Self versus selfie: the shadow archetype and discontent in postmodernity

Abstract

This article examines the shadow archetype, as formulated by Jung, as a key to understanding contemporary discontent associated with permanent exposure on social media. The starting point is a two-sided observation: the technical availability of means to refine one's self-image has grown alongside antidepressant consumption in high-income populations. It is argued that this coincidence is not accidental but the expression of a single psychic operation — the hypertrophy of the persona as a response to the indefinite expansion of the judging instance. The conceptual path from the Freudian topography of repression to the Jungian collective unconscious is reconstituted; the shadow is delimited as an instance harbouring both rejected traits and unacknowledged potentials; and projection is examined as its privileged mode of return. It is held that repressing the shadow does not suppress it but converts it into symptom: diffuse anxiety, a sense of emptiness, hostility directed at one's fellow. The clinical section discusses the analytic handling of the encounter with the shadow, with attention to crossed projections within the transference bond. It is concluded that integrating the shadow, rather than suppressing it, is a condition of the individuation process.