The importance of analysing childhood for assimilation of the shadow

This chapter describes the usefulness of having the concept in mind as a metaphor that helps to organize a number of data from different fields. Examination of the empirical data and the ideas about the shadow which C. G. Jung presents to us in his published work and his seminars shows that no single definition is adequate to elucidate what he means to represent by the term. In the Christian religion the shadow is one element in a conflict between good and evil which can become largely split off altogether from human beings, who then become virtually pawns in a divine drama. That the archetypes form the basis of psychic life in childhood, but most of all in infancy, can no longer be doubted, yet, because the ego is weak, their activity is liable to result in many critical anxieties.