What is the Jungian Shadow?

Shadow is the dark side of someone's personality, meaning features incompatible with the ego moral status.

Generally speaking, people are not conscious about their shadow.

If you think other people are to be criticized due to behaviors such as stingy, cowardly, opportunistic, womanizing, hypocritical, etc., it is possible that these traits are also yours.

The shadow is projected and therefore difficult to notice.

Assimilating the shadow is a moral effort and is done by analyzing the projection, that is, the aspects that we find revolting in the behavior of others.

The Archetypal Shadow

The shadow may appear as an archetypal form too.

The devil's images and the demonic features (symbols) are very common in our dreams and movies.

Also the devil-like characters - who compensate the luminous figure of the Saviors - share the shadow realm.

The shadow appears at the beginning of the Jungian analysis and may be contaminated by other inner figures, and for a long time during the analytical effort.

Shadow in Dreams

The shadow appears in dreams in the form of characters from our surroundings or from society, such as an immoral politician, a greedy rich man, a womanizing actor, etc. Analysis should help us isolate those traits that belong to us and that we can admit as part of our personality.

Shadow as Trickster

The term "shadow" has initially been attributed by Jung to the trickster.

The trickster is a kind of second personality, such as the trouble maker found in fairy tales and jokes.

It is an inferior subhuman personality living together with the actual personality.

Jung about the Shadow

The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge, and it therefore,. as a rule, meets with considerable resistance.

Indeed, self-knowledge as a psychotherapeutic measure frequently requires much painstaking work extending over a long period. (From Aion: Phenomenology of the Self published in The Portable Jung, edited by Joseph Campbell, Penguin Books, 1976, p. 145.)

Further Resources about the Same Topic:

• More about the shadow concept may be found in Carl Jung's book Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of The Self. Order from Amazon.com: https://link.amazon/B0iASoRa7
   
• Our paper entitled The Meaning of a Dream with Shadow, illustrates the occurrence and function of shadow in our dreams. This paper is included free in our Jung and Dreams email course here or may be ordered as a single article from here.

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Author: J. Jones
Updated: 27.10.2026