THE PERSONA AND THE SHADOW

[Kirsteneklund7]

THE PERSONA AND THE SHADOW
« on: August 30, 2018
Like many of us as I went through life I had an alter ego that was really just me. "SHE"would push through when my resistance was low. If I was working into the night by myself I would find myself saying the words “ I want to be a woman” or “ I wish I was a girl” or “ I’m going to be a woman.”
 Then I would think - why do I do that? I always knew deep down I wished I was female but I thought it was just a quirk like fantasizing about being rich & famous. I gave up cross-dressing at age 13 and put the focus into chasing girls and that worked for a long time. Unfortunately more than one girlfriend discovered I had a thing about wanting to be a woman.

  Eventually (in my forties)  “ SHE” was so insistent she pushed on through and had me on my knees - it was the end of my life as I knew it. Therapy and HRT and establishing a truce with “HER” started a new life.
  Like a lot of us I have read Freud and am familiar with the concepts. Carl Jung is a new thing for me and I find his concepts in popular literature everywhere. I came across the following in a great magazine I read called-“Womankind"(# 17 Unicorn)- a sister magazine to  “ New Philosopher”

(Quote)

                                       LEARNING TO LOVE YOUR SHADOW


Jung developed many psychological theories which have entered the cultural mainstream: complexes, introversion, synchronicity, the idea that the psyche seeks wholeness and that the subconscious speaks to us through mythological archetypes. One of his most useful ideas is the concept of the PERSONA AND THE SHADOW. Jung thought that adults in a civilized society have to learn to play a role and wear a mask. - he called this the PERSONA. Its how we would ideally like to be seen by other people. Behind the mask we bury those aspects of our psyche we deem ugly, weak, shameful, unacceptable or humiliating, which other people may judge or ridicule. Jung called this the SHADOW. The SHADOW is a “kind of hostile brother”, an “ adversary”, a “stranger”, bitterly opposed to our PERSONA with all its fake posturing and social ambitions. It behaves like a devil, “ and seems to delight in playing impish tricks”. We keep trying to bury it, but like a zombie, it keeps reappearing and demanding our attention.

  If the gap between the PERSONA and the SHADOW grows too big, if a person is playing a role that is simply too fake, then the energy to maintain this division becomes exhausting, and the person may have a breakdown. The SHADOW becomes demonic filled with resentful and vengeful energy, hating the ego’s false life and plotting to shatter it. The individual needs to find a truce, a way of reintegrating the SHADOW back into the psyche, rather than having it as a menacing adversary lurking in the window.

  The SHADOW is not entirely evil – it may be primitive, emotional, and socially awkward, it may play havoc with our ego’s plans for status and glory, but its also source of power, healing, vitality, and wholeness, if we have the courage and maturity to face it. Jung wrote that the SHADOW is not just” slime from the depths … this ‘slime’ contains not merely incompatible and rejected remnants of everyday life, or inconvenient and objectionable animal tendancies, but also germs of new life, and vital possibilities for the future”. The PERSONA by contrast, is a fake construction, without soul, without life.

(Unquote).


Please tell me if you found this in your own FTM or MTF journey.

  Big fat hugs everyone, Kirsten x.