Customer Reviews

A Little Book on the Human Shadow

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I highly recommend the book and will explain my review with a few personal illustrations.

It is a wonderful, digestible, brief introduction to psychological concepts that are new to me for understanding my motivations, anxieties and frustrations in such a way that I can begin to create positive, conscious change in my life.

His premise is that we are born with "360-degree radiance." Our spirits shine in all directions, good, bad, indifferent. Over the first 20 years or so of our lives we learn to stuff the "bad" parts into a bag so that we become well behaved, more polite, and able to manage our anger etc. We also stuff other things in there too, like our "feminine" or "masculine" sides and our "witch" or "giant" archetypes, among others. And to explain why these parts are missing, we learn to say things like "oh, I'm not really a creative-type person."

This process continues up to about age 35 wherein we begin to "rattle" a little, we begin to miss parts of ourselves. This often surfaces as resentment of others or depression. Basically, the masks we project onto ourselves and others don't seem to fit as well and this spooks us as the slipping masks reveal things that don't fit with our world view. We begin to lose tons of energy putting masks back on, dragging our shadow bags behind us and emotionally struggling to deal with the changes we feel. At this point we have a choice, we can either eat our shadows and reintegrate them with our personality/psyche or we can devote increasing amounts of energy to our rigidity, becoming more controlling toward and intolerant of others.

This is exactly the point I find myself at ... mid-thirties, misty-eyed at sappy commercials, tired of being grumpy, much too quick-tempered with annoying little situations, frustrated with my hesitations to apologize, confused by how hard it is to be more happy and spontaneous and generally struggling to understand myself with frameworks that simply don't work anymore. Now I must choose whether to open my bag of cast-aways and begin reacquainting myself with the rest of myself.

Eating a shadow is like eating your words ... it is hard work and not always appreciated by people who have come to recognize you as "not creative" or "not assertive" or "very polite" or "very strong." Moreover, these stuffed pieces of our personalities have become moldy and bent in the bag, so they often come out as ugly and angry. But it is wise work. Bly makes recommendations on the process for integrating our shadow selves. The result is that we become more balanced in our personalities, more tolerant of the struggles of others, more able to see both the half-full and half-empty glass at the same time. As we become more wise, more sage, more melancholy, we have more energy and more innate authority -- in short we stop giving our power away.

This is a path I can now choose to walk, that I now have the vocabulary to understand. I highly recommend this book for anyone else seeking to understand the shadow in themselves and hoping to dance with it.

While this is an older book, it is one of the very best you will ever find about the human shadow. Robert Bly is a poet, teacher, philosopher and astute writer. His observations in this "little book" (only 81 pages) are potent, penetrating and profound. While Bly explores the Universal shadow as well as the "lone bag we drag behind us" (personal shadow material), it is retrieving the shadow which is the main focus of this work.

Bly notes that "when one 'projects,' one is really giving away an energy or power that rightfully belongs to one's own treasury." From a young age, we learn to project outward, ridding ourselves of the inner tyrants, giants, and witches of the psyche. We may project onto individuals (parents as well as husbands and wives receive a lot of projections), onto any number of "them's" (the government is a favorite "them" in America) or onto other cultures and races. While there is always an initial gain (by projecting the witch outward, we don't have to deal with her), unowned shadow material eventually comes back to haunt us. The more parts of the inner world we give away, the more diminished we become.

At a certain point in life, however, when we are no longer interested in blaming or projecting onto others, we begin the long, lone journey of searching for our shadow. Bly speaks of "eating the shadow," retrieving its power from its projected place and reclaiming its energy. No small feat, but a damn worthy endeavor. By honoring the shadow, we honor ourselves.

If you're participating in the Mankind Project New Warrior Training, it is likely that this book was recommended to you. I found the basic premise of the book (i.e. Bly's introduction of the concept of the human shadow and the long bag we drag behind us) to be very solid and prescient. However, I felt that overall the book tended to be rather rambling and sometimes even incoherent, as if Bly was trying to identify a close relationship between subjects and concepts that had little or nothing to do with each other. I especially felt that the poetry discussed in the book failed to contribute anything to the subject matter. Now it could very well be that I simply missed the point; I do not proclaim to be an expert on poetry or the concept of the human shadow. But overall I did not feel like I gained a great deal from reading this book. I think Bly would have written a better and more helpful book had he concentrated more on the issue of the shadow and the "long bag," subjects that intrigued me greatly when I read about them here for the first time. It's a short book and doesn't take long to read, so even if you don't get as much out of it as other people might, it's still worth reading simply because, if nothing else, you won't need to devote a lot of time to it.

As for the reviewer who dismissed it as a "self-help" book, I'm not sure what to make of that comment. Some of the subjects discussed in this book entail deep, thoughtful reflection on one's own personality and being. Serious introspection and self-analysis is necessary to do the kind of work Bly talks about. I suppose anything we do to make ourselves better people can be described as "self-help," but I don't know why in the world that would be considered a bad thing. This book certainly doesn't read like some of the superficial popular self-help books I've taken a look at over the years. Bly suggests no quick fixes or easy 1-2-3 solutions. This work is for people who are dead serious about committing themselves to an honest and almost certainly painful examination of themselves.

This book was a text in my father's poetry class at SUNY Brockport many years ago. When I became a teacher of composition (ugh, I know...), it was a large part of my curriculum as well. This book is not about poetry, nor is it about composition. It does, however, speak to all human beings, regardless of their work in life.

I have bought copies to share with friends, and I have returned to this book so many times in my life as a reminder of the hard, good work we are urged do to in order to be whole.

Robert Bly has done an excellent job of presenting the childhood origins of problems that plague people in their adult life. His concise and poetic writing allows for the easy understanding of what Carl Jung termed the human "shadow." This book helped me realize how the subconscious seeds of obsessive/compulsive behavior are planted early in life. Understanding the origins of behavior is very freeing from the guilt associated with addiction and is the first step in correcting undesireable actions.

Even after having read Carl G Jung & Robert A Johnson, I found interesting commentary with Robert Bly's writings on the Human Shadow. When he began with his metaphors of "the bag, the film can and projection," I quickly awakened to his supporting roles for Joseph Conrad, Robert Louis Stevenson and Carl Jung! "In the old Gnostic tradition that we don't invent things, we just remember..." Then he calls on his three Europeans "who remember the dark side best."

After covering his graphic three metaphors using Marilyn Monroe for "her projections as part of her power-longing and childhood disturbance" ...He moved into even more authentic resources with Alice Miller's "Prisoners of Childhood." Later as renamed, "The Drama of the Gifted Child" gaining popularity & clout with many of us working with Prison Inmates!

"Many ancient religions...evidently moved so as to bring up the dark side into the personality slowly and steadily. Christianity has acted historically to polarize the 'dark personality' and the 'light personality.'" Today this is surely not only true in the areas of Religions, but present day's "dominant personality in the West tends to be idealistic, compassionate, civilized, orderly as Dr Jekyll's...so caring with his Patients.(A good bit parallel with some Broadway Musicales!)

When he really gets into my heavy personal resources, he delves into Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Sharer" & "Heart of Darkness" + Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn!" From there, on to Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens and other Poets! I became more smitten & really impressed! Hooray for Robert Bly!
Retired Chap Fred W Hood

I agree with AcornMan's opinion, so this review may sound like a rehash of his.

The good:
The bag theory is interesting; he says how the parts we disown about ourselves gets thrown into this hidden "bag." The parts that are placed into this bag become hostile towards us after time. In a way, we become our worst enemy. He also mentions how the longer we wait, the harder it is to see this "bag," because it becomes larger than our ego.

I also liked how he talks about certain gender-specific shadows (The man disowning his inner "witch," and the woman disowning her inner "hero."). I thought this was an interesting concept which explains why a lot of men nowadays let the wife/mom choose for them, even though secretly, men know what they want. We were taught to be good little boys and this hurts us in the long run.

The bad:

Some of the poetry was great, while a lot of it was a little too abstract for me. I admit I have little appreciation for flowery writing; I like my answers clear-cut and straight to the point. Still, I wish he made this book a little more accessible to the "non-poetic" man. If you are the type that loves poetry, you may have a different view.

Also, there are some pretty outlandish connections between subjects that aren't clearly relate-able to the topic, which is the shadow. Why couldn't he just give a clear answer of his main points without alluding to to an author most people have not heard about?

Final verdict:
I did pick up some revelations about myself and the shadow by reading this; the bag and the "inner witch" portion were very relate-able to my journey in life. Also, he explains projection well enough for the reader to understand; I will observe from now on where I am projecting. I just wish he gave more concrete, clear answers on how to find the shadow, and what to do about it.

Bly writes, "We spend our life until we're twenty deciding what parts of ourself to put into the bag, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again." We all have sides to ourselves that we wish weren't there and it feels like how the h--- did it get there in the first place? This book illuminates in a magnificent way how to learn and embrace all aspects of the self. Its a powerful tool towards integration of our many differing desires, voices, and wanderings within,

I've read a few books on the subject of the Human Shadow, and found this one to be possibly the most useful in understanding this necessarily murky topic.
I've also read a number of Robert Bly's other books, Iron John, and a few books of his poetry and translations and I feel this "Little Book" may now be my favorite.
The very subject is "shadowy" by nature. And what knowledge there is of it, is not widely spread, despite the fact that it effects each and every one of us, causing great upset in our personal relationships, and our family, social, and, political lives. A more widespread understanding of this dynamic would be very helpful in addressing the problems we are now facing, and may, in fact, be necessary.

This book is valuable resource in reaching that understanding.
I hope this doesn't make the book sound dry or academic. It most definitely is not!
Bly uses poetry and stories to illustrate and illuminate a "difficult" subject in a down to earth and intriguing way.


.A Little Book on the Human Shadow

...on accepting that which is dark in ourselves, others, the world. it is vital we face, and know intimately, our shadow; it is what empowers or destroys our lives.