Going Ghosting Gone

^{A brand new blog for a brand new year. A year that seems half over already. A year half removed from the world and half making up for lost time.}

This blog will specifically serve as a collection of citations for my upcoming thesis paper and project that will explore the idea of “The Shadow Self” and how an understanding of Shadow work can be beneficial for anyone looking to undergo some personal development.

“The “shadow” is a concept first coined by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung that describes those aspects of the personality that we choose to reject and repress. For one reason or another, we all have parts of ourselves that we don’t like—or that we think society won’t like—so we push those parts down into our unconscious psyches. It is this collection of repressed aspects of our identity that Jung referred to as our shadow self.” (https://highexistence.com/carl-jung-shadow-guide-unconscious/)

The idea of the “shadow self” and how it can tie into performance, and specifically for my work, dramatherapy has been intriguing because it allows for a manageable, definable system in which to take the individual, repressed personality traits bringing them to the light and finding ways to incorporate them into your developing psyche. Shadow work even goes so far as to assign these traits a specific archetype so that as we do the work we can have images of the characters we’re dealing with. Throughout these journals and in my paper I will start referring to these Shadow characters as “Ghosts” (which is just a bit of marketing on my part)

What’s an archetype?

“For example, someone who is stepping into the role of the director at a company would embody the “Leader archetype” and everything that comes with it. They would draw upon the power, the authority, the inherent benevolence of the ideal leader to create prosperity and profitability for the company.

Another archetype (usually for men) is that of “the Hero”. The Hero is the one who saves everyone from some looming threat at the end of the story, usually by doing deep introspection on himself, his flaws, and facing + integrating his shadow. This is “The Hero’s Journey” (https://www.unstoppablerise.com/jungian-archetypes/)

For me, archetypes really help separate things. Say you’re committing to using “The Knights of the Round Table” as the set of archetypes you embody as you do your shadow work…there’s a whole cast of characters at your disposal : The king, fair and just and yet committed to his way of things. The brave knight, young and eager to prove himself. Headstrong. The Page, similar to the knight but even more impressionable. The Jester, not taking matters of the court seriously and just thinking about his next meal. The list goes on. You can even name these characters!

Something I’m having trouble distinguishing right now is the difference between naming these archetypes so that you can identify outbursts and actions that you personally display and naming them so that you can recognize behaviors in others.

Arts Education

I believe incorporating some of this shadow work into the classrooms is helpful because the unconscious repression of the more undesirable parts of ourselves often happens in childhood. To be able to help kids identify things about themselves without them thinking that the trait “defines” them is paramount. “The class clown” is another archetype that comes up for me. Instead of understanding that the clown is a shadow self, a trick to be pulled out of a bag for good…to entertain others, something that many of us make careers out out…instead of understanding this they think they ARE the clown and end up doubling down on the behavior allowing it to reverberate and take up a large chunk of their personality. A goal of mine along with the thesis paper is to develop a work book to help, everyone really, identify the archetypes they relate to better equipping them to better connect with the material.

Tales of Hope and Resistance

I’m relating this work to the story I’ve been asked to develop for Tales of Hope and Resistance, because I feel that a lot of times these myths are written not about specific people, but about specific actions that people took and the things they felt while it was happening. Stories written to teach introspection, caution, but also bravery and pride. Emotions that we have inside of us and that so rarely get to be expressed in a fully cathartic matter.