“The difficulties of our psychotherapeutic work teach us to take truth, goodness, and beauty where we find them. They are not always found where we look for them: often they are hidden in the dirt or are in the keeping of the dragon.”
Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 16
We all possess what Carl Jung called a shadow, and this is made up of the contents of our personality we repress due to the shame, guilt, or fear they trigger. But what is often overlooked about the shadow is that it contains both positive and negative elements, or as Jung wrote:
“What our age thinks of as the “shadow” and inferior part of the psyche contains more than something merely negative.”
Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 10
In addition to repressing weaknesses and character flaws, many of us do the same with strengths, talents, and our highest potentials. Or as the author Ken Wilber writes:
“You can completely lose track of incredibly positive things about yourself – your beauty, goodness, strength, and virtue. . .the so-called Golden shadow.”
Ken Wilber, Finding Radical Wholeness
In this video we explore why we fear the contents of the golden shadow and why we avoid moving towards our highest potential.
“The impetus that makes you fly is our great human possession,” wrote Hermann Hesse. “Everybody has it. It is the feeling of being linked with the roots of power, but one soon becomes afraid of this feeling…That is why most people shed their wings and prefer to walk and obey the law.”
Hermann Hesse, Demian
The 20th century psychologist Abraham Maslow believed that we all possess an impulse to achieve greatness and an innate urge to move toward what he called our “highest possibilities”. Very few of us, however, move anywhere close to these possibilities. A primary reason for this, according to Maslow, is simply that we fear our greatness more than we desire it, or as he wrote:
“We fear our highest possibilities. We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments…We enjoy and even thrill to the godlike possibilities we see in ourselves… And yet we simultaneously shiver with weakness, awe, and fear before these very same possibilities.”
Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature
Maslow considered the fear of one’s highest possibilities so widespread that he gave it a name: the Jonah Complex. He drew the term from the biblical story of the prophet Jonah who tried to escape the destiny assigned to him by God. But what fuels this complex? In his book Art and Artist, the psychologist Otto Rank offers an answer. Rank argued that we are driven by two fundamental fears: a fear of death and a fear of life. The fear of death, according to Rank, is more than simply a fear of our physical extinction. It is also the fear of a psychological death that occurs when we lose our individuality through excessive conformity. This fear, according to Rank, motivates us to differentiate ourselves by actualizing the potentials that make us unique. It drives us to “exist” in the Latin sense of the word, that is, “to step out, stand forth, emerge, appear”. While this fear of death motivates us to individuate, a fear of life pulls us in the opposite direction. The fear of life, is the fear of moving too far away from the comforting confines of conformity. It is the fear of becoming too much of an individual. For there are risks to individuating – it can feel lonely and isolating and can set us up for ostracism or social rejection. Or as a Japanese proverb puts it “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down”.
The fear of life and the fear of death create a dynamic tension that sculpts our personality. “Between these two fear possibilities”, wrote Rank, “…the individual is thrown back and forth all his life.” (Otto Rank, Will Therapy) Most people in the modern day, however, are more afraid of life, or becoming an individual, than they are of the diminishment of their personality that comes with excessive conformity. And this fear of life helps account for the Jonah complex as the more afraid we are of being different, of discovering our individuality, the less likely we are to move toward our highest possibilities. Or as Nietzsche remarked “The concept of greatness entails…being able to be different.” (Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil).
But a fear of life is not the only factor inhibiting us from attaining our highest possibilities. Colin Wilson, one of the most prolific authors of the 20th century, suggested that an “insignificance neurosis” permeates modern society, acting as a barrier to realizing our potential. Wilson observed that much of contemporary thought is dominated by what he called “the unheroic hypothesis”, which he defined as “the sense of defeat, or disaster, or futility, that seems to underlie so much modern writing” (Colin Wilson, The Age of Defeat). In answering the age-old question, “is man more akin to a God or a worm?” modern culture instills in us the belief that we are much closer to the worm. For example, the dominant narrative of mainstream science tells us that we are nothing but a configuration of matter that turns to dust after we die. While the most popular political ideologies devalue the individual and tell us that we are merely a cog in a machine meant to serve the needs of the collective. If we accept these mainstream views, we will underestimate the potential of man and leave many of our strengths hidden in our golden shadow.
Maslow, who was a friend of Colin Wilson’s, came to similar conclusions regarding the insignificance neurosis. Maslow made it a habit to ask his students who among them would write a great novel, become a great composer, or achieve excellence in their chosen field and discovered that:
“Generally, everybody starts giggling, blushing, and squirming until I ask. “If not you, then who else?””
Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature
Maslow goes on to explain that even if we get an inkling that perhaps we could accomplish something great, these thoughts are quickly thrown to the wayside. “Who are we to have such grandiose thoughts”, we ask ourselves and an accounting of all our flaws will have us reject any grand aspirations. Or as Maslow writes:
“The person who says to himself, “Yes, I will be a great philosopher and I will rewrite Plato and do it better,” must sooner or later be struck dumb by his grandiosity, his arrogance. And especially in his weaker moments, will say to himself “Who? Me?” and think of it as a crazy fantasy or even fear it as a delusion. He compares his knowledge of his inner private self, with all its weakness, vacillation, and shortcomings, with the bright, shining, perfect, and faultless image he has of Plato. Then, of course, he’ll feel presumptuous and grandiose. (What he doesn’t realize is that Plato, introspecting, must have felt just the same way about himself, but went ahead anyway, overriding his doubts about himself.)”
Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature
But there is another factor that can account for the Jonah complex, and this may be the most influential of them all – we fear our potential for greatness and the impulse that pushes us in this direction because if we acknowledge their existence we will no longer have an excuse for living a passive and mediocre life. If we tell ourselves that we lack the natural talents, positive character traits and opportunities that allow others to achieve great feats, it is easier to accept our personal failings. Blaming an unlucky lot in life serves a defensive purpose – it allows us to seek out comfort and ease of life without feeling guilty about wasting our potentials. We fear our greatest possibilities, in other words, because we fear the hard work, discipline and courage that are required to actualize them, or as Nietzsche wrote:
“They fear their higher self, because when it speaks, it speaks demandingly.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
