The Collective Shadow in Jungian Psychology
Dangers of Groupthink and Public Scapegoating by Media
Aug 10, 2008
According to Carl Jung there are two types of shadow projection: the personal and the collective. The personal shadow is a projection of the individual’s unconscious and unlived life onto another individual. The collective shadow is a projection of the collective unconscious onto another group. Similarly, the projection may arise from one whole group onto another group.
This is how entire populations of people are made into enemies. This is also what props up racial, religious, and ethnic suspicion and hatred. Whenever one feels oneself or one's group superior to another one is engaged in shadow projection. This “other" becomes the “scapegoat” to carry away the “sins of the father.” The so-called sins are never carried away. They just go underground where they breed more hatred and shadow material. It sets up a vicious cycle.
The Scapegoat
Historically the scapegoat was an actual goat that carried the sins of the tribe and then was slaughtered and given to the gods. Nowadays, the slaughter is only figurative and the goat itself is not used. Instead human individuals or groups of individuals carry the projections.
The shadow qualities being projected are always in glaring contrast to the individual’s presumed ideals. This holds true for groups as well as individuals. Whenever one group, one society, or one nation is convinced of its own moral goodness and righteousness, the shadow is lurking. This shadow is more than happy to oblige by assigning blame and responsibility to the “other” person or group. Anything to keep it from attaching to oneself or one's group, in other words.
The Media Offers it up
So, when media or cable news offers up scandals to excite, surprise and titillate, the reason the public is so gripped, so held under its spell, is that this person or group has become the carrier of the population’s own darkness. This is what is meant by shadow projection. It seems that indeed “the world has become a stage for the collective shadow.”
Whenever a person is caught behaving “badly,” meaning in some way that goes against the accepted code of society, it is good to remember he or she is only acting out of a shadow self. Moreover, those who are deeply disturbed by this “acting out” behavior are the ones most likely caught on the hook of their own projection. It is their own shadow material that is in play.
The World Is a Stage
The reason the tabloids can win so much mileage from these stories is that most people would rather project their own issues onto another person or group than recognize or deal with it in themselves. In other words, they have projected their own worst nightmare, a nightmare which they have dutifully repressed under lock and key. The more tightly the shadow material is repressed the darker and more dangerous it becomes.
The cycle then continues and this shadow material gets projected onto another group or onto an individual. New scapegoats are born; new enemies constructed. And it is always, without fail, projected onto someone or something else. One cannot avoid this or do away with it through will power. It always comes back to bite. These ideas founded by Carl Jung, father of Depth Psyhcology, have become widely acknowledged.
Same Holds True for Nations
Just as on the individual level, whatever is denied and repressed on the national level will be projected onto other nations. “To the extent that I have to be right and good, he, she, or they become the carriers of all the evil which I fail to acknowledge within myself.” The same holds true for nations. These are some of the ways human beings attempt to deal with their own shadow material and in so doing end up dehumanizing others. All of this is to ensure that " they alone are wearing the white hats.”
References:
"The Evolution fo the Shadow" by E. Whitmont and "Introduction: the Shadow Side of Everyday Life" by the editors from Meeting the Shadow: the Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature. (1991). eds.Zweig & J. Abrams. New York: Putnam Books.
