Parents, children, teachers, clergy, and friends add to the mix, helping to determine what is allowed to be expressed and what is not. For some families, emotional vulnerability and crying are encouraged; for others, they are banished into shadow. For some families, anger and conflict are tolerated; for others, they are the worst taboo. For some

Some people live their entire lives within a ten-mile radius of their family homes. Internally, too, they remain in position in the family constellation, forever the provider, the dutiful child, the critical outsider, or the family scapegoat. Unable or unwilling to examine family sins, these people pass them on with the family jewels.

We suggest that you relate to the shadow as a mystery, rather than as a problem to be solved or an illness to be cured. When the Other arrives, honor that part of yourself as a guest. You may discover that it comes bearing gifts. You may discover that shadow-work is, indeed, soul work.

On the other hand, a woman who sacrifices her career opportunities to be a stay-at-home mother may envy her husband’s achievements. In addition, she may succumb to the danger of envying her children’s opportunities as well. If she lives vicariously through her daughter with conscious pride, she also may suffer with unconscious resentment and

But we do not believe that the dissolution of the family and the concomitant lack of moral order we see around us stem primarily from an absence of moral order imposed from the outside. Instead, we suggest that in many homes the family soul has been sacrificed to maintain the illusion of the family persona. As a result, the family shadow erupts,

However, for millennia, the sexual archetype has been split: It is worshiped for its powers of creating life, and it is damned for its powers of connecting us to the shadowy realms of the body and instincts. Therefore, sexual shadows pervade our intimacies. Eros, the god of love, opens the floodgates of desire and shuts them just as rapidly. Or he

The family holds mythic power—the source of all good, the defense against evil. It’s exalted as a sacred ideal, which promises roots, blood relations, future generations. It ties each individual life to its fate, imprinting it genetically, biochemically, and psychologically with blessings and curses. To imagine life without family is to imagine

Finally, although psyche means soul, many of the current trends in psychotherapy today are empty of soul. Focused on short-term treatment and behavioral change, they lack an orientation to depth. Focused on medication, they lack a permeability to the underworld. Focused on personal psychology alone, they fail to honor the gods. Focused on insight

Romancing the shadow is subversive: The culture teaches us to be extroverted, quick, ambitious, productive. Workaholism is lauded; contemplation is shunned. But shadow-work is slow, cautious; it moves like an animal in the night. It moves us against the collective mandate to think positively, be productive, focus outwardly, and protect our image.