The Shadow Self is a psychological concept that describes the negative and disowned parts of ourselves. Think of descriptors like greedy, rageful, selfish, or spiteful and you get the idea. In Christian mythology the same concept is framed as the seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride. Everyone has a shadow self. A person without shadow material of their own is a strange bird and perhaps even more off-putting than someone who is outwardly flawed. The Flanders character from the TV show The Simpsons is an example of someone without any shadow, and that’s what makes Flanders funny; it’s what also makes the character feel creepy, or odd at least. A key component to shadow material is that it is unconscious to the individual. If I am greedy and this affects myself and others, and I know I am greedy but continue to be greedy, then I am suffering with either a personality disorder, a compulsion, or bad parental modeling, or any combination of these.
The Psychiatrist Carl Jung is credited for re-purposing the word ‘shadow’ to describe the unconscious elements of our consciousness. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was published in 1886 ten years after the birth of Jung, and likely a book Jung would have been familiar with. It is a work of fiction who’s main character is split between his good qualities and his bad qualities. It is an eloquent and moving piece of proto-psychology, like most enduring art is, and is the perfect embodiment of the qualities of the Shadow as conceptualized by Jung. Carl Jung was famously the younger contemporary and acolyte of Sigmund Freud before outgrowing his elder’s concepts and blooming into his own rose. Freud’s key insight was a simple one: That there existed a vast unconscious body within human consciousness, one that has the potential to override the conscious decision making apparatus of human logic. Jung took this a step further: the unconscious is alive and running the show and must be given equal stake when defining our existence.
Having a shadow side is a fact of existence rather than a necessary deficit. The unconscious is the domain of the shadow and as such it is hidden from view for the most part. Someone gets drunk and they act in a surprising way by saying something rude or inappropriately sexual and the impression is that ‘alcohol reveals the way we really feel’. I don’t believe this is true, I believe alcohol lowers inhibition and therefore the barricade between the shadow self and the conscious self, allowing shadow material to spill over and contaminate the carefully constructed persona. A child of two or three you will note, has no problem acting freely; stealing what they wish, eating like a pig, stripping naked and exposing their pre-sexual organs, shitting and pissing wherever they please and generally feeling zero regret for puking on someone’s face. We learn during our childhood what is expected of us and pack away our unruly and un-socialized self into the closet where some of the urges will persist to be urges and grow in strength while others will shrink and disappear.
If you look for your shadow within your own self you will find its elements, if you don’t already know them intimately. I’ve found a good place to start is with the people whose behaviors agitate you or who you are very judgemental of – do they embody something you wish you could express or do they remind you of something you wish you were not? Often times the behavior of others are tip offs to your own fears or your own shadow desires. Keep in mind this is not a recipe in a cookbook but an invitation to explore one’s own behaviors and attitudes – guard yourself from pathologizing yourself, save that for webMD. That said, when a public figure is constantly accusing others of being crooked or dishonest there is a good chance they might be talking about their shadow.
The radio show “The Shadow” was based on a 1930’s pulp fiction crime novel character of the same title. It’s tagline was “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!” Although the radio show and subsequent studio film includes elements of eastern mysticism, hypnosis, E.S.P., intuition and telekinesis, there are no direct connections to Jungian psychology despite the fact that the radio show’s tagline could also be the tagline of a Jungian pop-psychology podcast. The Shadow rose from the American pulp fiction genre. Pulp fiction was a safe zone for the shadow material of our culture. The cheap, small books were a discrete and controlled space for citizens to explore disowned and socially damaging material without actually enacting it in real life and suffering the possible negative effects – sexuality, criminal impulses, rebellion, raw dirty emotion. It was a place where you can examine ‘what evil lurks in the hearts of men’ without being one of them or their victims or accomplices.
Currently Reality TV holds a portion of that space for us in the media landscape, but with one tantalizing fracture in the facade – the fantasy can become a reality. Reality TV has in its name the invitation for a ‘normal’ everyday person to become the subject within a TV show. Social media platforms and streaming platforms remove even more friction from the process by eliminating agents, managers, casting companies and auditions. Just by uploading your lip syncing performance on TikTok you can become true reality TV, and have an instant audience of the entire wired world. If you don’t believe it just log on and look, the top hits have many more times the views than many authors have readers of their books. Access to reality TV-like dynamics, for both the creators and the consumer, has been radically lubricated by tech.
As an embodiment of our shadow material, our sins as it were, it seems natural that Reality TV and it’s kindred social platforms is not held in high regard by the establishment. Like the pulp fiction before it, it is considered trash, cheap, the opposite of Art, not aesthetically worthy. A common refrain when people discuss it with me is ‘it’s my guilty pleasure’. Guilty pleasure because we aren’t supposed to openly admit to liking the negative parts of our society. We aren’t supposed to discuss sex acts, bodily function, homosexuality, menstruation and on and on and on. The Emmy’s do not even bother with Docu-soaps, even though that is where all the action is on a psychological level. I think it is fitting that Reality TV should be disowned, that makes it vital and lively. As soon as things are cleaned up they lack the danger and draw. A guy changing his tire by the side of the road will not draw an eye, but a good crash will stop traffic.
By becoming part of a reality show, whether as a cast member on a docu-soap such as The Real Housewives franchise or as a TikTok lip sync-er you will likely be playing in the Shadow. As an editor I was frequently asked about cast members’ personalities: “Are they really like that?”. The answer could be “Yes, part of them” (read my post How to Make a Villain), but 9 times out of 10 if the same question was asked to the cast member, they would say that it is just a put on for the cameras. From my perspective there is nothing put on at all; the camera and the editing allows us to draw back the curtain and reveal the shadow material for all of us to feast our eyes upon.
Living life in shadow material is unpredictable at best and calamitous often. One recent(ish) example that springs to mind is Logan Paul frolicking in a suicide forest in the presence of an actual dead human. He was, apparently unknowingly, solidly in the Mr. Hyde territory. After a thorough internet beat-down he was able to admit that he was ‘misguided’. Awareness can only partially inoculate one from the perils of welcoming the Shadow material into our lives. Many of our most celebrated cultural icons were consumed by or had near fatal scrapes with the bargain. Jay Z speaks quite directly about the benefits of therapy for those whose chosen profession is to dance with the Shadow.
Reality TV is often cited as a symptom of a once great society now circling the drain. Those who have not stopped to consider the relevance of pop culture find the people and scenarios on reality TV grotesque and disgusting. They are not necessarily wrong as much as they aren’t appreciating the position these subjects are holding open for the rest of us. I don’t believe that society is becoming somehow more deranged, I just wonder if there isn’t simply more opportunity to have the deranged parts of ourselves put on display. Couple that with the anonymity that the internet can provide and there is ample opportunity to wallow in our Shadows with even less consequence than before. A simple tweet, an offhand post, or a quickly stitched together meme can set anyone on a path towards parts of yourself you would never want someone to see let alone pile onto.
Through the portals of our flat-screens, PC’s and smartphones it’s easy to believe that we have reverted back to our two and three year old selves where clothes are off, chunks are being blown on the rug and no one gives a F@%#. Yet, if that damned Bard was correct, and if ‘a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’ then I can’t imagine as a race we have learned to love any harder, hate with more force or hold another human with any greater sincerity than the generation above or below, even with all these advances in tech. This is to say “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!”