Excerpt on Shadows

From Dreaming with Open Eyes: The Shamanic
Spirit in Twentieth Century Art and Culture
by Michael Tucker.

We came across this piece after we had already finished the album, so we cannot say that this passage influenced our work, but we did find it very interesting to read…

Just as modern art suggests that we need to penetrate the surface of things, and make far-ranging and imaginative spatial and symbolic connections in order to sense the deeper aspects of ourselves, so does Jungian thinking place the quest for self-knowledge within a framework of breadth and depth. This framework initially suggests that, behind the persona which each of us adopts to meet society’s demands, our true self should seek to develop, through an acknowledgement of the “shadow” or dark side in the psyche which we usually keep repressed. One thinks of aspects of the fool’s or the comedian’s role in society—or of the trickster figure of tribal culture, the joker and breaker of taboos who functions as a sort of creative safety valve for that culture…

Besides acknowledgement of the shadow-side of ourselves the development of the self also involves a creative awareness …of the complementary contrasts of male and female drives within us which Jung called the animus and anima. If persona and shadow, animus and anima begin to come into fruitful relation, then the self may sense itself growing towards the key condition of psychic health and maturity which Jungians call “individuation.” If such development towards individuation does not occur, a twisted personality can result—a personality which may project its own unresolved tensions and frustrations onto others, with potentially disastrous results at both an individual and societal level.