Carl Jung: How to Embrace Your Dark Side

In becoming acquainted with our inner cast of characters, or inner psychic frequencies, we especially need to accept the apparently undesirable ones, including the scared, sensitive child and the hostile, vengeful adult. These characters live in hiding, as our shadow-self, which can be repressed but never eliminated.

The shadow, then, consists of complexes, of personal qualities resting on drives and behavior patterns which are a definite “dark” part of the personality structure. In most instances they are readily observable by others. Only we ourselves cannot see them. The shadow qualities are usually in glaring contrast to the ego’s ideals and wishful efforts