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Focusing on Shadow Theory/Causes of Terrorism
From: JoAnn Murphy (JoAnnWorks@aol.com)
Date: 10/09/01
I am a psychotherapist, educational consultant/stress reduction specialist
who teaches violence prevention/conflict resolution strategies in
educational settings. I would like to respond to Fjetland's article in
which he said, "We have lived through greater risks than terrorist attacks;
so don't let these creeps win by letting panic rule your life in the days
and months ahead, regardless of what happens."
In a conversation about his piece with a friend of mine, her response to
the article was, "that article by Michael Fjetland (former terrorist
adviser) which you forwarded to me makes me shiver." For me, it spreads a
very limited and distorted view of terrorism and nothing about why there is
that kind of terrorism. So his encouragement 'don't fear, there's always
threat around' does not make sense to me.
Fjetland, I believe, is correct in that we live through great risks daily
from car accidents, violence at home, health hazards and the like, and fear
is something we need to fear. Panic will not help. But we must just as
importantly focus on the causes of terrorism, as many of your other writers
are suggesting. As political and military leaders are daily evaluating the
ways to stop terrorism due to the complex and highly sensitive volatility
of the Middle East's population of fanatic fundamentalists, we must begin
to consciously educate ourselves about the "terrorist" within us all, that
we have learned to project outward onto extremely rage-filled villains in
our outer world. We also must recognize that bin Laden projects his deeply
unacknowledged inner shadow onto us. He has rage, disgust, and probably
unearthed envy for our way of life, hidden by contempt. Although he and his
followers see us as the hallmark of spiritual emptiness, greedy, addictive,
self-centered, and godless people, isn't that what we see them as? Jungian
shadow theory would say that he has not owned his hate and disgust for
himself, his own spiritual emptiness and his masochistic evil addiction to
destroy others in whom he sees another version of himself. We do the same
to him. His qualities may not be immediately recognizable in us, but we may
need to take a closer look at the metaphor.
In the 80's, after the end of the USSR and the Berlin wall, shadow
theorists and writers predicted that by relinquishing such a huge national
shadow (our stated enemy-communism) we would suffer the shadow coming back
to be absorbed in our own culture. They predicted unrest at home, political
in fighting, diversity divisions, new violence in our own country, and
eventually the search for a new national shadow, to provide us with a sense
of unity once again, to allow us a sense of fighting together against a
common cause we could judge as evil, and not ourselves, I might add.
I believe we have arrived. We thought before September 11th that the
violence in our schools was bad enough. It was something we never thought we
would see in our lifetimes. It rallied us to action. Efforts are being made
to raise awareness about that problem. However, as time passes, my friends
who are school counselors remind me that the lip service paid to the
promise of more counselors in the schools has been just that in comparison
to what is needed.
High schools with thousands of students have on average 2 counselors to
2000 students, at the typical high school in America. But that is another
problem, addressing the shadow we disown within our domestic structures.
There are many fine books written on the subject of the shadow, which is a
Jungian concept. This topic was discussed widely as communism ended with the
breakup of the USSR. Several books I would recommend are:
Meeting The Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature.
Connie Zweig (Editor), Jeremiah Abrams (Editor) Putnam Publishing Group,
March 1991.
The Shadow in America: Reclaiming the Soul of A Nation. Jeremiah Abrams
(Compiler) New World Library, October, 1994.
Your Golden Shadow, by Wm. A. Miller, Harper and Row, 1989.
During this time of protracted war on terrorism, we can become much more
astute at owning our shadow as a nation, and as individuals. Every
condemning, critical comment we send out into the collective is a potential
denial of our own inner shadow identification. What we as a nation loathe
in others is fodder to understand what we have buried and perhaps disowned
in ourselves: spiritual emptiness, not owning our responsibility for
slavery in our history, disregard for our wealth-right at the expense of
the poverty and suffering of disadvantaged and uneducated peoples, using
"terrorists" for our own purposes, glorifying our capitalistic lifestyle
and good intentions while denying our fierce addiction to comforts and a
way of life that consumes natural resources at the speed of light. Perhaps
it is time to ask: "Have we stockpiled enough $100. video games of
destruction for our children yet? Do we have enough quickly outdated
computers in our closets yet? Do we need multiple credit cards just to
maintain our way of life and pay our bills? How many vacations in a year is
truly enough? How much water, gasoline, and how many trees do we feel we
have a right to consume daily? Do we poke fun at "voluntary simplicity" as
some new age anti-American activity? If you don't make enough money to live
the lifestyle I am describing, how does it feel to watch the "feel good"
ads on TV before the holidays? Do you feel resentful of what is portrayed
as "normal" in the USA?
So perhaps before we turn into so many talking heads, if we could stop, and
think before casting the first stone in any direction, including stones
thrown at our political leaders, at zealots of patriotism, at the media,
even at our addictive, consumerism-driven economy and lifestyle, at any
target we feel deserves our judgment, we would begin to learn a lot about
ourselves, about projection, about the shadow in us all. If we don't stop,
and examine the act of judgment and its place in human development, the
stones we throw just may come back at us like a boomerang, in the year 2001.
With every observation I make, may I therefore remember to add, "and so do I."
Peace to all,
JoAnn Murphy
JoAnn Murphy, MS
Holyoke, Ma.
JoAnnworks@aol.com
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