Edward C. Whitmont > Quotes

“The anima in projection is responsible for man's state of being in love or in hate. One has now met one's soul image, the ideal and only woman, or conversely an absolutely unbearable bitch. Both reactions are found to be fascinating and irresistable. In such situations there tends to be a compulsive involvement which we can neither deal with nor let alone. Were it simply the fact that the woman is so wonderful or so awful, we could either love her or leave her. But if we can do neither, then we are under the arresting spell of the archetype.”
― Edward C. Whitmont

“[T]he shadow is the door to our individuality. In so far as the shadow renders us our first view of the unconscious part of our personality, it represents the first stage toward meeting the Self. There is, in fact, no access to the unconscious and to our own reality but through the shadow. Only when we realize that part of ourselves which we have not hitherto seen or preferred not to see can we proceed to question and find the sources from which it feeds and the basis on which it rests. Hence no progress or growth is possible until the shadow is adequately confronted and confronting means more than merely knowing about it. It is not until we have truly been shocked into seeing ourselves as we really are, instead of as we wish or hopefully assume we are, that we can take the first step toward individual reality”
― Edward C. Whitmont, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“There are several kinds of possible reactions to the shadow. We can refuse to face it; or, once aware that it is part of us, we can try to eliminate it and set it straight immediately; we can refuse to accept responsibility for it and let it have its way; or we can "suffer" it in a constructive manner, as a part of our personality which can lead us to a salutary humility and humanness and eventually to new insights and expanded life horizons.”
― Edward C. Whitmont, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“Ask someone to give a description of the personality type which he finds most despicable, most unbearable and hateful, and most impossible to get along with, and he will produce a description of his own repressed characteristics — a self-description which is utterly unconscious and which therefore always and everywhere tortures him as he receives its effect from the other person. These very qualities are so unacceptable to him precisely because they represent his own repressed side; only that which we cannot accept within ourselves do we find impossible to live with in others. Negative qualities which do not bother us so excessively, which we find relatively easy to forgive —if we have to forgive them at all — are not likely to pertain to our shadow.”
― Edward C. Whitmont, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“In order to protect its own control and sovereignty the ego instinctively puts up a great resistance to the confrontation with the shadow; when it catches a glimpse of the shadow the ego most often reacts with an attempt to eliminate it. Our will is mobilized and we decide. "I just won't be that way any more!" Then comes the final shattering shock, when we discover that, in part at least, this is impossible no matter how we try. For the shadow represents energically charged autonomous patterns of feeling and behavior. Their energy cannot simply be stopped by an act of will. What is needed is rechanneling or transformation. However, this task requires both an awareness and an acceptance of the shadow as something which cannot simply be gotten rid of.”
― Edward C. Whitmont, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature