AtD 678 ff

[David Morris]

The personal double is an archetypal (pre-conscious/ancient) character
according to Jung, probably the most basic psyche-component one
encounters in one's journey into the world of the subconscious.  In
dream-life the shadow is the same-sex companion or
fellow-journeyperson in the episode:

http://www.iloveulove.com/psychology/jung/jungarchetypes.htm

The Shadow

The most basic potential for patterning is the Shadow Archetype. This
is the potential of experiencing the unconscious side of our unique
personalities. As we move deeper into the dark side of our personality
personal, identity begins to dissolve into "latent dispositions"
common to all men. We experience the chaos which indicates that we are
drawing close to the material structure of psychic life. This "Other
Side" may be manifested in a wealth of images. The image of
"wilderness" is fundamental. Remember that Hanzel and Gretel were led
"into the woods" and were trapped. Knights discover dragons, ogres,
and thieves in the woods. Robin Hood is at home in the wild. The image
may be that of the mob and its underworld, an urban equivalent in
which "Pretty Boy" Floyd is a hero. There is always "the concrete
jungle." Dragons sail the sea, "the watery wilderness." Jesus and John
the Baptist met God "in the wilderness," as did Israel at Sinai.

The Shadow is the easiest of the archetypes for most persons to
experience. We tend to see it in "others." That is to say, we project
our dark side onto others and thus interpret them as "enemies" or as
"exotic" presences that fascinate. We see the Shadow everywhere in
popular culture. He is Batman. She is Spider Woman. It is the Ninja
Turtles. We see it in popular prejudice as well. We "imagine" that the
Black Man is our enemy; that Communists are devils. We incline towards
Hawaii as the "land of paradise." We accept people uncritically if we
perceive them as "Fair Haired." Of course, Satan is the great Shadow
image of popular religion (Consider: the word only occurs 54 times in
the entire Bible.)

The Shadow is the personification of that part of human, psychic
possibility that we deny in ourselves and project onto others. The
goal of personality integration is to integrate the rejected, inferior
side of our life into our total experience and to take responsibility
for it.


On Jan 12, 2008 7:41 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>Interestingly enough, Niklas Luhmann's theory of social systems
considers the emergence of doubles or Doppelgänger in modern
literature since the Romantik (think of E.T.A. Hoffmann!) as an
indicator that modern society has switched from first order
observations to second order observations. So art, like other
outdifferenciated functional systems, is according to Luhmann not
about observing the world as such but about observing observers. Cf.
the dissolution  'thinglyness' (Gegenständlichkeit) in avangardist
painting à la cubism or fauvism.