The Long Bag we Drag ...

The Long Bag we Drag……………

Sometimes the motivation to do something like read a book is a mystery. I don’t usually re-read, but was drawn straight to “A Little Book on the Human Shadow” by Robert Bly this week.

I came to it again after 20 years or so, and it was new to me.  And in the process, I realised that it formed part of my introduction to C G Jung and his thoughts and ideas. Only about 15 years ago did I discover the power of Type Psychology as a means to outline a way of describing our human behaviours which is very fruitful as well as the driving forces of the psyches of individuals. Initially, I worked with the MBTI, then later discovered the JTI, the work of Keirsey and Bates, and on. I think, I by having read about the human shadow before understanding type, I have had an advantage in that I already had a notion that the shadow is a powerful idea which we ignore at our peril.

Here are some quotes from “A Little Book on the Human Shadow” which struck me this week.

“I lied all through high school automatically to try to be more like the basketball players.”

“men, young men, are likely to put their feminine side, or interior woman into the bag.”

And  … (WR’s) … surely some of their masculine side, the homo erotic …

“projection is wonderful thing too … women sometimes complain that a man often takes his ideal feminine side and projects it onto a woman. But if he didn’t, how could he get out of his mother’s house or his bachelor rooms?”

“When a woman Lincoln met on a train told him he was one of the ugliest men she’d seen in her entire life, he didn’t become offended. “What should I do about that?” he asked. “Well” she said. “you could stay home.” Lincoln told that story on himself – he liked her answer.”

“The anger is angry with us for not honouring it, for treating it shabbily, for getting out of it what we want without ever bringing it in and introducing it our friends, saying, “This is my friend Anger here. He’s a lowly-paid assistant of mine.””

“…. horrible types, specialists in the One, builders of middle-class castles, and upper-class Usher houses, writers of boring Commencement speeches, creepy other worldly types, worse than Pope Paul, academics who resembled gray jars, and who would ruin a whole state like Tennessee if put into it; people totally unable to merge into the place where they live ….”

“A man has an effect on “the world” mainly through institutions. So we could say that in the second half of life a man should sever his link with institutions. I think the problem is more complicated for women, but I don’t understand it. Conceivably for women the change might involve accepting more responsibility for affecting the world.”

WR Jan11