r/Jung

Made a video exploring one of Jung's most important and least understood concepts — the Shadow. Why we develop it, how it secretly runs our behavior, and what it actually means to integrate it.

This video explores Jung’s concept of the Shadow — specifically how it forms through the construction of the Persona, how it expresses itself through projection, and what Jung meant by integration as a path toward individuation.

The video draws a distinction that I think is often lost in popular discussions of shadow work — that the Shadow is not simply our “dark side” in a moral sense, but everything we have disowned about ourselves in the process of becoming socially acceptable. This includes not just rage or jealousy but buried ambition, suppressed creativity, and grief we were never permitted to feel.

It also addresses what Jung called enantiodromia — the tendency for extreme one-sided psychological positions to flip into their opposite — and why the most dangerous Shadow is often found in those who most strongly identify with virtue and goodness.

The aim is to present these ideas faithfully to Jung’s actual writings rather than the simplified version that circulates in self-help culture. I would genuinely welcome critique from this community on where the framing succeeds or falls short.

Would love to hear what you think.

https://www.youtube.com/@thewakingmind-g9s

Came across this passage from The Red Book again and it hit differently this time. It's the moment his own soul confronts him mid-crisis: "Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules.

What gets me is how he frames madness not as something to suppress or "manage" but as a part of the self that needs to be recognized and given life, otherwise it comes back as fate rather than choice. Feels connected to how he later talks about the shadow - what we refuse to integrate doesn't disappear, it just runs the show from underneath.

Curious how others here read this passage. Is he talking about literal madness, or more about the parts of ourselves that reason can't account for? And do you think this ties into individuation more broadly, or is it specific to what he was going through during the Liber Novus period?

Source: The Red Book: Liber Novus, C.G. Jung

As one mature he begin to realize the practicality of the witch, and the impracticality of the angelic anima

Edited :

Those who understand the idea expressed here have a laugh and walk away ! those who don't understand it walk away too silently, it's only those neurotic, infantile individuals who genuinely cannot see what this post is about, they can only see that very thing that is pressing down on their souls and project it here ! make it a good opportunity to study the patterns of these people how they tend to talk, what are their tactics, learn how they hide in sentences that make the crowd clap for them ! learn how something is driving them, and pushing them to put such comments that absolutely mean nothing if there was no one to see them ! they are posers ! because they have failed to face themselves ! i hope i made myself clear thanks !!

I have a wild amount of synchronicities. I need to talk about them and my friend told me about Jung recently. I’ve never been a spiritual person - but these are far too surreal for me to keep ignoring. I genuinely think that ‘back in the day’ I’d probably be considered a witch at this rate. How would Jung view these symbols and synchronicities?

Now, this is where it gets a bit weird, last August, I was walking my dog through the cemetery near my house, when a black crow started following me. It walked along side me for AGES. Both my very reactive dog and the crow not even bothered by one another. I sat down on a tree stump and it came up to me, it continued to follow me and even got up on the bench next to me when I sat down. My partner video called, and I sat with the crow. It was truly surreal how long it stayed with me, and how close and for how long.

Fast forward a few months, my partner had a sudden and unexpected diagnosis of terminal cancer. He passed away last month.

For some context, I met my partner whilst working on a cruise ship. The night we first met, we listened to music together and our first kiss was to David Bowie, Life on Mars. Our other sentimental songs are Heroes by Bowie and a more niche song called ‘Sea of Love’ by Phil Phillips.

I was on the ship we met a few months ago, a very special ship for us. It was the last day of my work trip - and I skipped a meeting, I had an ‘urge’ to go for a coffee, but every time I went to walk to the cofffee shop I kept turning around. I walked up onto the back deck of the ship and outside in the rain - and our song, Sea of Love, was playing. This song is SO niche and I stood there and nearly burst into tears. The last hour I was ever on our ship.

When he was in hospital, I stayed with him every night for the last two weeks of his life. One hour before he passed, I sang Sea of Love to him, and within an hour he took a turn and I held his hand and told him I loved him as he took his last breath.

After he passed, a moth flew over his bed and flew around me and his daughters - there had been no insects, flies, moths or anything in the room for all the weeks he was there. It was the shape of a heart when it landed on the wall. When I drove home that night, I got out of the car and a moth flew around me and landed on my forehead before flying off again. The next week, I went to look at photos and videos of him and a moth was on my laptop, then a week later I was laying in bed in the early hours and I played a video of him - as soon as I began to cry, a moth appeared and walked towards me on my bedside table and flew at me.

Yesterday I’ve been sorting his house out, I spent all day doing it. As soon as I picked up a piece of paper that was from when we met and I saw the date, almost instantly the song from our first kiss on that exact day, Life on Mars, played on the radio. Then hours layered I had an urge to go to a little trinkets shop near his house, went in, walked over to the left of the shop, picked up a notebook with his home town and place of birth on and Heroes by Bowie began to play right next to me.

I just don’t know anymore, my armour of logic is well and truly off. I’ve got videos and pictures for so much of this just so I can remind myself how crazy this all is. The exact timings and places of all of these things is too weird for my brain just to be ‘noticing patterns.’ I surrender to whatever the heck the universe is trying to show me or guide me towards.

Other random synchronicities:

- I had emergency surgery for an ectopic pregnancy in 2021. Three years later I was back in hospital for a pregnancy loss with my next partner. That night, I realised I was in the exact same room, the exact same bed and I realised it was the EXACT same date July 21st.
- I was cutting out articles from a travel magazine - not something I’d usually do - and I cut out a page all about Bhutan. A few days later, I woke up to a missed call from Bhutan (never happened before, I have no connections there) and the voicemail was the sound of birds in the distance - and I’d not googled or searched anything online!
- Twice in a month, I’ve eaten VERY random things on my lunch break (lamb kofte and rolos) and returned home to find my dad had surprised me by making/buying me the exact same thing that I’d eaten - these are things we would never normally eat.
- Someone from work shared a poster from another company about a Europe cruise with cats - I saw a cat on the poster and just knew I’d met it before. I found a picture I’d taken with that exact completely random cat in Montenegro that was the I exact cat from the poster.
- My friend was looking at Airbnbs in Italy and there was a completely random very generic picture of a street in a small town and I instantly saw this photo and knew I had stood right there and had a photo to prove it
- This time last year I randomly found a scallop shell in Scotland and it made me think about doing the Camino De Santiago - was in a pub recently and told a complete stranger I have a sabbatical coming up and said I didn’t know what to do - he said the Camino De Santiago! Of all the things in the world he said the very niche thing I’d been thinking of doing!?
- There are so many more people/places/connections ones too!

Hey, it’s still me, the same person asking about the same (MDR) book. This time I’m at the travel chapter, which is really interesting. But I can’t help to be bothered by something Jung said in the book, and I’m trying my best to understand why I am bothered by it (as a woman), maybe it is the culture that I grew up in, I don’t know.

But Jung made the comparison between the men and the women of Africa with the men and women in Europe. He said that women in Europe were too masculine, and men in Europe were too feminine. Whereas the women in Africa embodied the feminine better because of their possession. And he said that maybe European women were masculine as a compensation for their lack of possession (in the book, when he was talking about possession for the black women, he was talking about the food that they were growing, house and kids I think).

To me, I think it disturbs me because everyone is different and has their own desires. Not every woman wants to have a husband, kids etc.. When I was reading him, it was as if, in order for a woman to be aligned with her feminine, she needed to live her life this way.

Now it’s very possible that this isn’t what he meant, and this is why I came here, for a better explanation.

Thank you!

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Reading 'Memories, Dreams and Reflections' has been an eye-opening experience for me so far. I believe everything that I encountered and discovered in this book is a representative of my unconscious.

There were moments in the book that made me realise that there is an invisible binding thread that connects Jung to people like me and many more, who have a similar disposition and longing for a rich inner world.