Throughout this series on psycho-epistemology, I've touched on two important issues: that of associations without symbols, and that of repression. These two issues are at the root of Carl Jung's idea of "the shadow".
Because they cannot be represented, and isolated from the totality of our mental content, pre-conceptual associations cannot be experienced as discrete ideas, but only as vague feelings - and as the choice between investigating that feeling or repressing it. Even if the association in question is a harmless one, such as "I have had more pleasure with chocolate than vanilla ice-cream", we can never know exactly what it identifies, and the full extent of its implications, until we put it into words, and actively integrate it with the rest of our knowlege.
The Jungian shadow is the concept that identifies the totality of Man's mental content that hasn't been explicitly identified. He calls it a shadow because our relationship with this mental content is the same as the one we have with physical shadows - we know something exists there, yet do not know what it is. Because it refers to an unidentified existent, the feeling of a pre-conceptual association is always one of anxiety.
The shadow, and the feeling of anxiety brought about by its content, are a perfectly healthy part of our minds. Our time is limited, and choosing what is worth focusing on is also choosing what we push away from our conscious awareness. Anxiety merely gives us a direct awareness of the ratio between our identifications and our total perception - of "how much we know about", compared to "how much we know exists". This is a key component of one's sense of life, as it reflects how much we are in control of our surroundings, and ultimately, of existence itself.
We are always perceiving, and choosing what to focus on, and what to ignore. Therefore, the shadow is never static - it can be shrinking, passively expanding, or actively being inflated. We "shrink" it by introspection, i.e. by identifying and reflecting upon our pre-existing mental content, thus turning pre-conceptual associations into concepts. It expands passively as a natural by-product of conceptualization - to focus on something is to direct our perception away from things we find irrelevant, thus creating unidentified mental content. The passive increase of subconscious mental content is not problematic, because it happens at the same time as the increase in conscious content - unidentified thoughts do not make up a larger share of our total mental content.
Our attitude towards this type of mental content, however, can be unhealthy. To the extent that an individual guides his thoughts by the principle that reality is what it is, his attitude will be one of identifying the pre-conceptual associations he comes across, despite the initial anxiety. To the extent that he is guided by the emotional, short-term avoidance of suffering, his attitude will be one of evading it, because of anxiety. Jung identifies a positive feed-back loop brought about by the unhealthy attitude towards one's shadow, which he calls "inflation".
By evading a specific pre-conceptual association, we reinforce the notion that it is something to be evaded, making it even harder to identify in the future. In order to continuously evade pre-conscious content that causes anxiety, one must evade every thought that brings it to the surface. These secondary evasions thus become more unidentified mental content, while the initial evasion is given more importance - both of which bring about more anxiety, hindering further identifications.
This leads us to a situation in which the contents of the shadow systematically outgrow our conscious identifications, leading to a pathological increase in anxiety. Instead of playing its role in motivating caution - the less we know, the more anxious we are, the less risks we take - the emotion makes us unable to think and act. This can lead to all sorts of conditions, from phobias to psychotic episodes - and also to the dangerous use of projection as a defense mechanism, which I will deal with tomorrow.
1923.538 SRY