Several years ago, I wrote a short essay on the collective Shadow, drawing parallels that Jung himself outlined in his essay on Wotan. That piece was rather abstract and generalised, though grounded in the situation unfolding at the time. Today, I want to return to this topic — not because it has become more theoretical, but precisely because it has become painfully concrete.
What was once a philosophical concept has turned into something I see in real people — friends, acquaintances, clients. The collective Shadow has stepped out of textbooks and into therapy rooms, kitchen conversations, and sleepless nights. It manifests on every level: cognitive, emotional, and existential.
What do I mean when I say the problem has become real? I mean that people are suffering because of it. Suffering expressed in guilt, alienation, possession, obsession. As if ancient demons have emerged into the light, waiting for their master. Although, as Jung rightly noted, demons have given way to neuroses.
This suffering captures the cognitive level, influencing our actions and decisions — decisions for which we bear responsibility. The internal becomes external. But there is also a reverse tendency, forming a vicious circle: actions reinforce emotions, penetrating the existential level — the level of our values and fundamental beliefs. This is where deep identity shifts occur.
So let us talk about this phenomenon in detail.
I want to start with a bit of necessary groundwork, because there is some confusion in Jung’s early terminology that persists to this day.
Many people know Jung through the phrase “collective unconscious” and immediately mix it up with archetypes and archetypal images. This is not entirely correct.
Jung spoke of the personal unconscious — everything that arises from individual life experience. A specific person who suffered a specific trauma and suppressed certain desires and capacities acquires a corresponding piece of their individual Shadow.
Elements of the personal unconscious include the Persona — our social identity — and a portion of the Shadow. (I have written about the Shadow and Persona in previous articles — the Shadow is our alter ego, everything we deny, suppress, despise, and refuse to acknowledge.) But it is only a portion of the Shadow, because beyond the personal unconscious, there exists the collective.
The collective unconscious, in this sense, is formed through the interaction of groups of people. We can speak of the collective unconscious of a family, a workplace, a political party, a nation, or even humanity as a whole. Many of you have probably noticed that people behave differently in different groups. This happens precisely because of group dynamics — the collective unconscious, which is, roughly speaking, the sum of all individual unconscious minds within that group. (It is not strictly a sum, but this approximation works for our purposes.)
So the collective unconscious belongs to a specific group. It has nothing to do with archetypes.
Archetypes form what is called the objective psyche. Objective because it is universal to all human beings. This is why archetypes reside there — universal patterns inherent to our species. For those who studied calculus, you could express this as the limit of all possible collective unconscious minds. The universal within the collective.
Now, having sorted out the terms, let us return to the Shadow — specifically, its collective dimension.
A group, just like an individual, also develops a Shadow. How does this happen? Exactly the same way it does with ordinary people.
Imagine a group that believes one should drink exclusively Coca-Cola, never Pepsi. Accordingly, Pepsi — along with kombucha and everything else — ends up in the group’s Shadow, because these are denied and suppressed at the level of group values. The more fervently the group preaches this idea — say, holding morning gatherings to praise Coca-Cola and curse Pepsi — the more pronounced the Shadow becomes.
This reminds me of the story of Senator Cato, who ended every speech in the Roman Senate with the same phrase: Carthago delenda est — Carthage must be destroyed. Regardless of the topic being discussed.
The collective Shadow is formed from individual Shadows, which is logical: who joins a group? Those who share its fundamental beliefs and values. This usually means their individual Shadows are also similar. For the collective Shadow to emerge, you need a critical mass of individual Shadows. They are the necessary ingredient in the equation.
OK, so the collective Shadow exists. So what?
The answer is simple: the crowd.
The very word “crowd” carries negative connotations in most languages, and for good reason. When a group develops a strong collective Shadow, it begins to “capture” even those individuals who did not originally share the corresponding individual Shadow.
Social psychology — both Western and beyond — offers numerous experiments supporting this thesis. The famous Asch conformity experiments showed that people would call white black just to avoid standing out from the group. The Zimbardo prison experiment and Milgram’s obedience experiments demonstrated that people, under the influence of authority figures, are perfectly capable of consciously inflicting serious harm on another person “for the greater good.”
These experiments are not only about our dark side but also about the collective one, because they all share one common element: this only works in groups. You need either planted confederates or already “processed” comrades. This is precisely what points to the collective nature of the phenomenon.
And if we are ready to sacrifice our own perception, ready to believe that black is white and truth is a lie — then what can we say about half-truths? Play one string here, another there, stay silent about this, embellish that — and the result of the collective Shadow’s influence is right there on the surface. Or on our faces.
This might sound somewhat abstract — after all, in real life, as we would like to believe, nobody is going to run large-scale experiments on us. That is closer to conspiracy theories.
True enough. But the mechanism still exists and still works.
What is important is that the collective Shadow can easily influence not only our judgments (which we could, in theory, verify through critical thinking) but also our emotions. And here is where it gets truly dangerous, because recognising the sources of your emotions and managing them requires something approaching mastery — or perhaps a Buddha.
The power of the collective Shadow lies in its emotional impact. It awakens our most basic instincts — which is exactly why it is so attractive. Notice that the most popular slogans, repeated and chanted by millions, are usually extremely banal. Because their power lies not in meaning but in the accompanying emotion — in the feeling of belonging to something larger. And this is true — the collective Shadow is far greater than any individual ego.
Still sounds too abstract? Here are more everyday examples of the collective Shadow at work.
It emerges when we divide people into “us” and “them” — regardless of the principle, whether it is gender, orientation, beliefs, or faith.
It emerges when we place someone else’s values above our own because “that is how it should be.”
It emerges when we act out of “the greater good” — because, unfortunately, the road paved with good intentions does not lead to paradise.
It emerges when we spend our energy on ideas instead of spending it on ourselves and those close to us.
It emerges when we argue not to discover the truth but to force everyone to accept our point of view.
It emerges when we notice that we have changed — but these are not changes we ourselves initiated.
It emerges when we want to change the world but do not want to change ourselves.
Allow me to quote a substantial passage from an interview Jung gave in 1945:
“Can we hope that the demons will be cast out and a new, better world will rise from the ruins?”
Jung: No, the demons cannot be gotten rid of yet. This is a difficult task, the solution of which lies in the distant future. Now that the angel of history has left the Germans, the demons will seek a new victim. And that will not be hard. Every person who loses their shadow, every nation that believes in its own infallibility, will become their prey. We love the criminal and take a burning interest in them because the devil makes us forget the beam in our own eye while we notice the splinter in our brother’s eye, and that is the way to fool us.
“Universal suggestibility” plays an enormous role in America today, and how much the Russians are already enchanted by the demon of power.
I have already said that salvation lies only in the peaceful work of educating the individual. This is not as hopeless as it may seem. The power of the demons is enormous, and the most modern means of mass suggestion — the press, radio, cinema, etc. — are at their service. Nevertheless, Christianity was able to hold its ground against an overwhelming adversary, and not by propaganda and mass conversion — that came later and was not so essential — but through persuasion from person to person. And that is the way we must also go if we wish to tame the demons.
“Werden die Seelen Frieden finden?” Ein Interview mit Prof. C. G. Jung von P.S. In: Weltwoche, Zurich, 11.5.1945.
Jung’s message is clear: if we truly want to make the world better, we must begin with our own Shadow. Why? Because the collective Shadow is formed from our individual ones. This is not a metaphor — it is a mechanism. As I explored in an earlier article on projections, what we refuse to acknowledge in ourselves inevitably gets projected outward, and when enough people project the same content, the collective Shadow gains a life of its own.
Joseph Campbell echoes this in the appendix to his epochal work The Hero with a Thousand Faces, stating clearly that the path of the modern hero is an individual path — one that stands against society and its collective demons. That is the hero’s task. (This connects to a theme I explored in the very first article of this series — what happens to the hero after the journey’s triumphant end.)
I would like to close with an old Jewish parable.
Rabbi Zusia decided to change the world. But the world was so big, and Zusia was so small. Then Zusia decided to change his city. But the city was so big, and Zusia was so small. Then Zusia decided to change his family. But Zusia’s family was so big — he had ten children alone. And so Zusia arrived at the only thing he had the power to change, being so small — himself.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.