A Little Book on the Human Shadow by Robert Bly

Author:Robert Bly
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9780061777431
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-03-11T04:00:00+00:00

PART 4

Honoring the Shadow: An Interview with William Booth

4

Honoring the Shadow: An Interview with William Booth

Booth: The shadow by definition is that part of ourselves that is hidden from us. How do you answer a person who is not aware of having a shadow and asks you where to look for it?

Bly: I asked that question myself of an experienced Jungian analyst at a public talk, passing on a question asked of me. I said, “Suppose that a woman about thirty-five years old living in a small town in Minnesota knows no psychology. How would that woman begin the process of absorbing her shadow?” His answer was this: unless she meets a teacher who understands the concept of the shadow, she doesn’t have a chance. “That’s a harsh answer!” I said. “Well,” he added, “there might be another way.” He observed that our psyche in daily life tries to give us a hint of where our shadow lies by picking out people to hate in an irrational way. Suppose there is a woman in the town who seems to her too loose and too sexually active, and she finds herself thinking of this other woman a lot. In that case, the psyche is suggesting that part of her shadow, at least, lies in the sexual area. She has to notice precisely whom she hates. That is the path of attention. Suppose that she hates the current president of the PTA; and if you ask her, she’ll say that the woman is fakey, can’t be trusted, is too successful, and so forth. The psyche might be telling her that part of her shadow lies in the power area. She has unused and unrecognized power impulses, which she has put into the bag. Otherwise there wouldn’t be such heavily emotional contact with that other person. So, following the path of attention, one notices where the anger goes, and precisely whom we become obsessed with. We become entangled with people who are virtually strangers. That’s odd. The metaphor is this: if we maintain eye contact with that person, we can damage him or her by our anger and hatred. If we break off eye contact and look down quickly to the right, we will see our own shadow. Hatred then is very helpful. The old tradition says that if a man loves God he can become holy in twenty years; but if he hates God he can do the same work in two years.

Paying attention to what one likes or hates in literature helps also. I’ve always been obsessed with certain eighteenth-century men, Pope and Johnson, for example. I grumble about them as neoclassical, haters of feeling, rationalistic sticks, followers of metrical rules, enemies of spontaneity, etc. I finally stopped attacking them, and looked down to the right: it’s obvious that I’ve had in me for years an unused and unrecognized classical side, and I have to readjust my view of my own openness to feeling. It’s possible I’m not romantic. Facing that had two effects: first, I wasn’t able to sustain my hatred for Samuel Johnson.

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