An “always-good” self must have an “always-bad” self

Excerpted from Holistic Psychology, Balance on All Levels, PACMES (3rd ed forthcoming)

Where do all my negative traits live inside me?

Q: Where do all my negative expressions live inside me?

A: There is emphatically no such place.

I do NOT subscribe to the idea of a negative Habit Body, a hologram of all our negative habits. I have never perceived this. I also know where these ideas come from. They come from the same place all earlier negative views of our Habit Body, inner child and unconscious come from. They come from an inner critic and inner blamer, in our left-hemisphere, who feel desperate to survive physical death. Our survival-mad part wishes no responsibility for anything bad. It wishes to blame, have a scapegoat to vent its every frustration on. If it can get away with it, it will always beat-up on its own lower self — however individually conceived. t will accuse its lower self of every wrong-doing, my body is betraying me, my lower self let me down, and so on. This heavy-duty self-denial and lack of healthy accountability behavior is often visible at congressional hearings, where invited corporate CEOs publicly testify.

If you need a good topic for a PhD thesis in psychology, one never-written history is how the idea of a “shadow” originated and evolved I believe the modern history of the show starts between 1850–1930. The earliest ideas about the inner child were stories and case study anecdotes hoping to prove each person had an evil doppleganger inside, who was the source, origin and repository of all bad and unwanted personal and character traits.

An always-good mono-mind must have an always-bad shadow

“Good” and “bad” are not real. They are judgements, evaluations our mind places on top of our (neutral) sense percepts. “Good” and “bad” are artificial. They are partial truths. They are only valid (true) on the mental level of our psyche.

The model of an “always-good” self therefore necessitates another self who is “always-bad.” Any partial myth, any one-sided view, necessitates a “hidden” (ignored, neglected, denied) other self.

In the late 1800s, came:

- Psychology 1.0 (Freud, Wilhelm Wundt and their followers),

- Theosophy (Western metaphysics) 1.0, and

- Our greatest literature on the Shadow:” “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (1891), and “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (1886). Stevenson, the author, claims inspiration for this story came to him in a dream.

Our Habit Body does not have any shelf space designated “always-bad” or marked “Mr. Hyde.” What does it have? In modern IFS terms, it only has disturbed and unresolved internal parts waiting for healthy Self leadership.

Complicating matters, our psyche tends to have many immature protector parts who as jailer for our most disturbed, most shameful parts (exiles). If never addressed, our protectors become very practiced at keeping our exiles locked up “in a dungeon in the basement.” More therapeutically, our immature Self chooses to avoid, deny, dissociate from our unwanted internal exiles by willful ignorance. Ignoring them, denying their needs, keeps them “locked up.” Hence, our “shadow.”

Before Rudolf Steiner died in 1925, the idea of an “always-bad” lower self (incorrigible, bad and irredeemable) took hold. The splitting off a part of our internal multiplicity, so it can be blamed for all the bad choices and bad behaviors in your life — believe it or not — was part of psychology’s first awareness of less conscious needy parts.

Many readers will understand the above polarity was played out on a massive, outer scale in Nazism. The original Nazis conceived of a polarity. One end, a white, naturally dominant Nordic Race. On the other end, “worthless” Jews and gypsies who must be exterminated. Why was this polarity needed? If you need scapegoats to project your “always-bad” parts onto, a good~bad polarity supports splitting and dissociating. Not us but they (the others) are the source of all our problems.

The story of how the German shadow was finally more resolved continues into the 1980s-2000s. Starting in the 1980s-2000s, Germans imported, from the USA, experienced trainers in authentic personal growth methods. I heard some of these trainers speak about this around 2000. They said the German people had more difficulty than other demographics for accepting; and, coming to terms with their own shadow.

Since 2005, White Nationalists in the USA and elsewhere have a very similar dynamic. Learning how to re-integrate your shadow, parts rejected, neglected, ignored, denied and repressed for multiple generations is significant work for adults. We call this work therapy, psychotherapy and healing. For adults, nothing else is as effective for resolving disturbed shadow dynamics.

In the 1940s, Carl Jung’s idea of the “shadow” gained popularity with therapists and clients on the US East and West coasts. Looking backwards from 2023, Jung’s “shadow” was an intermediate idea between the older, all-bad conceiving of the child within; and, the more recent New Age all-good conceiving of the inner child as (flow-child, flower child). While true and valid, Jung’s insights about our “shadow” did not circulate much beyond circles of Jungian psychotherapists and counselors.

Fortunately in the late 1980s and 1990s, the “inner child,” especially John Bradshaw’s “wounded inner child,” did find a wide, national audience. Variations on Alcoholics Anonymous 12 step programs for over-eaters, gamblers, codependents, children of alcoholic parents proliferated nationwide in living rooms and church basements.

The 1980s wounded Inner child of John Bradshaw also proved to be an intermediate idea. The good news was various forms of dialoging with the inner child replaced a huge fraction of older abstract, intellectual talk therapy, Depth Psychology, Freudian and otherwise. Still a big problem persisted. The inner child was still only a psychology devoid of any healthy spirituality. No power higher than the mind was acknowledged.

In the 1990s this problem of psychology divorced and dissociated from all spirituality was usefully addressed from three directions:

- By William Glasser in Choice Theory (1998 first edition). Glasser usefully converged psychology with awareness as choice. Choice Theory was among a handful of later psychologies, who together, rolled back overly materialistic 1930s Behaviorism in psychology,

- In University of Santa Monica, 1983–2014, Ron and Mary Hulnick usefully innovated a very successful “spiritual psychology.” This went a long way to addressing and resolving the divorcing of healthy psychology from healthy spirituality. However as a theory, method and system of spiritualized psychology, it left much to be desired,

- Finally after 2015, Internal Family Systems (IFS) emerged more publicly. IFS converged dialoging with internal parts with a spiritualized view of healthy Self leadership.

Unlike many earlier integrative and innovative psychologies, IFS “converted,” held the attention and loyalty of scores of therapists trained in other, earlier methods. Some converts combined IFS with what they were doing; others switched to IFS as their new primary therapeutic method. Evidence for how many therapists, across a wide range of methods, switched to IFS, can be found in the podcast series, IFS Talks. Tho the series originates from Portugal, all podcasts are in English. The interviews are good enuf to listen to from episode one; then, come forward in time. I have listened to several twice already. — https://podtail.com/en/podcast/ifs-talks/

Q: Can I simply ignore my lower self? Benign neglect?

A: Denial is very effective. If we choose, we can avoid, deny, dissociate from our unwanted internal parts by willful ignorance. Just ignoring them, denying them, keeps them “locked up.” Just get a few friends who also wish to deny their unresolved inner voices and you can all support each other how “everything’s fine.”

Above is from Chapter 7.