Why Good People Do Bad Things. Understanding the Darker Sides of Our Soul

Why good people do bad things: understanding our Darker selves

"For many years I have been trying to solve this psychological puzzle. Why are people cruel and why are they kind? Evil can be found in the behavior of most. My next task I see as the study of evil, understanding it" (A. Maslow, Motivation and Personality, p. 371📚)
This is about all that we fear in ourselves, as it can destroy our lives. For some, it is outbursts of aggression; for others, forbidden drives, the very thought of which is unacceptable to discuss with others; in general, all the "dark" that is present in each of us.
"The word Satan comes from the Hebrew word for 'adversary,' and devil from the Greek for 'one who throws.' This indicates that the ancients came to understand the diversity of the human soul and the presence of a shadowy 'antagonist' within.
But instead of recognizing such an antagonist and the work of some otherworldly force, such as the prince of darkness, depth psychology asserts that this opposing energy is us, and we are it. As Milton's Satan pronounces, 'Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell' (p. 51)
But this vile sensation of the bad in us... It is rarely made conscious and is harshly controlled by our consciousness because it causes pain to us and our loved ones. 'Who can bear this burden: to see oneself in the wide range of human qualities? Was it not our brother Oedipus, upon learning the whole truth, who blinded himself and begged for a quick death?
'No wonder the Ego does not clap its hands with delight when it is forced to come face-to-face with the Shadow.'
💡 And yet... yet, such moments also contain seeds of healing, of broader understanding. In these moments of meeting our reflection in the mirror, when you vaguely discern in the dark glass the dim, yet more complete outlines of your nature, we can lay claim to greater humanity, broader consciousness, and, frankly, to becoming a little less dangerous to those around us" (p. 36)

✒✒✒A little less dangerous to those around us!!! Yes. 🖌🖌🖌

❓ But How to Express Your Shadow in the Presence of Others❓

If you want development... ok. You are ready to meet face-to-face with all this pain,... This is your choice.
But others should not suffer from your striving for self-knowledge. What to do?

I know of 3 ways so far:

🥇 "Jung said, the patient must remain in solitude" (p.106)

Those whose impulses are powerful withdraw, living through episodes of self-abasement away from society. In their inner world, they go through cycles of "Life-Death-Life" and return to the ordinary world stronger (C. Pinkola Estés)
As Oxxxymiron says about it:

"So I emerge from another episode
Of self-deprecating psychosis once a season and the rakes
Are all the same, I'm just as stubborn, don't trust the tables
Though clearly in vain, real Struggle, such Thug Life
Favorite of all methods, to gain a special ability
To put myself in a hopeless well, so that
I am my own jailer, judge, patient, pet
Forgetting what sentenced for experiment to control"

🥈 Weaken Ego control with the help of alcohol.

"No wonder T. S. Eliot in his play 'The Party' suggested making a bar or a Dionysian feast a new confessional! And yet quite a few people were able during the 'libations' to truly pour out their souls, express genuine aspects of their individuality in such moments of free self-expression. Such a Spirit of Freedom lives in each of us, but we learn early that its manifestations are too expensive a pleasure in our tribe or family, and only the effect of the 'potion from the flask' or group approval will allow this split-off aspect of the soul to be expressed."

🥉 But the most common is simply to suppress your Shadow within yourself,

there are hundreds of ways here… Freud described that soap opera in which people using this 3rd way are stewing, "that daily soap opera, where the pulsating Id, cursed and suppressed by the Super-Ego, leaves the frayed Ego to invent accommodative compromises, to repress in fire-drill order, rationalize, project onto others, and resort to endless distracting displacements in order that the serene life might continue in this precarious house of conscious life" (p.208)

But this suppression deprives us of that necessary energy, which is so needed, especially in our time.
Never before in its history has humanity had so many possibilities and never known so much neurotic misery. Never before has there been so much light - and never before such a Shadow" (p. 203)❗ Our age is the age of discovering new energies that can destroy all of humanity. To come into contact with one's Shadow means 'to live dangerously' (Nietzsche). But 'to set sail upon the sea of the unknown—that is our destiny. To suppress the Shadow is to hug the shore in fear of this open sea. Only thus, going out into the open sea, can one attain spiritual breadth and chart that unique course which will lead us to the New Land which we are called to make our own" (p. 285).
Monsters arrive within us. But if anyone wants to study them and thus take them into service to achieve their development, let's do it.

We are conducting research, we are looking for such people.

✅1) Detection of EEG activity and physiological indicators
✅2) Maintaining charts with markers that show the amplitude of your emotional experiences (AEP). Where, the magnitude of the range of your negative emotional experiences is the magnitude of your Shadow.
✅3) Psychological counseling

All this will reveal the strength of your Shadow, with further integration of this energy and this knowledge into conscious life.

🏅This 4th way is roughly the same thing Freud called sublimation, but not quite. After all, a high amplitude of passions will never be safe, but if such a person, "takes himself by the head, then everyone will grab their own"😃

📍📍📍📍📍📍📍📍📍📍📍
This research is dedicated to those who left our world young,
Living dangerously.....
To those whose shadow destroyed them.
To those who accepted this battle, whose life was a game - without rules!" (🎶)

This research is about:
Those, the "outcasts" within the system, who, risking in this life, prefer to experience passions.
Those who go all the way!
For whom life is something more than satisfying their needs.
About the madmen, the rebels....
We are waiting for you at the Faculty of Psychology of St. Petersburg State University.
📍📍📍📍📍📍📍📍📍📍📍

"To come to know this Other will be for us also a new beginning - the task of integrating this energy and this knowledge into conscious life. Otherwise it will continue to realize itself through unconscious channels, causing harm to us and our neighbors (p. 208).

"The Shadow can play a positive role in the process of individuation. It is less adapted and hence more truthful, it is less acclimated and hence more primordial, less conditioned and more yielding and so conveys far more fully the wholeness of that person we are called to be in order to share ourselves with others."

Maslow wanted to develop a concept of 'the psychology of evil',
I picked up this torch, and that fire showed me,
That even our secret 'flaw' can become a key to doors. ☝️

"All our institutionalized religion, all our humanistic and scientific education, our enlightened morals are unable to keep completely civilized and highly educated souls from lethal possession by the Shadow" (p. 231)
Not a day goes by that I do not mentally return to this troubling paradox, that it does not demand from me to devote myself even more fully to my calling as a psychologist, to renew myself daily, and to follow the instruction of the ancient Greeks 'Know thyself'⚕