Collective Cultural Shadow and Confrontation

¶ … Collective Cultural Shadow and Confrontation with the Archetypal During the 1960s, a musical group called Jefferson Airplane created a popular song called White Rabbit, based on the Lewis Carroll children's fantasy Alice in Wonderland. In the book, Alice follows a white rabbit down a rabbit hole into a world that is bizarre, where she has an adventure of encountering strange and fascinating characters.

In the rock song by Jefferson Airplane, "One pill makes you larger and one makes you small, and the ones that your mother gives you don't do anything at all.. Go ask Alice when she's ten feet tall... Call Alice when she was just small." The rock song and the children's story, decades apart in time, are nonetheless reflective of the human collective shadow; those traits in ourselves that represent our collective experience of our alter egos or darker sides, or our collective cultural shadow.

We know today, of course, that the incredibly talented voice of Grace Slick was singing about the experience experimenting with drugs that taking place during the counter culture revolution of the 1960s; and Lewis Carroll, it has been alleged, was catering to his own darker desires when he penned he created the story of Alice while sitting on the river bank with two young sisters, one of whom he grew an unnatural attachment to that caused him to pursue her the rest of his life (Kincaid, 1998, p. 126).

These collective experiences comprise our collective cultural shadow, and it is this shadow that when faced with the antithesis of the archetypal characteristics of our society that cause us to cross the street when we see a homeless person, or to stare in horrified wonder at a gruesome traffic accident, or for prison guards to become the tormenters of the tormenters incarcerated behind bars. It is the manifestations of the collective experience that the collective shadows sees in the archetypal face of the mentally deranged, and fears.

Lyn Cowan (2002) quotes the psychiatrist, Carl Jung, as saying: Soul is the living thing in man, that which lives of itself and causes life... With her cunning play of illusions the soul lures into life the inertness of matter that does not want to live. She makes us believe incredible things, that life may be lived. She is full of snares and traps, in order that man should fall, should reach the earth, entangle himself there, and stay caught, so that life should be lived....(p. 1)." C.G.

Jung, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious) Cowan discusses at length the notion held in modern psychology that people can accomplish any kind of change, especially social change (p. 3). Cowan goes on to say that the idea that people can bring about change so long as that change is in the best interest of society, is flawed. This view of change inflates it and makes it moralistic and unrealistic, placing a heavy burden on individuals who cannot change and who are not moral wretches because of that.

Not everything in the individual psyche can be, or should be, changed, any more than a cottonwood tree should be required to change its appearance to that of a redwood because redwoods are bigger, more impressive, and privileged to live in federally protected national parks (p. 3)." Cowan does, however, acknowledge that those changes which can be brought about the people in the nature of the benefit of society as a whole, are worth an effort at least to work towards changing (p. 3).

Cowan suggests that the west is beginning to exhibit a collective psychosis of sorts, "a flattening of psychic life" that is becoming evident through psychopathic tendencies (p. 3). Her concern, she says, is evidenced by the increase in violent crimes, and the increase in the number of serial killers - some of whom have yet to be identified or apprehended (p. 3).

While Cowan's concerns are valid, she fails to recognize the psychopathic social conditions that have given rise to the increase in destructive forces of human nature: homelessness, to which society turns a blind eye pretending not to notice that an individual, and sometimes his family, have succumbed to the pressures of the capitalistic society in which we live, and have, under those conditions, failed to thrive.

This is the collective shadow that turns a blind eye to these conditions and allows it to continue, even when the social infrastructures, like homeless shelters, prove to be insufficient in helping to relieve or address the problems. These kinds of social band-aids do not heal the deeper social problems. Unhealed, the problems exacerbate and lead to other forms of psychopathic behaviors about which Cowan is concerned.

These social problems have become the rabbit hole, which, by the time we are adults, we have gained the collective experience which allows us to avoid falling down that hall; although we do, when curiosity compels us, take a peek on occasion. The Collective Shadow In his book, the Shadow and the Counselor: Working with Darker Aspects of the Person, Role and Profession, Steve Page (1999) says that it is often by choice that people remain unaware of their shadow person, or their darker side (p. 58).

In many instances, the day-to-day behavior of a person wherein the manifestations of the shadow might reveal itself in the individual remains unconscious to the individual (p. 58). However, any thought, feeling or behavior that is driven by unconscious forces also provides an opportunity for growth, a window through which the shadow is visible, if sometimes only for a moment.

As counselors we will probably all have felt the frustration of working with a client who insists on remaining oblivious to the impact of their unconscious in their everyday life, one example of this being those individuals who seem able to form relationships only with partners who treat them appallingly (p.

58)." Another example is brought to life in the film Monsters Ball (2001), directed by Marc Foster, starring Halle Berry as Leticia Musgrove, Peter Broyle as Buck Grotowski, Billy Bob Thornton as Grotowski's son, Hank, and Heath Ledger as the younger son, Sonny, who, following in the footsteps of his racist, mean spirited and abusive father as a prison guard, becomes so emotionally distraught by his life that he commits suicide early in the film.

The elder Grotowski does not so much as flinch at his young son's suicide, and Hank and dad hold a small service for the younger Grotowski, and then lay him to rest next to the garage. It takes some time for Hank to find himself, but his blind eye begins to see a light that creeps in from his peripheral view as the attractive black waitress Leticia enters his life.

The film exemplifies the way in which people turn the blind eye to the chaos in life, those people and things upon which our collective shadow feed; ignorance, hate, the giving in to harmful and violent compulsions, and the disregard for lives and well being of others. In the film, this disregard for the well being of others is a trait, amongst others, that eats at Sonny, who is a prison guard on death row.

Sonny finds it impossible to ignore any longer the curing of social injustices and pathology by eliminating the chaos, the individual who is a product of society's dark side. This conflict between the social response to chaos and the creation of the chaos creates a conundrum which Sonny can no longer ignore nor reconcile and it becomes a source of mental anguish for Sonny, leading to his suicide.

Sonny, unable t experience the growth from his experiences, serves as the catalyst for Hank's personal growth, and Leticia is an integral part of Hank's growth because she is black, and the primary focus by virtue of her race for Hank's dad. This film is an insightful look into the dark side of the collective mind.

A that shadow in us leaves clues, and sometimes the result of the clues is painful; and perhaps there are those people who can relate to Sonny's (Monster's Ball) suicide, or to one of the other characters' change in behavior. Page says: Thankfully shadow-driven actions do not always have such grim consequences and are not always so irrecoverable. The action cannot be undone once performed but sometimes the consequences can be ameliorated.

It was hard for me to deal with the guilt I felt about my central role in N'Assarudin's death. However, this precipitated me into entering individual therapy so I did salvage something constructive from this horrible event (p. 60)." In an article appearing in World Watch magazine, journalist Ed Ayres (1996) talks about the shadow economy (p. 10). It makes sense that where there is a collective shadow, that it gives rise to its manifestations in all forms, even economically.

Ayres cautions: As globalization ties the world together more tightly, activities that are unaccountable are paradoxically increasing. They pose a growing threat to civil society - and a critical opportunity to reform the way we do business on this planet (p. 10)." Just as in the U.S. economy, where individuals have been economically left behind, such will be, and is, the case in the emerging global economy (p. 10).

Ayres says that the impression, or the turning of society's blind eye towards the chaos of the economically disenfranchised, tends to cause the more affluent amongst us to believe that the term "global" means everybody will be a part of the emerging global economics, and this will produce an economic benefit that will be enjoyed by everyone (p. 10).

That is not accurate, and, moreover, those people who presume to take a comfort in the economic globalization are not just turning a blind eye to the disenfranchised, but may find their selves vulnerable in a way that serves to be their light, much like Hank's in Monster's Ball. On this point Ayres says: There is a popular impression, among the affluent and well-connected, that the global economy is now almost complete and almost everyone is a part of it.

Transactions span the globe in seconds; people in the remotest corners of the world watch the TV advertising of multinational corporations; your VISA card is accepted in 224 countries and territories; and the international community, through agencies ranging from the World Trade Organization to Interpol, has become highly adept at both protecting economic activities and keeping them accountable. But that impression - of a powerfully and securely interfaced international system that now keeps track of us all - is a myth (p.

10)." The collective shadow moves in a synchronicity, away from the chaos of the archetypal chaos that reminds the collective of the shadow.

Moving about in the contemporary world is perhaps more than ever a contest of the survival of the fittest; where those who cannot achieve, or who cannot maintain the equilibrium to stand erect on the world where communication takes place at light speed, self-interest prevails over the interest of the group, and especially those whose blind eye has begun to seep light; will be devoured by the collective shadow for producing the chaos of a collective truth. James F.

Hamilton (1996) says that the space that we occupy helps to create meaning in our lives (p. 101). Therefore, to allow the chaos into the area of personal space evokes a response of hostility, anger, resistance or avoidance. Hamilton says: Space also structures existence to give it meaning (by configuring daily life and personal relationships) and needs to be elevated to the same high level of understanding as time.

Spatial arrangement in architecture and art gives visualization to the artist's needs, desires, feelings, and intentions -- personal and collective, conscious and unconscious -- to produce distinctive categories in cultural history, period style, and artistic movement (p. 101)." The collective integrates the space of the collective into expressions of home, office, landscape, and those individuals who become by choice or default components within the space (p. 101). It is this space by which the collective identifies themselves, and by which it serves to justify the collective blind eye.

The Archetypal The archetypal is the antithesis of the collective shadow, or that way in which the collective, unaware of their dark shadow, tend to perceive themselves. In western culture, the archetypal is the patriarchal society, where women have been slow to emerge as independent personalities separate and apart from their fathers and husbands. The archetypal collective perceives women who are not married, or who are without a mal by which to define themselves, as aberrant manifestations of something gone horribly wrong.

In terms of the space that Hamilton spoke about, he helps put into perspective the archetypal space, saying: Archetypal architecture finds poetic expression in Chateaubriand's portrayal of his family home, Combourg. Connecting inner space and time, identity and the world, psyche and the text, Combourg becomes a focal point in the Memoires from 1826. Its mythic potential has been pointed to by critics in the images -- "du cote de Combourg" (Le Youanc70) and "haunted memories" (Rollo38).

Moreover, a view of Combourg as a place of subjective reality, concrete but evolving in significance (Barberis292-93), prepares the description of Combourg as "a mythic place" existing "outside of time" (Salesse29, 11). The subjective reality of Combourg as perceived by an adolescent surpasses its historical, geographical context to reveal an ominous configuration of space and its corresponding pattern of psychic development.

Underneath its lyrical description lies the stark reality of another archetype, the negative Father, a patriarch whose pervasive presence is made concrete through the spatial organization of family life (p. 101)." In a journal article appearing in the Yale Law Journal, Ariela R. Dubler (2003) talks about women in society's shadow of men; that an impoverished woman is perceived by the court system to be a failure in marriage (p. 1641).

If a woman is not married, this causes her to be suspect by society as perhaps being defected or amoral or even a lesbian - whether she is or not. It is reflective of the archetypal image by which the collective identify with in a patriarchal society. The unmarried woman is as difficult for most of us to explain as is the homeless man who was once a CEO of a fortune 500 company.

For a long time, the archetypal image of the ideal family was the family of the hit television show that ran from 1954 to 1977, Father Knows Best. Actors Robert Young and Jane Wyatt provided the images of the ideal parents, faced with, in today's world, seemingly mundane challenges involving their family of three children: two girls and a boy, the ideal family.

Then, of course, there was the less archetypal family, the family that was presented as less ideally normal, but not so far from the mainstream as to pose a threat to the archetypal family image; Leave it to Beaver (1957-1963). The mother, a beautiful blonde, played by actress Barbara Billingsley, might actually be said to have supplanted Jane Wyman as the "archetypal" American mother.

Billingsley, a stay at home mom, always dressed in a neat dress, pearls and high heels - not flat shoes to do the laundry, vacuuming, and mopping of floors. It is from these unrealistic archetypal images that during the 1960s the darker shadow side of American culture began to clash with.

The result was the counter cultural revolution of the 1960s, wherein young people went to seemingly great extremes to look and behave opposite the archetypal image, which soon became known as "the establishment." At a point in American history, during the years of the Vietnam Conflict, it would have served Americans well to have found a way to blend the archetypal with the new; but that did not occur.

Part of that which kept the two from meeting on a common ground was the Civil Rights Movement, which the young people of the 1960s was very much in support of for the most part, but which because it was about change in attitudes, laws, and social behaviors, loomed as a threat to the people who resisted the change. Instead of coming together in support of social changes, for the most part, Americans have demonstrated a stubbornness to change.

If that which is subject to change defies the archetypal image with which Americans have become accustomed, and with which the collective identifies, then the tendency of Americans is put that challenge or contrasting image aside, or, better, to lock it up so that it no longer poses a threat to the archetypal. In some instances, such as the prison system, as we see in Monster's Ball, the archetypal, when exposed to the dark side, begins to manifest its own buried shadow side, and often the conditions become antagonistic.

Author Arjen Boin (2001), talks about the institutionalization in prisons and leadership roles and models. On the leadership in American prisons - which should be provided by the individuals in charge of inmates, the guards - Boin says, noting the difference between the federally operated Bureau of Prison's systems compared with the system employed by the individual states: The high degree of institutionalization found in the U.S. federal prison system is not the result of coincidence or fortuitous circumstances. The federal prison system did not have an extraordinary budget.

The BOP did not achieve operational uniformity by imposing a restricted or purely custodial regime upon its inmate population. The BOP is, as we will see, one of the most progressive prison systems in the United States. Nor is this degree of organizational unity facilitated by an "easy" inmate population.

It is sometimes supposed that the BOP has to deal with a different class of inmates as a result of federal crime definitions; white-collar criminals are thought to dominate federal prisons, whereas state prisons have to deal with the violent inmates. However, inmate statistics do not support this assumption (DiIulio, 1991) (p. 81)." Here, the states' dysfunctional systems have become the archetypal image of the prison, shadowing the federal DOP systems, which have been, at least by Boin, deemed as the better model of guard-to-prisoner modeling (p. 81).

The states' prisons are a clear example of how the shadow can take over when that which is being shadowed is of a nature that society wants to ignore or disregard. Very much like homelessness, child abuse and neglect, and other prevalent social ills coursing through the veins of contemporary American society. Found in an article in European Judaism (2003), one paragraph in the article in particular helps to make more clear the clash between the shadow culture and the archetypal image of that culture.

The worst catastrophes endured by humanity have always been the result of a lack of communication between countries or societies, with confrontation and violence taking over from dialogue. In order to combat an enemy with greater conviction and ferocity it is always indispensable to dehumanize him, to turn him into scum, to project on to him our most monstrous imaginings: in short, to demonize him.

This is an eminently cultural undertaking: to replace the objective perception of reality with mirages reflecting our fears and our hates, thereby replacing human beings with ghosts, depriving them first of their inherent reality and then abolishing them from life altogether. Religion, ideologies and nationalisms have traditionally provided the arguments and pretexts for this dehumanizing debasement of the enemy, something which inevitably precedes the genocides and holocausts that fill universal history with horror and blood (p.

17)." This helps create the visualization of the clash that occurs when the archetypal and the shadow meet. It explains the American states' prison system, the treatment of the mentally ill, the disregard and avoidance of homelessness, and the blind eye turned to other social issues like child abuse. In the closing paragraphs of the same journal article, another paragraph gives rise to hope for the changes that will come about as a result of the process of globalization: In a famous essay, Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), T.S.

Eliot predicted that in the future humanity would witness the renaissance of local and regional culture. At the time his prophecy seemed rather daring. However, it is likely that globalization will turn it into reality in the twenty-first century, something that should delight us.

A rebirth of minor local cultures will restore to humanity that rich, multiple variety of behavior and expression that -- from the end of the eighteenth century, and in particular during the nineteenth -- the nation-states exterminated so that they could create the so -- called national cultural identities. This extermination -- sometimes not in a metaphorical but in a literal sense -- is something that tends to be forgotten, or to put it more appropriately, that people try not to remember, because of its grave moral connotations (p.

17)." Thomas Singer and Samuel Kimbles (2004) use the example of young Elian Gonzales, a Cuban child whose mother, in route from Cuba to Florida, drowned trying to reach America, the place where she might pursue freedom, opportunity and the American dream (p. 16). Instead, following his.