Shadow Self Research Articles

Do Psychedelic Trips Open the Door to Messages from God, Spirits, Transcendent Realities, or the Devil? Links with Attitudes About Psychedelics, Opinions About Legalization, and Interest in Personal Use

ABSTRACT Could psychedelic use open the door to messages from supernatural entities, including God, the devil, or human or nature spirits? Might psychedelics allow a glimpse of some transcendent domain, consciousness, or self that exists beyond the material world? We were interested in how people’s answers to these questions would relate to their attitudes about psychedelic use, legalization, and desire to use psychedelics if given a safe opportunity. After preregistering key hypotheses on the Open Science Framework, we recruited U. S. adults (final N = 800) to complete an online survey. Participants expected psychedelics to prompt psychological messages (from the brain or subconscious) more than spiritual messages, which were typically endorsed more than explicitly supernatural messages; however, even supernatural messages received moderate endorsement. As predicted, seeing psychedelics as a doorway to positive spiritual or supernatural messages (from a transcendent spiritual domain, God, human spirits, nature spirits) was linked with more positive attitudes about psychedelics, more favoring of their legalization, and more past use and interest in personal use. As expected, attitudes about psychedelics were less favorable among those who saw them as doorways to negative messages, either from supernatural evil (devil, demons, evil spirits) or from one’s own mind (dark side, shadow self, “inner demons”). Beliefs in supernatural messages via psychedelics were linked with stronger supernatural beliefs, more prior psychedelic use, younger age, self-identifying as spiritual, more past experiences seen as supernatural (in general and involving psychedelics), and greater approval of psychedelics by one’s religious community (where applicable). In summary, many people see psychedelics as potential sources of supernatural messages. These supernatural attributions, in turn, are closely linked with attitudes, behaviors, and past experiences related to psychedelic use.

AN ANALYSIS OF BTS’S SELECTED SONG LYRICS: A STUDY OF DENOTATIVE, CONNOTATIVE AND MYTH MEANING

This Research is entitled “An Analysis of BTS’s Selected Song Lyrics: A Study of Denotative, Connotative and Myth Meaning”. The study is conducted to look at the meaning namely denotation and connotation as well as myth in these selected songs. The writer limits the research to only focus on 3 selected BTS songs. The writer used Roland Barthes’s theory. By using the method, the meaning contained in the song lyrics can be described in detail by analyzing the meaning of denotation and connotation in the lyrics and also to find the myths about what is already formed. The writer uses a descriptive qualitative method in order to answer the research problem. The writer found that there are 9 sign systems for BTS Epilogue: Young Forever lyrics that regarding career pressures or a person's mental health condition particularly for K-pop idols, 9 sign systems for BTS Fire lyrics that relate to social class, especially in Korea that usually called spoon theory and 12 sign systems for BTS ON lyrics that show how the shadow self- began to appear

“Completion of a Circle”: Female Process of Self-Realization and Individuation in Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride and “I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth”

In The Robber Bride and its sequel, “I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth,” Margaret Atwood underscores the complex feminine identity through the femme fatale, who is depicted using mythic Gothic figures, such as the vampire. Atwood contradicts socially-sanctioned roles for women. She shapes newer and more complete social and personal female identities, questioning how inadequately the patriarchal system represents their multiplicity. The author describes how the protagonists challenge the patriarchal definition of the feminine Self on their Jungian journey towards individuation, for which the fatal woman, as the Shadow Self, acts as a catalyst.

The Shadow Self by Adrienne Ione

The Shadow Self by Adrienne Ione

Shadow Self: Bringing White Supremacy Into the Light

Shadow Self: Bringing White Supremacy Into the Light

Heroism and Comics Form: Feminist and Queer Speculations

Heroism and Comics Form: Feminist and Queer Speculations

Showtime’s Dexter: The horror of being (non)human

Abstract Showtime’s Dexter exemplifies the ‘nonhuman turn’ manifest as horror. It dramatizes, in its serial killer protagonist, the profound interconnectedness of the human and the nonhuman as well as a nonhuman ‘agency’ that undercuts the already limited power of humans to direct their own lives. It does so by consistently highlighting Dexter Morgan’s own determining nonhuman part, which he calls his ‘monster’, his ‘dark passenger’, his ‘shadow self’ – all terms that mark an anonymous ‘it’ and the threat it poses to the ‘human’ Dexter desperately wants to be. The series refuses, though, to define Dexter’s impersonal monstrousness as his alone, as a part of only his past or only his brain – or even, in the end, as a ‘monster’ that is in any way separate from the ‘human’. Dexter’s personal ‘dark passenger’, I argue, is shown to be a shared nonhuman life inherent in the condition of being human. This ‘it’ or ‘thing’ is represented in the series in Dexter’s human doubles, in animals, even in the weather. The ‘it’ of Dexter, in short, marks a nonhuman that is both an external and an internal nature and that is manifest precisely as their indistinction. Showtime’s groundbreaking series thus models a new kind of monster, as well as a new form of horror – one that recognizes the nonhuman in the human.

The Tragic Ballerina's Shadow Self: Troubling the Political Economy of Melancholy in Black Swan

Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan (2010) opens with a dream sequence in which a young ballerina dances on stage with perfect poise and precision, her disciplined body trained to perform the role of the...

Masochist or machiavel?: Reading Harley Quinn in canon and fanon

Creative responses to the DC Comics character Harley Quinn, sometime girlfriend and assistant to the Joker and established favorite among female fans, are considered. By means of examples from an array of media (fan fiction, short film, and comics), I observe how the character's trait of submissiveness is read and (re)constructed. First acknowledging the antifeminist possibilities of the submissive female and masochism's portrayal within medical and psychoanalytic discourses, I then move on to explore the ways in which fans use the Harley character to overcome these negative stereotypes of sexual submission. I show that fan works exhibit evidence of familiarity with concepts of the Jungian shadow self and with real-life BDSM practices and philosophies. The central thesis is that we can understand the masochist as potentially Machiavellian—that is, creative and manipulative. Fan fiction echoes postmodernism's concern with ambiguous subjectivity and employs strategies that shift the responsibility for character construction from creator to reader.

A contemporary parable on Good and Evil: James Bond as moral compass

The latest Bond film, ‘Quantum of Solace’, was released in the autumn of 2008 on the centenary of Ian Fleming's birth. He and his literary hero, James Bond, have continued to enjoy an enduring popularity over six decades in our contemporary culture. This paper explores possible reasons for this phenomenon, and argues the hypothesis that Fleming depicted Bond intentionally as a moral compass, embodying a conscious psychological attitude with which to make moral choices and to confront conflicts of duty. Bond, a modern day St. George, slays dragons that expose the contour of modern evil and that are personified by villains who reflect Fleming’s (1962) list of ‘Seven Deadlier Sins’ for the modern era. The paper examines the pivotal sin, accidie, the loss of passion or joy for life through the lens of Fleming’s novel ‘You Only Live Twice’ (1964). James Bond’s personal grief from the loss of his murdered wife precipitates a spiritual and moral dilemma. Should he succumb to his own accidie, despair and suicidal thoughts and become evil (i.e. remain regressed in a primitive state of unconsciousness) like his arch-enemy, Blofeld? Or does he grieve and kill (007 – the right to kill the seven deadlier sins) the despair and accidie personified in his Shadow, Blofeld? The paper also proposes that Bond’s life is a projection of the archetypal image of the hero’s journey. We review the psychological Jungian perspective on moral and ethical conscience in relation to good and evil, and consider Bond’s struggle to own and integrate his shadow self as a reflection of the individual and collective contemporary moral problem facing humanity. Finally, we explore Bond as a cultural expression of shifting perspectives and attitudes to gender image, masculinity and the archetypal male.

The cloud god and the shadow self*

The cloud god and the shadow self*

The shadow group

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of the “shadow group” as a partial explanation of intragroup relationship conflict in organizations. Also, to offer a new model of the “self‐in‐group” comprising a binary pair of opposite selves (“overt self” and “shadow self”) held in balance by the awareness of the “inner observer”.Design/methodology/approachIt is proposed in the paper that when an individual is triggered into emotional reactivity, especially as a result of projection, their shadow self engulfs their overt self and replaces it as the operational entity. In a group setting, the overt selves of the individual members constitute the overt group while their shadow selves comprise the normally dormant shadow group. As group conflict escalates from one member's initial emotional outburst, more and more members experience shadow‐self engulfment and eventually the shadow group may operationally replace the overt group. The dynamics of the shadow group are illustrated by means of two case studies.Research limitations/implicationsThe study identifies a number of empirically‐testable hypotheses that arise from the shadow group approach including the hypothesis that individuals who have high inner‐awareness are less likely to experience negative emotionality (shadow‐self engulfment).Practical implicationsThe paper shows how emotionally‐based relationship conflict can be prevented by the exercise of emotional intelligence competencies to keep the shadow group in check.Originality/valueThe study builds on Jungian theory to provide new constructs that help explain the dynamics of negative emotionality in relationship conflict.

The Helpfulness of Spiritually Influenced Group Work in Developing Self-Awareness and Self-Esteem: A Preliminary Investigation

This paper discusses an exploratory study that investigated the helpfulness of spiritually influenced group work with eight adult women who shared a history of substance abuse. The overall purpose of the group was to help participants develop their self-awareness and self-esteem. The group, which was contextualized in transpersonal theory, was organized around the following themes and experiential exercises: meditation, mindfulness practice, dream work, stream of consciousness writing, the shadow self, and other arts-based processes. Grounded-theory analysis of group sessions and individual interviews with the participants found that the participants perceived the group to be helpful in developing their self-awareness and self-esteem. While the participants identified different aspects of the group as spiritual, making-meaning was one practice that was consistently described as a spiritually sensitive process. The results of this study in this emergent field are promising and suggestions are provided for future research.

BEYOND THE COLONIAL NOVEL: THE LAST NOVELS OF LAURENS VAN DER POST

BEYOND THE COLONIAL NOVEL: THE LAST NOVELS OF LAURENS VAN DER POST

Voyage to Eudoxia: The Emergence of a Post-Rational Epistemology in Literature and Science

IN A NEW NOVEL BY THE JAPANESE NOVELIST Haruki Murakami, Hard Boiled Wonderland or The End of the World, the hero discovers that a brilliant but somewhat amoral scientist has implanted a cybernetic device in his brain. The device has three parts: one controls the conscious perceptions of the hero, one the unconscious dream states, and one the stable sense of the self. As the novel progresses, the hero understands that the switches that keep these three circuits separate from one another in his head are dissolving and as a result, his world-the world as he knows it-will literally end. Interspersed with this hard-boiled narrative in alternating chapters is another thread of the novel, concerned with the hero's shadow self and his actions in the dream world. As the novel progresses, the dream-hero in the dreamland-called End of the World-and the real hero, living in Tokyo-slowly become aware of each other's existence. At the end, Murakami implies in his complex cybernetic fiction, the two worlds inevitably merge, requiring the marriage of two cognitively separate realms as well as two different methods for knowing the world. When the last barriers between ego self and the dream self dissolve, with the aid of that clever cybernetic hardware, Words and Worlds end. Murakami's scheme is a parable for the subject of this paper, the culmination of our Cybernetic Age resulting from the collapse of the barrier between two epistemologies. My thesis is this: the barriers between the rational epistemology of science and the irrational epistemology of literature are dissolving in a way already prefigured in postmodern sciences and literature. The result will be an entirely new order of discourse we can now begin to define. At least one aspect of this new order of discourse is clear: the computer will play the role of l'entremetteur for this transformation of discourse after postmodernism. My goal here is to outline the shape of this final transformation of postmodernism.

Robertson Davies by Michael Peterman

N O TES 1 These interviews, held in 1974 and 1976, appeared in Ronald Hayman, Tom Stop­ pard (London, 1978). 2 David Gollob and David Roper, “Trad Tom Pops In,” Gambit 10 (1981). 3 Tom Stoppard, “Ambushes for the Audience: Towards a High Comedy of Ideas,” Theatre Quarterly 4 (May-July 1974) : 4. Cited by Jenkins, p. 184. 4 Ibid., p. 12. Cited by Jenkins, p. too. 5 Ibid., p. 14. Cited by Jenkins, p. 118. St a n l e y g. m u l l in s / Laurentian University Michael Peterman, Robertson Davies (Boston: Twayne, 1986). 175. $19.95 (u.s.) Robertson Davies has recently emerged as one of Canada’s most important authors. Despite the confines of the Twayne format, Michael Peterman makes a valuable contribution to our critical understanding of the nature of Davies’s vision and his art. This study is more than an introduction to an important writer’s work; it marks an original intervention in the debate about the ethics and ultimate achievement of Davies’s fiction. Peterman argues that Davies’s sustaining theme is “the importance of self in modem life” (ii) and that the “egoism of the hero figure . . . dominates his work” (iii). Such an approach represents the critical consensus about Davies’s writing in Canada. Continuing with the psychological and thematic focus that has dominated Davies criticism to date, Peterman provides a balanced introduction to this aspect of Davies’s writing. He notes that “most of the critics who have quarreled with Fifth Business have at the heart of their complaints a dissatisfaction with egoism as the novel celebrates it” (127). Peterman shares some of this dissatisfaction. He is critical of Davies’s tendency to “romantic hero worship” and to the celebration of an “autocratic worldview” (130). In World of Wonders, Peterman sees this tendency leading Davies to depict “a persistent kind of moral and aesthetic bullying by dominant and domineering figures whose credentials are their successes in the undemocratic world of art and theater” (149). Although he never accuses Davies himself of similarly bullying his readers, one could logi­ cally draw that inference from Peterman’s reading of these texts. He sees Davies the author as the true subject of the Salterton novels. He believes that, in The Manticore and The Rebel Angels, the very strength of Davies’s per­ sonal voice creates problems in differentiating among his characters’ narrative voices. Finally, Peterman acknowledges that the “ essentially religious and moral” commitment to self that he argues is at the heart of Davies’s work is 16 also “selfish, undemocratic, and elitist” (159). These characteristics seem all the more disturbing to Peterman in that they do not bother Davies himself in the least. Peterman’s consistent elaboration of his thesis enables new insight into the continuities of Davies’s work. It allows him to see Eisengrim as “an extraordi­ nary reincarnation of Samuel Marchbanks” (152). It alerts him to the con­ tinuity of the Prospero figure, the didactic, manipulative, dogmatic teacher, as a recurrently privileged type in Davies’s fiction. It leads him to note the similarities between the final volumes of the Salterton and Deptford trilogies, both of which focus on the “sustaining selfhood” of the artist (147). His argument also leads to clear differences between his readings and those of other Davies scholars. It causes him to modify Patricia Monk’s Jungian emphasis on Marchbanks as Davies’s “shadow self” to argue instead that Davies “was in complete control of the energy of his mouthpiece, of what both he and his mouthpiece chose to reveal” (33). Peterman’s reading of Marchbanks restores the satiric wit to the dark energies highlighted by Monk, and it places Davies the conscious artist clearly to the fore. In his emphasis on the monologic nature of Davies’s fiction, Peterman also implicitly sets himself in opposition to Barbara Godard’s’ attempts to claim that Davies’s writing exemplifies the Bakhtinian dialogic imagination of the camivalesque. Peter­ man’s stress on the conservative form and didactic manner of Davies’s fiction remains persuasive. Indeed, Peterman is most convincing when he points out the thematic and stylistic implications of Davies’s undoubted emphasis on the...

Secret Sharing: Reading Conrad Psychoanalytically

Conrad's Secret Sharer seems an ideal-indeed, almost too ideal-text on which to base an introduction to the varieties of psychoanalytic criticism. The story is told in the voice of young sea captain uneasy with his first command. His self-doubt is reinforced by the suspicions of the ship's two officers, heavily whiskered first mate and silent young second mate, both of whom are more familiar with the ship than their captain is. The story opens with the sighting of second ship, the Sephora, which is anchored nearby. During the night, the fugitive former first mate of the Sephora, man named Leggatt, swims to the narrator's ship and tells the young captain of having killed man during maneuver designed to save the ship in storm. The narrator conceals Leggatt in his own stateroom until he can bring his ship close to shore (against the better judgment of his officers) so the fugitive can swim safely away. There are thus two ships, two stories, two scenes. In the first, man is murdered; in the second, man escapes. Secret Sharer has long been staple of the classroom-what one colleague has called the New Critic's delight. Every rift is loaded with or-with the omnipresent figure of the double. Yet the double can hardly be the of the text, since it is mentioned on virtually every page: my my secret my second a double captain, says the young narrator again and again.' A more overdetermined figure has seldom appeared in literature. The reader is hardly to be congratulated for noticing its presence-we are not being any cleverer to think of it than the young narrator, for whom the mysterious stranger is clearly symbol of something. Indeed, the narrator puts forth version of just about every interpretive hypothesis: Leggatt is his double, his opposite; his projection, his fantasy, his unconscious; his shadow self, his ego