Get to Know Your "Dark Side" Through Stories

Surely one of the most vivid and memorable metaphors in psychology is Carl Jung’s shadow. Similar in many ways to Freud’s “Id,” the term shadow helps us to visualize the way in which troublesome human instincts and impulses may be consigned to darkness within the psyche. I picture a troop of chimpanzees, caged up in the dark, getting more and more enraged, waiting for a chance to kill their jailer and launch themselves at the world.

Much of child-rearing is an attempt to imprison socially undesirable behaviors, and even thoughts, within the shadow, where they cannot cause havoc. Some degree of suppression is needed, if people are to live together in relative civility. We can’t be allowed to attack everyone we don’t like, or “jump” everyone to whom we are sexually attracted.

Shadow-Energy Is Life-Energy

Yet, despite its dangers, shadow-energy is vital not only to survival but also to happiness. Shadow-energy is life-energy in its most potent form. Passion, vitality, enthusiasm, and sexual love all partake of shadow-energy. Parental love does too. A person with no shadow would be a weak, pathetic thing. And attempts to shove too many impulses too completely into the shadow can have a whack-a-mole effect, the way attempts to suppress Satan’s power in Salem gave rise to acts of Satanic cruelty.

It’s worth remembering that if at least some of our ancestors hadn’t used shadow-energy to do things commonly thought of as horrific, we would not be here today. Shadow-energy is survival energy.

Integrating Shadow-Energy Into Our Personalities

To be mentally healthy, individuals must find ways to integrate shadow-energy into their personalities without becoming psychopaths. Stories—novels, movies, podcasts, whatever—offer one good way to do this. By empathizing with the characters in stories, people can experience even the most destructive parts of shadow-energy vicariously and claim some of that energy for their own.

It’s axiomatic among writers that great stories require great antagonists. Such antagonists are often full of shadow-energy. The monsters that Odysseus faces—the cyclops, the sirens, Scylla, Charybdis—come straight out of our hominid past, when being torn apart and eaten was a serious possibility. The mere name of Mordred, from the King Arthur legends, evokes darkness and the fear of death. Shakespeare’s plays are full of shadow-energy—Iago, Richard the Third, Lady Macbeth, and on and on.

Closer to our own time, Dr. Jekyll feels the horror of humankind on finding that Mr. Hyde lives within. Who isn’t fascinated by the power of vampires—especially sexy ones—to seduce and kill? People wolf down stories about criminals—the mafia, hitmen, serial killers. They love serial killers even more when they kill only bad people, giving their fans an excuse for their fascination with shadow-energy. In my novel Ursula Lake, the three protagonists have to deal with the shadow-energy in their own psyches, even as they encounter a character fully possessed by the shadow.

Yet shadow-energy is not confined to antagonists. Well-rounded protagonists possess it too. There’s nothing more boring and less realistic than a morally perfect character. As we identify with a story’s protagonist, we experience vicariously the struggle to tap shadow-energy without being ruled by it.

In our neo-puritanical, “cancel-culture” world, more and more material is being shoved into the shadow, from which it may emerge in destructive ways—for instance, the events of January 6, 2021. Experiencing the shadow through literary art is a constructive way to siphon off some of the shadow’s potentially destructive force. When we experience a story, we not only increase our ability to empathize with others, but we also give our shadow-energy a chance to come out into the light. By integrating some of that energy into our conscious selves, we become stronger, more capable, more compassionate, and more fully human.