by Connie Zweig
In this way, as a result of the healing power of love and the gift of shadow-work, the couple becomes a vehicle for developing awareness in the partners. As we begin to feel more safe and secure within ourselves and with a partner, the soul is nourished and the relationship transforms: a new kind of trust and internal strength appears. As a result, each individual develops, and the eggshell cracks, allowing for more individuality, risk taking, and vulnerability. Therefore, the partners can achieve a deeper integration of opposites, a capacity to accept and even value both darkness and light within ourselves and our partners.
PARTNERS AS GODS: THE ARCHETYPES OF LOVE
Besides the two sources of the projected image of Other that we have discussed—our disowned parts and parental traits—there is a collective, archetypal aspect to the image as well, as described by Robert Bly. When a vulnerable baby boy first feels disappointment with Mother as she fails to respond adequately with love or nourishment, he may rage with a tantrum, imagining that his all-too-human mom, who represents for him the all-powerful source of life, turns into a death-dealing archetype such as Kali, the wrathful Hindu goddess of birth, death, and transformation. If the projection sticks, throughout the man’s life his mother and lovers may at times wear the face of the devouring, critical, demanding goddess. In order to survive, he may put on the face of a kind, submissive caretaker in an effort to avoid her threatening rage.
Later, when the man falls in love, this projection gets handed over like a family legacy to his female partner, who unknowingly dons the mask of Kali. Therefore, in her marriage, a woman actually may feel herself become more pushy, greedy, or hostile than she ever was before. At the same time, the man may grow kinder, which enrages his wife still more. As she carries all of the Kali energy for both of them, he grows calmer—and tells her that she needs therapy.
The same process takes place for women: At an early age a girl may begin unconsciously to pick up various images of masculinity and project a bossy tyrant onto her all-too-human father, eventually seeing in him the face of a killer warrior or a dark, domineering god. When as an adult she commits to a partner, he unknowingly takes over the projection from her father, becoming more controlling, rigid, and kinglike in his decrees. She, in turn, survives by submission, unable to hold her own tyrant character within.
Unlike the personal shadow, which can be understood as stemming solely from our parents, these archetypal images are more complex and ineffable, stemming from a confluence of factors: The feminine pattern, as embodied by our personal mother, contains images of women from childhood fairy tales, religious stories, films, television, advertising, and other cultural sources. The masculine pattern, as embodied by our personal father, contains images of men from the same sources.
In addition, each archetype is represented by a dyadic image with two sides—light and dark—like Christ and Satan or the merciful and wrathful aspects of Yahweh, the Persian Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, and the Egyptian Osiris and Seth. The female godhead also has two sides: The Hindu Durga, omnipotent mother who combats demons and blazes with the splendor of a thousand suns, is the flip side of Kali, the black goddess who wears a necklace of skulls and wields weapons in her many hands. The Egyptian Bast, goddess of joy, is the sister of Sekhmet, goddess of divine retribution, who has a lion’s head and a woman’s body. And in the Judeo-Christian tradition, Eve, the second wife of Adam, only came to power because the first, disobedient wife, Lilith, refused to lie beneath him and so was cast out into the realm of wild dogs and screeching owls.
In a discussion of male psychology, Jungian writer Robert A. Johnson has pointed out that it’s a difficult but necessary task for a man to differentiate the various aspects of the feminine projection: mother, mother archetype, mother complex, goddess, wife, romantic ideal, sister, daughter, and friend. If a projection contaminates a relationship inappropriately, such as a mother complex or goddess projection onto a wife, it can wreak emotional havoc.
We would suggest that a woman, too, can strive to differentiate the various aspects of the masculine projection: father, father archetype, father complex, god, husband, romantic ideal, brother, and friend. Our client Marsha had been sexually abused as a child and later raped as an adolescent, so her sexual passion had gone into hiding. But so had her intense anger at men. Today, at age thirty-four, she finds herself extremely enraged at her fiancé, Guy, when he tries to touch her, even for simple affection. If she succumbs to his advances in an effort to please him, she wells up with anger, which overtakes her, and she ends up feeling like a helpless victim, reenacting her abuse.
Guy, in turn, reports, “She stares at me with a coldness that I can’t describe, like she’s hating me. I don’t understand what I’ve done to deserve that. And I’m starved for sex. We have no erotic life at all.”
Marsha is not simply angry at Guy for something he has said or done; she is caught in a negative archetypal projection, enraged at all men and especially at male sexual desire. In those fits of rage, she is overtaken by Lilith, who traditionally was seen as a dangerous she-demon, seductive witch, and child-killer. For women today who have been victimized and rendered passive and obedient, there is gold lying hidden in this shadow character: She can represent a woman’s capacity to say no, her desire for equality and independence, and her natural, wild instincts, which may return with healing.
In a similar way, the positive archetypal projection both blesses and curses us: Through its deep resonance in our souls, it carries us past the persona and puts us in contact with the Beloved’s spiritual essence, pulling us toward a deeper love. At the same time, it blinds us to the dark side of the individual, who, as a result, carries the light projection, setting us up for a fall when the projection shatters. During his thirties, Ron, a Jewish attorney from New York, fell in love six times in one year with thin, blond, youthful, athletic women. He would see one of his goddesses and instantly his heart would go out to her. “She has my heart. I want her,” he would say to himself with a sigh, as if he actually gave away that part of himself to another human being. Pretty soon, there was a long lineage of Ron’s goddesses living in downtown New York City.
Ron kept following this image of womanhood until one day he saw her, a stranger, on the street and, in one moment, he understood the meaning of projection. He realized that his intense feeling had nothing to do with her. He did not know who she was or what she valued. Instead, the attraction was all in his mind. He was falling in love again and again with an invisible aspect of himself, his soul, which like a prince could feel complete only by bonding with a princess. Although he still admired these goddesses, the spell was broken: Ron was free to explore a more authentic connection with a different kind of woman.
In therapy Ron found several keys in the darkness of the shadow. He confessed that all his life he felt ugly and unlovable. In seeking the goddess, he was attempting to make peace with this wound. At the ego level, he sought to be with an attractive woman so that he could be perceived as attractive. But at a deeper level, he was in search of his own acceptability, which would heal his soul.
His healing came when he fell in love with a goddess one last time and, looking into her eyes, saw her soul. In a moment of grace, the woman told him that she, too, saw his beauty. He believed her, and in receiving that reflection from her, like the Beast receiving Beauty’s love, he broke his identification with being unacceptable and connected with his own soul. Soon after, he met a dark-haired Jewish woman who has been his partner for three years.
In a similar way, Mindy, thirty-three, a lovely San Francisco artist who lives in a loft, kept falling in love with the same kind of man—a dashing, charismatic, highly intelligent, highly self-involved entrepreneur. In a strange twist of fate, all three of Mindy’s men were named David. She reports that she would meet him and feel dizzy, as if her feet were lifting off the ground. But when she would go out with him, she would feel frightened and her body would grow tight as she relinquished the kingdom to another character, w
ho is self-conscious and rigid. Then she would lose her sense of humor and gracious personality. Mindy would feel abandoned if the man needed to attend to other people, even on phone calls. She felt as if she were always waiting, “waiting to see if they liked me so I would know who I am.” Like Sleeping Beauty in her glass coffin, she waited to be awakened by her prince.
Both Ron and Mindy projected their souls onto other people, investing their lovers with the archetypal powers of gods and goddesses. For Ron, the thin blond woman became a carrier of meaning and validation, a guide to another world. He followed her as Dante followed Beatrice, as the poet follows his muse. But he never knew her—he was blind to her individuality, deaf to her needs. He was caught in his own idealized projection, living a mythic reality, not a personal one.
Mindy, too, attributed magical powers to the men in her life. Like King David, they were charismatic, noble creatures who offered her an identity simultaneous with their acceptance of her femininity. Like a puppet on a string, a character would come alive with a nod of their heads.
Heterosexuals don’t have a monopoly on projection. It’s a universal human process that inevitably appears in gay relationships as well. Lee came to therapy for grief counseling several months after his mate, Manuel, died of AIDS. He spoke emotionally of their meeting twenty years earlier, each man recognizing a deep and soulful connection with the other. Moving in together soon after this encounter, Lee reported that the patterns of their relationship dynamic set in quickly. Manuel, more extroverted and competent in the outside world, became head of the household; Lee, more introverted and artistic, became more subordinate.
Today, having nursed his lover through the long, terrible illness, Lee recognizes that a certain kind of projection underpinned their behavioral roles. “I saw Manuel as my lord, a saint, really. In private, I wanted only to serve him. Raised as a Catholic, I didn’t seek to be God but to serve God. And Manuel stood for Christ for me. I felt special by humbling myself as his servant, especially near the end of his life when my sole purpose was to care for him.”
These archetypal projections may initially pull us into the arena of relationship; however, they eventually evoke the shadow. Like the many priests who have been caught recently in clandestine sexual escapades, those who carry the idealized projection suffer under its weight. When Ron married one of his ideal women, she felt idolized, not loved; held at a distance, not held closely. Eventually, she had an affair with a friend, and this betrayal opened his eyes. He told his therapist, “I was married to Lil for three years, but I couldn’t tell you how she felt about things or what she thought. I could only tell you what she looked like. When I realized this, I knew that I needed help.”
Conversely, the one who projects the ideal suffers diminishment and loss, identifying with the inferior, unworthy position. Lee, for example, came to realize that he “gave away his saint” in a projection onto Manuel out of fear of owning his unique kind of greatness. After Manuel’s death, Lee did the slow, difficult work of taking back elements of his projection by wearing his lover’s clothes, assimilating some of his traits, and eventually learning to face the world as a more independent, competent man.
Which gods and goddesses lie sleeping in your partner? Do you wish to wake them up?
THE BREAKDOWN OF PROJECTIONS: MEETING THE WITCH AND THE TYRANT
These two kinds of romantic projections—partners as parents, partners as gods—inevitably rattle and break down, often causing a crisis of commitment. At that crucial moment in every relationship, the most familiar person becomes a stranger. Then one or both partners proclaim, “This is not what I expected.” “This is not the person I married,” “I thought I knew you so well, but I was wrong.”
The partners may suffer shock and disbelief. Then the feeling of betrayal sets in. We suggest that there are three reasons for this series of events: First, the romantic partner is not who we thought she or he was. Yet if the shadow did its work, our partner is exactly the right one—and exactly the wrong one. As one couple put it: “She has everything I need—and everything I hate.” “Yes,” said the Other in response. “He has everything I need—and everything I hate.”
In short, the ideal projection of parent or god rattles—and another face appears suddenly on the loved one. As one woman said, “He’s like a stranger with secret desires that are not like him. But it is him,” The quiet, nonthreatening woman turns into a jealous, demanding, nagging complainer—her partner’s worst nightmare. The strong, efficient man turns into a needy, dependent control freak—his partner’s bad dream. When these shadow characters emerge, shattering the illusions of romance, they reveal such unknown, unexpected aspects of personality that the observer may feel, all at once, that trust between them is broken. The partners face a crisis of commitment.
Second, the romantic process is not what we thought it was. We are no longer at home in old, comfortable patterns that feel familiar. Instead, we are face-to-face with the Other, the stranger, the unpredictable one who lives inside the Beloved. And the process, which had been moving toward greater and greater safety in intimacy, seems to be halted.
Finally, we are not who we thought we were. The humbling revelation of our own shadow sides can be as abrupt and disconcerting as the discovery of our partner’s. One woman told her therapist that she habitually used sarcasm as a shield, out of her fear of having her feelings rejected. But when her partner reported that her sarcastic tone hurt him deeply, she felt great sadness and remorse. In discovering these aspects of our own shadows, we feel humiliated in our own nakedness and rush to hide, thereby creating obstacles to intimacy and another crisis of commitment. Or we may feel overwhelming guilt and responsibility for the disillusionment and suffering of our loved ones.
The shattering of these illusions may happen gradually, like peeling off the layers of an eggshell, so that bit by bit, even over many years, we come to have a clearer perception of our partners and ourselves. For instance, a man may keep an alcohol dependency hidden from his wife or a woman may use tranquilizers or antidepressants secretly to control her moods. When the mate finds clues to these behaviors after years of secrecy, he or she may be outraged and betrayed, feeling as if life had been shared with a stranger.
Or the shattering may happen suddenly, like the eggshell cracking open, so that in one moment we feel we know one another, and in the next we are living with a foreign intruder. A friend told the story of walking into her kitchen where her new husband stood in his bathrobe with his back to her. She looked down and saw his “bony knees” sticking out from under the robe—and in that moment her perception of him shifted from a refined, elegant musician to a vulnerable, limited man.
Just that part of us which may project perfection onto our partners may, in turn, become critical of all that is not perfect about them. That’s why the goddess can shift so quickly into the witch, or the king can pick up the whip of the tyrant, or the hero in an instant can seem ordinary, fading into insubstantiality like a dream figure. Like Randy, a mother’s son who projects spiritual purity onto Betsy but uncovers in her a volatile, distant mother; and Betsy, a father’s daughter who projects a spiritual hero onto Randy but unearths in him a controlling, invasive father, each of us seeks the light and unwittingly finds the darkness.
As projections break down and we meet our partners’ shadow characters, as well as our own, the tasks of relationship become more complex: to romance the dark side and to hold on to the soul connection, the archetypal unity that joins us together; to see through the illusion of Beauty to the Beast and to see beyond that to the authentic beauty that lies at the heart of our loved ones. To be able to contain both the light side and the dark is a great developmental step—and a promise of romancing the shadow.
Our objective, then, is not to live without projection; that is an impossible task. We will naturally and automatically turn our partners into our parents as the shadow tries to make us feel safe and loved. To uncover the gold in this personal projection,
we need to continually see through it while mining it for insight, and at the same time stay related to the other person as a real human being.
We also will naturally and automatically turn our partners into gods as the powerful archetypes sweep us off our feet. To uncover the gold in this archetypal projection, we need to continually see through it while staying related to the other person as a mortal human being—and honor our deeper vision, which can see god in the Beloved, a transpersonal reality and an ongoing source of aliveness and inspiration.
POWER SHADOWS: SHAMING, DEPRIVATION, AND ENTITLEMENT
The power shadow has many faces. It may appear, for example, in a disparaging look or fleeting remark that sends a loved one into shame. Jackie, an actress and father’s daughter, and Grant, an attorney and mother’s son, had been dating for nearly a year when he asked her to spend more time with him. When she asked how frequently he wanted to get together, he said five nights a week. Jackie felt so desired that she beamed with delight, but deep inside she panicked. She was terrified of Grant’s neediness—or was it his great capacity for intimacy? She felt loved and wanted—but what about time for her creative projects?
In the next few days, Grant cleared his schedule of clients and children to make more room for intimate time with Jackie. She, however, had other things on her mind. She felt a production deadline hanging over her head like a guillotine. In the past, she rehearsed for long hours into the night. Now, that option was gone. In addition, she felt annoyed and irritated about several recent events, but she had put on a shield, suppressed her feelings, and chosen not to discuss them with Grant. In doing so, she identified with a compliant, unassertive character that had been modeled by her mother.