Brain Food #844: The invisible bags
On seeing shadows
Thoughts of the day
One of Carl Jung’s most well-known — though, ironically, less tangible — concepts is the idea of the shadow, an archetype that consists of our most repressed and hidden instincts and desires. The shadow is created, James Hollis says, as a way out of social discomfort and a means of fitting in, thus creating personal discomfort, perhaps what psychologists try to communicate through the term ‘cognitive dissonance’:
“We are often called to save the appearances, to paper over the gap between our presumptive identity and values and our actual practices. This distressing gap is what Jung called the Shadow, those parts of ourselves that make us uncomfortable with ourselves. Feeling discomfort, we repress these facts, project them onto others, are subsumed by them, or, occasionally, bring them to consciousness and integrate them into a more complex, more accurate sense of self.”
In a short yet far-reaching essay, poet and author Robert Bly described the workings of the soul’s shadow as an ever-growing bag, where we hide the parts of ourselves that did not receive approval or encouragement in our first years, even decades, of living:
“When we were one or two years old we had what we might visualize as a 360-degree personality. Energy radiated out from all parts of our body and all parts of our psyche. A child running is a living globe of energy. We had a ball of energy, all right; but one day we noticed that our parents didn’t like certain parts of that ball. They said things like “Can’t you be still?” Or “It isn’t nice to try and kill your brother.” Behind us we have an invisible bag, and the part of us our parents don’t like, we, to keep our parents’ love, put in the bag. By the time we go to school our bag is quite large. Then our teachers have their say: “Good children don’t get angry over such little things.” So we take our anger and put it in the bag. By the time my brother and I were twelve in Madison, Minnesota, we were known as “the nice Bly boys.” Our bags were already a mile long.”
The bag keeps being added to, until we reach a point when we realise we are carrying a heavy load with us: “We spend our life until we’re 20 deciding what parts of ourself to put in the bag, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again.”
What a bag might look like: an artist following a trend, too scared to make what they want; a yes person at work; a child following a parent’s dream instead of their own; or any form of crowd-pleasing, or people-pleasing.
Noticing the bag may come at a moment of quiet desperation, of looking at the mirror and not seeing one’s reflection, a form of returning to find no one at home. As Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.”
A feeling of fear may be a sign of recognition: “The man who opens his bag at forty-five or the woman who opens her bag rightly feels fear. She glances up and sees the shadow of an ape passing along the alley wall; anyone seeing that would be frightened.”
To take a deep look inside one’s bag is a step towards self-acknowledgment. A starting point could be being in tune with what feels like a chore, and what feels gripping, or energising. It could still, strangely, all link back to effortlessness. There is a part of success that comes from doing things one does not like well, or not being afraid to take on an unfamiliar challenge. But there is also the part of living that requires us to grab the bull by the horns, to take leaps. As Mary Oliver asked, “Are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?”
After all, the opposite of self-acknowledgment is self-denial. A recurring source of human discontent is often the futile, stubborn attempt to try and be who we are not, instead of fulfilling one’s own potential, which is something that is already part of us, though we may not be entirely conscious of it. It might explain why pieces about following one’s own path, or stories about people who gave it all up to pursue their passions, resonate deeply and widely.
But the shadow, of course, always remains with us. Every being that has a soul also possesses a shadow, which is why mythical creatures like vampires lack one. The goal is not to erase the shadow but to accept it, or integrate it. And from time to time, we might be able to imagine the invisible bags of those around us. If the metaphor resonated with you, it most probably resonated with someone else.
How do we see ourselves? Is it ever possible to truly reveal oneself to another?
Photographer Vivian Maier understands the difficulty of this task. In her self-portrait series, many shots are of her shadow, acknowledging not just its presence, but its importance and inevitability. The shadow is not part of the self-portrait; it becomes it.
