The Shadow

Carl Jung’s concept of “the shadow” represents the personal characteristics an individual possesses that he or she would like to renounce or disown. Jungian analyst Aniela Jaffe says the shadow is the ‘‘sum of all personal and collective psychic elements which, because of their incompatibility with the chosen conscious attitude, are denied expression in life.’’

                                                                                                                            

Each of the characters in “Rashomon” denied these “shadow” characteristics about themselves as they told their version of the event. From each character’s belief-perspective he or she is telling the truth while in fact the narrative is being told to show the character in a more noble or honorable light than was actually the case.

In the poem “The Boy Who Had No Shadow” the boy would have seemed a little too perfect to those with a shadow.  For those with a shadow nothing is more to be loathed and ostracized than a person like the boy so as the boy says,”Sooner or later they will greet me / at the river and, judging me as peculiar, / will shove me in the river / to drown.

Those with a shadow would have used a Freudian defense mechanism called projection.  Through projection unwanted impulses or feelings are displaced onto another person, where they then seem a threat from the external world. This threat seems so real to those with a shadow that they would have taken precautions: “So, just to be sure, just to be sure / the boy had no shadow, they kept him down for days.

This exploitation of “difference” in individuals, which, if truth be known, probably always operates from the shadow and through Freudian projection. The remedy for the injustice that is inherent in this process is as elusive as a child chasing his or her shadow and expecting to catch it.