Romancing the Shadow

by Connie Zweig

However, those healers who continue to do their own shadow-work by examining the feelings and images that arise in them can remain connected with their own woundedness, an antidote to hubris. And if they romance the power-hungry shadow characters who seek to control or influence others’ lives, these figures will take their appropriate places at the table, and the healing of both persons can continue.

  What do you imagine more power at work would bring you? How do you feel inhibited from expressing yourself at work? When do you shut down the expression of others to keep them powerless?

  SEXUAL SHADOWS: CORPORATE HARASSMENT AND SEX IN THERAPY

  One of the primary ways of acting out the power shadow in the workplace or in the helping professions is through unwanted sexual advances—sexist remarks, intimidation tactics, or inappropriate physical contact. For the many women who suffer the degradation of feeling objectified or used sexually, old wounds resurface, and legal action becomes a psychological rite of passage, a way to stop colluding with abuse and to reclaim their own voices. As a result, monetary rewards have skyrocketed. Also, companies lose millions of dollars annually from high turnover, absenteeism, and low productivity due to the atmosphere created by harassment. Consequently, male executives become reluctant to hire and promote qualified women, or even to eat business meals or travel with them. In a backlash to whistle-blowers, many male workers scapegoat women who report harassment as complainers or gold diggers. The result: Both genders lose the contributions and companionship of one another.

  In other arenas of corporate America, where no-harassment policies are upheld, Eros has been banished altogether. In fact, one of our clients, a charismatic public speaker, said that he cannot give a compliment to a female colleague “without first thinking of my Miranda rights because anything I say can be used against me.” As a result, he tries to avoid any friendly contact with women employees, repressing his natural sexual feelings into the shadow. When his wife mentioned that his sexual desire seemed to have decreased, he stopped in his tracks: Shutting it down consciously at work, he realized, resulted in his shutting it down unconsciously at home.

  At the same time, new battlefronts emerge: The epidemic abuse of women continues in the international workplace, where the law does not yet protect them. And in the United States, evidence of discrimination against gays and lesbians at work is mounting. In a corporate culture where discrimination is the norm, homophobia remains repressed, so gays may be insulted, patronized, or harassed without recourse. But in gay-friendly companies, which embrace diversity as an ethos and promote people on merits, heterosexuals may be forced to face this shadow issue as it emerges in the larger culture. The current hot button: state recognition of gay marriages, which would permit domestic-partner benefits, including health care, sick leave, bereavement leave, and survivor benefits.

  Outside of corporations, in the helping professions, where more intimate one-to-one contact prevails, the sexual shadow prevails as well. In the last two decades we have uncovered an epidemic of sexual abuse in which powerful men—therapists, doctors, teachers, and clergy—have betrayed the trust of women under their care.

  Jungian analyst Peter Rutter estimates that more than one million men and women have had exploitative sexual contact in violation of a sacred boundary. He calls this phenomenon sex in the forbidden zone: Sexual behavior is prohibited because a man holds in trust the intimate, wounded, or undeveloped parts of a woman’s soul. The trust derives from his role and creates an expectation in her that she will not be used to his personal advantage. His power and her dependency, then, may render a woman unable to withhold consent, so that she colludes in her own victimization, often re-creating early childhood experiences.

  Recently, a psychologist friend told us that in 1985 he was part of a peer supervision group with eight other psychiatrists and psychotherapists. When he discussed his growing feelings of passion toward a female patient, the others came forward with a shocking secret: All of the men and two of the women had had sex with patients. Instead of suggesting ways for him to do shadow-work and contain his feelings, they advised him to end therapy with his client and explore the love that might emerge between them.

  Today, it’s highly unlikely that a young therapist would hear this disturbing advice. Although state laws differ in their approaches to the issue, most recognize that any kind of dual relationship with a client, whether social, sexual, or financial, is detrimental to therapeutic goals.

  And yet … even with an awareness of its risky legal and ethical consequences, even with an awareness of its damaging emotional impact, some therapists, like priests, cannot contain their desires and continue to act out sexually with their clients. Perhaps, in the heat of the moment, they are compelled by Ananke, goddess of necessity, to risk everything—their careers, their marriages, and their clients’ welfare. Perhaps they are swept up in the arms of Eros, and the god hidden in the sexual shadow overtakes them. Perhaps for these people, the god cannot be legislated out of the clinic. And yet … with their own efforts at shadow-work, perhaps they could honor the god without allowing him to take over the kingdom.

  Does the sacrifice of Eros in the workplace make you feel more repressed or more rebellious? In what ways do you sacrifice your authenticity to avoid addressing sexual issues at work? If you have acted out the sexual shadow, how might you make amends?

  MONEY SHADOWS: THE MISTAKEN GRAIL

  Of course, most people work for money. It is the medium of exchange for our labors, the mana that allows us to participate in spending and saving. It permits survival; it opens opportunity. In the end, it appears to promise security. But what is the nature of the security that we imagine money can buy?

  One friend, at fifty, has earned several million dollars from a high-paying, high-profile position. He recently suffered a heart attack but returned to work the following week saying, “Gotta earn a living.” To the ancient Aztecs, who practiced human sacrifice, a pulsating heart, pulled from the victim, would feed the sun and make the new corn grow. Perhaps the epidemic of heart attacks in working men is a contemporary form of sacrifice for security.

  Many people long for safety, a kind of refuge from the painful vicissitudes of life. The root meaning of the word “security” is free from care. But each of us sees the falsity of this promise all around us: Money cannot save us from shadow suffering. The bottom may fall out of the stock market; we may grow ill and be forced to spend our savings on medical care; a natural disaster may destroy our home. Even social security, designed as a safety net for America’s workforce, appears to be no longer secure. And with alterations to the inheritance laws, family money may be passed on less easily than ever before.

  So, what is security? For most people, our fantasy of financial security leads to a longing that can never be met. One client was told blatantly by his attorney mother that he was as good as the money he earned. Reinforced by the workplace, this message keeps him in a constant panic because he lacks an internal sense of self-worth, an authentic relation to the Self. If he loses his job, he becomes worthless. He had the following dream: I am sitting in a dark cave, looking filthy and grimy. I’m clutching some small stones for dear life. They are the only thing that is of any worth. This man’s longing for money covers over a longing for identity.

  Another woman was told blatantly by her Catholic mother that money was dirty. Its cost: her soul. So, as a child, she reasoned that if she remained poor, she would not have to face this moral conflict. She could avoid the temptations of acting for money, abusing people for money, or becoming arrogant with money. She could avoid becoming “Lady Muck from Dirt Hill”—an image of her shadow as an uppity woman who looks down upon others. It’s more difficult for this woman to long for money consciously because it’s covered in darkness. Unable to make her business profitable, she came to therapy to try to understand how she kept herself from earning more money.

  If money becomes an end instead of a means; if money becomes, in essence, the grail that we seek, the
n we must contemplate the question at the center of the grail myth: Whom does the grail serve? Which character at the table longs to earn more and more money? Which members of the family benefit and which lose by our focus on money? We suggest that, while we certainly need to attend to our financial stability, we also need to listen to the voice of the Self, the inner grail which, when obeyed, may lead us to soulful work.

  REDEFINING SUCCESSFUL WORK AS SOULFUL WORK

  Just as we long for a Beloved partner or a sustaining family life, we long for soulful work, which nourishes and sustains us. Yet work, which holds such great promise, may, like romance and family, deliver us into the very hands that betray us. In response, some people call for a return to old images of work: a nationalist cry to return to a sovereign economy before globalization; a staunch summons to return to traditional roles and values before women worked; a nostalgic yearning to return to the land before it was raped by technology.

  Instead, we suggest that if, as leaders, we can embrace the challenges of a radically changing business climate and empower our employees and colleagues to do shadow-work, then our companies can become engines of transformation. And if, as individuals, we can face our fears and resistances as shadow characters with an underlying message, then we may reconnect with that part of us that has the capacity for soulful work. In addition, if we can put down, our numbing anesthetics, such as alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, and television, we may reconnect with our lost creativity, which lies buried as gold in the shadow. Then our work can draw energy from soul, and our soul can gain substance from work.

  In this way, we begin to make of our lives a work: We transform the stone of Sisyphus into the philosophers’ stone, the alchemical image of god in matter. And we turn lead into gold, transforming our daily work into the Great Work.

  CHAPTER 9

  MIDLIFE AS DESCENT TO THE UNDERWORLD AND ASCENT OF THE LOST GODS

  In a dark time, the eye begins to see,

  I meet my shadow in the deepening shade …

  Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.

  My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,

  Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?

  A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.

  The mind enters itself, and God the mind,

  And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

  —THEODORE ROETHKE

  At midlife, Dorian Gray’s painting comes out of the closet. And, with it, all of the devils cast into darkness during the first half of life return to haunt us. Forbidden feelings of helplessness and rage; secret fears of unattractiveness and rejection; shrouded fantasies of sexual desire; private reveries of creative potency; unanswered questions of meaning and purpose, all begin to sneak up on us, pester us, then prey upon us until at last we turn to look—and face the beast.

  Like Dorian’s face, ours is lined with the passage of time, drawn with the pull of gravity, pinched with the pain of betrayal. Like his face, ours tells a tale: We made a bargain to survive and paid with the coin of soul. At midlife, that story no longer works. A new story demands to be lived—the descent and resurrection of the soul in the second half of life. As Jung wrote:

  Our personality develops in the course of our life from germs that are hard or impossible to discern, and it is only our deeds that reveal who we are. We are like the sun, which nourishes the life of the earth and brings forth every kind of strange, wonderful, and evil thing.… At first we do not know what deeds or misdeeds, what destiny, what good and evil we have in us, and only the autumn can show what the spring has engendered.

  During the hero’s journey in the springtime of life, we leave home on a noble quest to build an identity, find love, create a family, and adopt social virtues, ultimately contributing to the greening of the larger community. During this time we identify primarily with one archetypal pattern, such as a Persephone-style mother’s daughter, a Hestia woman at the hearth, a Hermes-style prankster, or a Dionysian hedonist who feasts on life. And we come to manifest primarily the behavior patterns and emotional states of this archetype, although they will be complemented by others. But at the stroke of noon, a descent begins: The midlifer’s journey in the autumn can mean the browning of life.

  One reason: Midlife typically involves reversals, as the trickster calls us to break old rules, ignore past customs, transgress boundaries, and laugh at the ironies of life. The trickster can be capricious, unpredictable, irrational, and playful. But typically he or she turns our lives upside down. The result: A journey of seemingly unlimited ascent begins to look like a journey of inexorable descent. Our relationship to Cronos time alters, as we shift from cramming appointments into our daily calendars to making sacred, the time that remains. In effect, if we face our mortality, we move from a sense of open time to an awareness of end time.

  In addition, people who turned toward the world in the first half of life may wish to turn away from it in the second, reorienting toward an inner life and reevaluating the consequences of their choices. As Jung puts its, “After having lavished its light upon the world, the sun withdraws its rays in order to illuminate itself.” For some, this shift will involve adopting a more religious or spiritual orientation, as the ego and its values take a backseat. For a professional Athena woman, this transition may mean exploring a new style of femininity, including having a first child in her forties. A Zeus-style corporate executive may suffer from information overload and begin to take long retreats from work. An Artemis lover of the outdoors may turn to meditation and discover the beauty within or turn to a profession and discover her mind awakening. A highly rational Apollo man may taste the sweetness of his tender vulnerability.

  On the other hand, those people who previously turned away from the world may wish to move toward it. For instance, a Demeter mother whose children are grown may return to school to begin a new career. Or a puer, whose early onset spirituality may have resulted in a rejection of all things worldly, may begin to build bonds of family; a puella, whose social and political ideals may have resulted in a sacrifice of her own gratification, may begin to uncover a secret personal ambition.

  This chapter reframes the issues of the midlife transition in a broader and deeper context: Midlife crisis becomes the call of the Self to encounter the unlived life, to resurrect the lost gods lying dormant in the shadow. Midlife depression becomes the liminal time between the descent of one archetypal pattern and the ascent of another—a changing of the gods. Midlife illness becomes the way in which our shadows take on substance in our bodies and reappear as symptoms. Midlife wisdom becomes the way in which we mine precious gold from the dark side.

  What have been the tasks of your hero or heroine’s journey in the first half of life? What gods or goddesses have helped you on the way?

  MEETING THE SHADOW AT MIDLIFE: THE PROMISE OF RENEWAL

  As the shadow forces us to face the unlived life and the resulting limits of our choices, the ego is destabilized, and our sense of identity shatters. Our ideal self-image, previously reinforced by the shields of power, sex, and money, cracks like thin glass as a woman can no longer use her beauty to win approval or a man his position to command respect. And our social adaptations, once viewed as an inevitable part of growing up, come to feel like tight clothing, restricting us from the freedom we imagine to be available in the unlived life. In each of the arenas of life that we have surveyed in this book, midlife brings new hope and the promise of renewal. But first it often ushers in breakdown: Unresolved family betrayals can no longer be tolerated, family secrets no longer kept. The many compromises made to protect a parent or to avoid family strife suddenly seem too much to ask. And in a family reversal, adult children may need to care for aging parents, evoking shadowy feelings in both.

  The foundations of our intimate relationships, which appeared for years to be solid, may liquefy at midlife as shadowy feelings emerge and long-term projections rattle. If our bonds were shaped by shadow projections, which re-create childhood patterns, or formed to
compensate for our own missing parts, the eggshell may crack at midlife, and these unconscious agreements break down. A crisis of commitment may ensue: The call of the Self for greater authenticity threatens the status quo. And we must choose once again to let the relationship die as it is in order to become something else. For instance, for many couples a reversal of masculine and feminine takes place with aging: A man discovers his tender feelings and a woman her keen intellect, or a man retires to introspection and a woman launches a new venture. For other couples, a man may follow Aphrodite into an extramarital affair; a woman may fall into depression with menopause, which leads her to turn within. This kind of pendulum swing may be unbearable for some, liberating for others.

  Our friendships, previously a refuge for authenticity, may fall by the wayside as unresolved conflicts resurface and old resentments reappear. Or we may desert longtime friends as the shared ideals and values that were cherished in the springtime lose their color in the fall. If marriage and family have been primary, friendships may move to center stage; if friends have been primary, a midlife realignment may involve forming a family at last.

  And our work, if difficult, may become intolerable. If we are identified with our function at work, if we believe that we are what we do, then when work is at risk, which inevitably it will be as we age, our very identity comes into question. We may come to feel like a fraud, a sham. We may suddenly realize that we are not indispensable. If our work was undertaken primarily as psychological unfinished business—to cover up feelings of unworthiness or fraudulence, dutifully fulfill a parent’s dream, or achieve more than an older sibling—its unconscious purpose dries out. If we have striven to reach the top, we may find it empty. With retirement, but without an authentic relationship, soul friends, or soulful work, we may feel that life is over.