Dr. von Franz can you explain the concept of the personal shadow and the collective shadow?
Well they in practical life they emerge but the personal shadow is the personal shortcomings of things which every human being could be conscious of which is not archetypal and therefore not a mystery for instance such things as greed for money or jealousy. Jealousy is one of these aspects of the shadow or laziness sloppiness unrelated and a sentimentality and was not inferiorities which everybody has, but prefers not to know about. And because we generally strive through education and through environmental pressure to be a bit better than we actually are. Or we have our own ideals: I'd often to be jealous, I often to have a power complex.
And but you see for instance that in criminals they sometimes leave their inferiority and then they have a personal shadow which is Noble: they dream about noble people and it's just reversed they live so to speak their mean side and then they have a positive shadow. And therefore even in a what is more the average truth: the inferior shadow is not really bad - it's just human all too human and something one could know about if one is jealous or if one is suddenly possessed by wanting money or so on one one could know about it if one is honest with oneself.
But the collective shadow has to do with the dark side of the archetype of the Self that means it's the shadow of the God image. In the Christian tradition it would be the devil and that has always been personified and felt as something which has not to do with directly with the human being. I mean it: somebody is possessed by the devil he's much worse, then just he's not human - it's demonic.
But on the other hand generally that merges first you have this area of dim dark side and behind it lacks the other I for instance seen that when Germany went to the devil in Nazism people fell into it through their personal shadow. For instance they didn't want to lose their job because they were clinging to money that was a personal shadow, but then they joined in with the Nazi movement for that reason and did much worse things than they would have done normally under normal social conditions. So you can say the personal shadow is the bridge to the collective shadow or they open the door to the collective shadow. But the collective shadow comes up in those terrible mass psychosis.
Well, now if a person becomes more aware of it's personal shadow?
That's why it's so tremendously important, because then you don't fall into the collective shadow. Is like that there's one door open and the devil can come in. But if you know your personal shadow, you can shut all the doors, then you don't join in massacre and holocausts and such. You catch yourself and you realize and you can keep out of it, then keep reasonable, keep your head. While the average person who doesn't know about her personal shadow, they get swept away by the collective evil.
Is it possible to speak of a shadow in terms of national identities: a shadow in Switzerland, shadow in the United States?
Yes, actually the summing up of every society has its ideals and lives up to those ideals and has also a shadow. The average American has a typical shadow and the average Swiss has a typical shadow, which is slightly different - but there again, you can say: the more individuals in a nation know about their shadow, them the better that nation is. All are less likely to fall into a mass psychotic destructive sweeping away movement, where people lose every measure. You know I mean just kill their relatives, kill thousands of people without even having a bad conscience about it. This is just madness.
Is the analytic process the only way of coming to terms with the shadow and becoming aware of it? Are there other ways for for individual people to?
I don't know this is the only way, but it's the only way I know, because you know to see one's own shadow is such a painful thing, that you will never do it honestly in the group. You can't admit such painful little secrets. So all the official confessions people make in groups: Oh, I am jealous or I'm childish - just words, they cover up, when it comes to the really painful spot, even the analyst has to be very tactful and and very trading on the dangerous ground and looking out of the window and you know because it's the other is we see under his realization of his inferiority.
So he needs a man to human being to human being situation to help the other to become aware of his shadow and you can't do it in a big sweep.
It's the individual connection though?
One connection which is decisive, because you can't stand your strata when you are alone you just collapse you need a human being to hold your hand when you go into that dangerous area.
And if there's a group, you slide out kind of?
You slide out or you make general, you know like in the Oxford groups everybody said: I'm greedy of money, I drink too much and they didn't mean it. it's in the personal relationships that it becomes so awkward and then you are pinpointed and then it becomes an indelible shock to see your own shadow and then then you have it that you really know it you can't forget it again the next morning.
Well doesn't that also happen in long-term friendships or marriages that you're kind of up against a wall?
All close relationships are in a way analytical relationships - it is a because it simply means a relationship in which both partners try to become conscious by exchanging with each other sharing, each other treat.
There seems to be around the around marriage a kind of avoidance and aversion now, so divorce is so easy and it's happening at least in the State that people don't stay married very long so they in a way that are they running from the shadow do you think?
They are running from either from the shadow or very often from Animus and Anima that's the big complication between the sexes. If you live with somebody of the same sex it's the shadow gets constellated, but if you live with somebody of the other sex, then the bigger task comes that's why it's the more valuable relationship because it's also the bigger task because that constellate Anima and Animus and as the average American nowadays doesn't know yet what that is. Whenever Anima and Animus clashed, they run run apart they finish they throw it over if they start it out they would learn a lot about themselves. But that doesn't mean that we are not sometimes for divorce, there are situations you better think of the divorces. There are relationships where both partners become destructive to each other, mainly destructive and then it is better to to make a final decision, but there are others where it's just a clash of Animus and Anima mind. If they could become conscious, they could get on again.
