Using Beauty and Her Beast to Introduce the Human Shadow

Carl Gustav Jung, one of the big three fathers of modern psychoanalysis (Freud, Jung, Adler) first coined the term 'human shadow'. He used the word 'shadow' to describe the parts of a human being that the person doesn't want to, or can't, think about or acknowledge. It refers to the repressed, unlived side of your normal daytime personality - the stuff you don't like about yourself, the stuff you don't want anyone to know about you. Thus your shadow contains negative qualities, such as envy or prejudice or insecurity. Or it could even contain positive qualities, such as compassion or artistic ability. But the qualities, whatever they are, stay in your shadow because you don't like to - in fact most of the time you simply can't - admit you possess them. Some parts of ourselves we like to show to others - put out into the light - and some parts of ourselves we like to hide - keep in the shadows.