At this point, Dr. Jung suggests that they take a break for several minutes. He offers Mitch some more coffee; however, Mitch declines the offer, suggesting that a glass of water would be preferred. All the stress and insights of this session have made Mitch quite thirsty.
The Shadow
When Dr. Jung and Mitch settled back in their chair after the break, Dr. Jung brought up a new topic. He introduces the concept of Shadow:
“The shadow was one of my uncle’s favorite characters in the psychic theater. I think he liked the Shadow because, like the Shadow, my uncle was something of a trickster and troublemaker. He liked to stir things up and often wanted to appear mysterious and shadowy in his work with patients and in his writing—his writing is often hard to understand!”
Dr. Jung then introduces the important role played in the psychic theater by the Shadow:
“While our Shadow can mess with our mind and disrupt our behavior it can also correct our misguided behavior, especially when we are filled with hubris and walk around with a large, inflated ego. Under such conditions, the Shadow places a banana peel on the floor in front of us so that we slip and make a fool of ourselves. In our dreams, the Shadow will strip us of our clothes and leave us naked trying to impress a crowd of skeptics or a panel of critical judges.”
At this point, Dr. Jung shifts his focus from the role of shadow in our personal psyche to the role of shadow in an organizational setting:
“I want to return to the issues you are facing in your organization. It is important to note that the Shadow can be represented not just in our psychic theater, but also by a real person in an organizational setting. This the person, like my uncle, who stirs things up and like the judges in the dream who declares that the leader is naked and wrong! Similarly, there is the old tale of the child who declares that the emperor is naked. The Shadow function is served by this child – and by many children in our life.”
After Dr. Jung has described the function served by the Shadow in an organization, Mitch remains silent for about a minute. He then conveys a story with some emotion in his voice:
“My goodness. I must tell you about Horace, one of the key members of our production team, He is serving as a Shadow. He goes around pretending to be a robot that is making decisions about layoffs among members of the production team. Sometimes, he portrays me as a robot. Or he is acting as a robotic Gwen making these critical decisions. I hated the role that he is playing and have accused Frank of putting him up to this pointed criticism of the way things operate in this organization.
Frank is strongly urging me to break up Gwen’s division. He thinks it is inappropriate for Gwen to oversee Human Resources while she is also in charge of Information Technology. This is where the Shadow role played by Horace comes in. Is it appropriate for someone handling a technology that could lead to employee layoffs be in charge of the layoff process. Frank is suggesting that one of the bright and ambitious members of Gwen’s staff be made the head of HR, so that Gwen can concentrate on strategic planning and information technology. Perhaps, I should give this proposal greater consideration. I put all three functions together to save some money; however, this might not be a wise move, especially with the potentially greater role to be played by IT in the future of our company.”
