פני הרוע: מופעיו של הצל הארכיטיפי במיתולוגיה ובנפש האדם

Since the beginning of time, evil has been a focus of human concern.Philosophers, theologians and many other disciplines, including moral theories,mythology and psychology, have tried to understand evil and define it within various theoretical frameworks. In psychotherapy as well, moral judgments based on the notion of evil are supposed to be withheld in order to prevent censorship and enable in-depth understanding of the psychic ingredients and tributaries of moral positions.In the present work, I discuss evil and its manifestations within the human psyche, using the Carl Gustav Jung's (1875-1961) concept of the “Shadow”. The individual’s shadow represents the part of the personality that consists of all the tendencies that the developing ego considers unwanted and bad. On the collective level, Jung described the archetypal Shadow – the dark side of culture and of human nature, which is considered evil. Shadow is less a ‘thing’ than a point of view, defined by and shaped by the strictures of ego consciousness. But it is also an archetypal structure within the psyche,containing cultural images, values and ideas.For Jung, knowing and owning one’s Shadow dimension is a highly important moral imperative on the personal level as well as on the collective one. This is rendered practicable by the study of myths that offer an avenue for knowing the Shadow. Jungian tradition regards mythology as “a textbook of archetypes” (Jung 1988: 24), a source of psychological knowledge. Specifically,creation myths can be viewed as a form of developmental description because the story explains how things in the world came to be. A Jungian reading of creation myths revealed archetypal images portraying evil. These images embody psychic qualities that are considered to be evil by the consciousness that created the myth and as a way of externalizing these forces. Thus, myths describe evil as all forces that cause fear and suffering and pose a threat to human consciousness. No single trait is considered evil in all myths; the same trait may be portrayed as evil in some myths but not in others, and even occasionally reappear as ‘good.’ Thus, the notion of evil and the contents of the Shadow are contingent on the values and the conscious attitude of the ego, and the regnant culture.The values, as well as the archetypal tendency to value certain characteristics as evil, permeate psychotherapy as in all human interactions. Psychotherapeutic discourse tends to exclude the notion of evil, or to view evil as ‘privatio boni’ (St. Augustine, 1995), the absence of good, due to deprivation or hurt.Denying evil, and denying the archetypal evaluation of shadow attributes as evil, can actually cause a judgmental attitude towards the patient, if the therapist is unaware of the influence of her own Shadow. Acknowledgment and acquaintance with the therapist’s Shadow as well as that of the patient enables us to take responsibility and work with the evil that we encounter within.