The Shadow

Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist, used the shadow for the parts of the personality we push out of view because they clash with the image we want to hold of ourselves: aggression in someone who sees themselves as gentle, ambition in someone who prides themselves on modesty, envy in someone who sees themselves as generous. Greene adopts the idea and makes it practical. A denied trait does not disappear, he argues. It shows up in sudden outbursts, in behaviour that surprises the person afterwards, or in the intensity with which they attack the same trait in others. Two uses follow. For reading others, an unusually loud condemnation can be a clue, and an exaggerated public virtue sometimes hides its opposite, though this is a pattern to notice, not a rule to apply. For yourself, the more valuable use, the aim is integration rather than denial: notice the trait that irritates you most in other people and ask honestly whether some of it is yours. Acknowledged, it becomes something you can manage and even channel, as ambition or directness, instead of something that manages you.