Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche Paperback – February 17, 1994

I just wrapped up this book. It's a pretty short read at approximately 120 pages, and you can easily finish it in one day. I read the reviews before purchasing, but I decided to buy it anyway I had just Robert Johnson's other book on active imagination and dream work, which is phenomenal. It completely changed my life, and I highly recommend it.When I saw comments complaining that this book focuses on Christianity or that Robert Johnson is trying to push his Christianity on you, I thought, "Okay, that seems strange, but let's read it anyway." I'm super happy I did. I'm not a religious person, but I know there's a lot of symbolism in Christianity and the Bible. Even Carl Jung references God often in his works. Robert Johnson makes these references not to push religion on you, but to help you understand the shadow through a different lens. He uses symbolism in the Bible to explain and emphasize the concepts.If you're really turned off by the Bible and religion, I highly recommend Jordan Peterson's YouTube series on the Bible. It serves as a perfect primer to this book, with approximately 17 hours of lectures explaining the psychological significance of the Bible and its stories.Overall, this book is another amazing work by Robert Johnson, and I highly recommend it. It feels like a gem that many haven't discovered yet, and quite frankly, I'm surprised there are negative reviews for this book at all.

This book was a random purchase because it stood out to me in the bookcase. I didn't expect much, but what I got was an eye-opening, life-changing experience. This author is phenomenal, his writing is such so that anyone can read it with ease. The way he flows his words and thoughts together are an art form. The subject matter is admittedly a overly saturated genre, mostly everyone saying the same thing with their little spin on it.Not with this writer. His views on the shadow self, human nature and the universe itself are unlike any I've ever read or heard. Yet he doesn't try to force it down your throat, he's not trying to convince you that his theory is right above all others. He just lays it out for you to make up your own mind. I'm not going to spoil the story for anyone, it's an experience that will be different for everyone I'm sure.I don't ever leave reviews about books. But I have given this book to probably 10 different people since I've read it. Given my own copy to people and ordered another one many times. He is in a league all his own..

The book promises to help you understand the posited dark side of the psyche and own that, attempting to build on the work of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung and I think it does a good job of that. This topic interests me.The shadow is explained. For example, beginning in childhood, most of us are subject to so much external explanation, control, and shaping, that our own natural gifts and understandings become repressed and form a shadow.This shadow can accumulate as much energy as the ego. When it accumulates more energy than that, it can erupt in various ways, for example, rage, accident, illness, depression, bad decisions, war.The shadow can be dark or light, with positive or negative traits. When we demonize others, we are projecting onto them our most negative shadow qualities. When we fall into romantic love, we are projecting onto our lover our most positive unacknowledged shadow qualities.The recommendation for dealing with this is to bring the shadow into awareness and expression. We can do that symbolically by ritual; we can sit with the two sides of the psyche and incorporate them both ... see the books on meditation for how that practice helps heal the psyche.To handle the shadow projections of others onto ourselves, we simply recognize them and let them go by.I posit a scale or curve in which on the extreme left is religion and on the extreme right is science; I see this book as more on the left side of that imaginary thought curve. Because I favor a more rational approach to the science of human behavior, this book contains information that I can understand and agree with, then goes on to make some claims I cannot endorse.For for former, an example would be that I agree with the concept of the acculturation process forcing some natural aspects of the personality into remission; the phenomenon of projection; and that meditation can help unify the personality.I do not agree that creativity must be balanced by the acting-out of destruction. Is this just what Jung stated? It does not matter, because if this is not an excuse for wars I don't know what is. More deeply, I believe it is a fundamental misunderstanding of the root cause of war, which, yes, is found in the psyche of man, but not a necessary balance to man's creativity.Carol Tavris, in her book Anger, explains how practicing a behavior and the thinking that appears to justify it, strengthens the behavior ... a figure-ground reversal takes place and the anger or other emotion takes control and strengthens ... and so with the war and destructiveness of man.Johnson also suggests that atheism is something highly destructive, and I happen to believe just the opposite, and that we can, and mostly do, practice Christian-themed morals on a secular basis, as exemplified by Jefferson and his version of the Bible.There are other books on the shadow, and I'm acquiring and reading more on this interesting topic.

This book will help anyone understand and apply shadow work. Easy to read, straight to the point, and could change your life! Or at least help lead you in the right direction. Read many reviews of different shadow work books and none of them sounded good at all. Took a chance with this one and so happy I did! It might be the best one out there. Worked for me 100%

This is a small book with a stream-of-consciousness writing style. Some people may find it more relatable, but I found it disorganized and hard to follow the author’s thoughts and sometimes disconnected examples.

I highly recommend this short but potent book. Johnson writes succinctly and with great clarity. In the book he talks about recognizing and owning one's own shadow, and that it's the MOST important thing a human can learn to do. The ending on paradox is especially enlightening.