and with words broken across lines joined.
Where to Read
- “The Shadow,” in Aion (1951), Collected Works 9ii
- “The Fight with the Shadow” (1946), CW 10
- Marie-Louise von Franz, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales (1974)
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
In the Glossary: Shadow, Projection.
Also among The Persons of the Psyche
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“The Shadow.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/shadow.
Symbols That Share Its Terms
The Antichrist (The adversary) · Projectio (Projection) · The Prima Materia (The first matter) · The Goat
Nearby in the alphabet: The Serpent: The chthonic, the healing, and the wise. The Seven: The number of the planets, the days, and the stages. Silver: The metal of the moon. The Skull: Death remembered, and what outlasts the flesh.