At some point in time, a person’s conscious needs to be adapted to unconscious factors that arise. This is a way of accepting “criticism” from the unconscious.

Jung believes a person can be acquainted with this unconscious side through their dreams. Dreams often portray the side of your personality that you have not preferred to look at closely. When you become acquainted with this side of your personality, this is known as the realization of the Shadow. The realization of the Shadow is a step towards individuation.

 
The Shadow is the part of a person’s unconscious that is unknown to the ego. In Jung’s theories, the shadow is the most easily identified archetype and hence the easiest for most people to experience. The difficulty though is to recognize the shadow, and correctly adapt it into your conscious.

 
When you attempt to see the shadow, you become aware of qualities that you deny in yourself but you can see plainly in others. The shadow shows the qualities that are the opposites of your ego and that you dislike most in other people.

Such qualities include egotism, mental laziness, sloppiness, unreal fantasies, schemes, plots, carelessness, cowardice, inordinate love of money and possessions.

 
Therefore, an introvert typically has a shadow of their extraverted side, whereas an extraverted person would typically have an introverted shadow.

For example, one of Jung’s patients, a young and successful entrepreneur, had dreams of a rich man who gave orders to a passive Frenchman to kill him. The man however killed the rich man who gave the Frenchman the orders first. The Frenchman was then satisfied and did not try to kill the dreamer because the rich man who gave him the orders had died. In this dream we can see that the Rich man was really the entrepreneur’s persona and his conscious self, while the passive Frenchman represented his shadowed self. It also showed that the shadow had turned hostile to him, because his conscious did not agree the shadow side.

 
Recognition of the shadow requires people to reexamine themselves and reorganize their lives. This often makes people disregard their shadows since most people are ashamed and fearful of their shadows. People are scared of things that they’ve always hated in other people and suddenly finding out it exists in them. People that do not get along with their shadow or discuss the matters without fear will tend to hide it or ignore it. This is dangerous because these shadows will become hostile and will be projected on to other people, which obscures your view of fellow people and spoils objectivity. This happens a lot in politics where votes would project their shadows onto the politicians. For example in this election, maybe you have a politician that you particular dislike but is hard to pinpoint the reason, it could be because of your shadow being projected onto that politician.

 
“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it. Furthermore, it is constantly in contact with other interests, so that it is continually subjected to modifications. But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected.” Dr. Carl G. Jung

What the shadow had been repressed for a long time it will show up in impulsive acts and cause results that were never intended or wanted.

 
The process of realizing and integrating the shadow is a difficult search and a lifelong process. One way to realize the shadow is to be honest with it. But sometimes using only reasoning and insight alone might not prevail against the shadow. Then the Ego must get strength from the Self to accomplish this task. Only the power of the Self can help the Ego realize the shadow

 
If a person can realize his shadow it helps balance the person, by displaying some of his ego’s opposite characteristics and helps a person become more vigorous and full of life, but the ego’s does not have to use energy to suppress the shadow. Bringing the shadow conscious also helps a person realize their faults and help correct them, where as an isolated shadow can never be corrected. Realization of the shadow is one step closer towards individuation.

Dunstan Ramsay was an introverted person. He had lived a very honourable life, as a professor, historian, hagiographer, and a winner of the Victoria Cross. He had always been a very conscientious person, but his ego had felt guilty over the snowball incident. Because of this, his shadow displays a complete opposite characteristic. His shadow should portray an extraverted person that’s very unscrupulous and guilty and innocent like Boy’s ego. Similarly, the confident and extraverted Boy should have a shadow that’s very introverted and insecure and guilty sort of like Dunny’s ego.

 
Both Dunny and Boy tried to repress and hide their shadows, evident in the changes of their names. This was also evident since Dunny despised all the people around him except for Mary Dempster. “Oh yes, you do despise me. You despise almost everybody except Paul’s mother. No wonder seems like a saint to you; you have made her carry the affection you should have spread among fifty people.”(217) This hatred of the people is probably because his repressing of his shadow led to the projection of his shadow on to others. Another way for Dunny to repress his shadow was the keep secrets. He’s has been keeping secrets his entire life and never telling them to anyone because the secrets contain his shadow. “Almost from the earliest days of my childhood I had been close-mouthed; I never passed on gossip if I could help it, though I had no objection to hearing it; I never betrayed a confidence, preferring the costive pleasure of being a repository of secrets. Much of my intimacy with Boy Staunton rested on the fact that he could be sure I would never repeat anything I was told in confidence, and extremely little that was not so regarded” (215)

 
Similarly, Boy had repressed his shadow by forgetting everything about Deptford, and the snowball accident. His repressions lead to the projection of his shadow onto. “You’re trying to get me. You want to humiliate me in front of this man here; you seem to have been in cahoots with him for years, thought you never mentioned him or his miserable mother to me – you best friend, and your patron and protector against your own incompetence.” (264) This quote shows how Boy viewed his relationship with Dunny. He thought he protected Dunny from incompetence but really it was Dunny that had been protecting Boy.

 
At fifty years old, Dunny’s shadow begins to leak through and he falls in love with Faustina who was completely opposite of Dunny. Dunny also became a loose talker and a liar and all the characteristics of his shadow.  “I was aware that I was recapturing the best of my childhood; my imagination had never known such glorious freedom; but as well as liberty and wonder I was regaining the untruthfulness, the lack of scruple, and the absorbing egotism of a child. I heard myself talking boastfully, lying shamelessly. I blushed but could not control myself.” (215) This showed that Dunny’s repressing of the Shadow had made it hostile and it now seeped through him in impulsive acts.

 
Boy on the other hand continued to hide his shadow. “He had begun to irritate rather easily, and be pompous. He urged me to get out of school mastering (while praising it as a fine profession) and make something of myself. ‘If you don’t hurry up and let life know what you want, life will damned soon show you what you’ll get,’ he said one day.”(129) From his quote we see Boy urging Dunny to get something done with his life, but really Boy is the one with the shadow of insecurity and feels that his life is not getting on well, but since he has projected his shadow on to Dunny, he would tell Dunny to get a life instead, because he couldn’t accept that fact in himself, since he’s always been successful in his life.

 
When Dunny met Blazon, Blazon told him that he must “Shake Hands with your devil.” This can be seen as advice to compromise with the shadow side of himself and that is what he did. The next time that Dunny talks with Blazon, we see that he has identified his shadow. Padre Blazon asks: “Have you met the Devil yet? ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I met him in Mexico City. He was disguised as a woman – an extremely ugly woman but unquestionably a woman.”(249) From this we see that Dunny finally saw his shadow, because a shadow in society is often portrayed as a devil. The woman that he met was Liesl and so this means that Dunny’s shadow had been projected onto Liesl after he retold his life to her. Reexamination of life is also a step to realizing one’s shadow. Later on after Dunny tells Padre Blazon about his fight with Liesl, Padre Blazon says. “Well done, well done! You met the Devil as an equal, not cringing or frightened or egging for a trashy favour. That is the heroic life, Ramezay. You are fit to be the Devil’s friend, without any fear of losing yourself to him.” (250) A person must not be afraid when confronting his shadow and must use logic and reasoning. Through that quote, we can see that Dunny had gotten acquainted with his shadow because he was not afraid of it.

 
When Dunny goes to live with Liesl at the end of the story it confirms that he had successfully integrated the Shadow into his life. By incorporating the shadow into his life, Dunny was able to lessen the guilt that he feels for Mary Dempster and realize that he was not the guilty one. Boy however had tried to hide his shadow till the end even as Dunny tried to help him by uncovering the story for Boy. Unlike in the example, Boy was not able to kill the rich man and so the introverted Frenchman became hostile and in the end killed Boy and by not recognizing his shadow Boy could never achieve individuation like Dunny.

 
In conclusion, Dunny in Fifth Business was able to achieve a higher degree of individuation than the Boy and Magnus Eisengrim, because he had recognized his unconscious self and successfully integrated it into his conscious self. This realization of the Self and the balance of his conscious and unconscious, helped Dunny recognized the true meaning of his life as Fifth Business. I hope after listening to our presentation you will able to able to recognize your unconscious Self and achieve individuation. Thank you.