Downloaded from http://musictherapy.oxfordjournals.

org/ by guest on September 8, 2016

Music and the Shadow 21

envy, jealousy, and greed are only seen in others. Jung (1958, Vol. I I)
wrote:
We must still be exceedingly careful not to project our own shadow
too shamelessly, we are still swamped with projected illusions. If you
imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw all these
projections, then you get an individual who is conscious of a pretty
thick shadow. Such a man has saddled himself with new problems
and conflicts. (p. 83).
Jung (1958, Vol. 9, II) wrote the following:

Downloaded from http://musictherapy.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on September 8, 2016

The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-per­
sonality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without
considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recog­
nizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act
is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge, and it there­
fore, as a rule, meets with considerable resistance. Indeed, self­
knowledge as a psychotherapeutic measure frequently requires much
painstaking work extending over a long period. (p, 8)
Knowing one’s shadow requires working with another person and is the
first step in any thorough personal analysis. Intellectual knowledge about
the shadow is, ifanything, only a beginning. “In dealing with the shadow or
anima it is not sufficient to know about these concepts and to reflect on
them. Nor can we ever experience their content by feeling our way into
them or by appropriating other people’s feelings” (Jung, 1958, Vol. 9, I,
p. 30).
Although knowing one’s shadow is not easy and is sometimes fright­
ening, “the shadow and the opposing will are the necessary conditions for
all actualizing” (Jung, 1958, Vol. 11, p. 196). Action without realization of
the shadow is subject to sudden unconscious reversal. Action produced by
the tension of opposites can signify true progress. In The Development of
Personality, Jungwrote: “All consciousness, perhaps without being aware
of it, seeks its unconscious opposite, lacking which it is doomed to stagna­
tion. congestion and ossification. Life is born only of the spark of the
opposites' (p. 53).
It is interesting and important to be aware of Jung’s framework when he
developed his concept of the shadow. At that point in his career. he had left
the Burgholzli Asylum in Zurich. Most of his private patients were not
psychotic, but functioning people who felt that they missed something in
their lives. Many of them were in thesecond half of life. Theexploration of
this dark shadow was an essential aspect of their discoveries of their whole
selves.
Many of the people I treat with music therapy, in contrast, are people
who have not fulfilled their potential in even the most basic tasks of life.
For them, the shadow also contains hints of unrealized oossibilities.
Modern Jungians talk about this as the “bright shadow.” Jung himselfdid
not directly refer to it as such.
In Aion Jung wrote:
22 Priestley

If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was thesource
of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the
unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of
morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displaysa number of good
qualities. such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic in­
sights, creative impulses, etc. On this level evil appears more as a
distortion, a deformation, a disinterpretation and misapplication of
facts that in themselves are natural. (p, 266)
The potentially’ good qualities are somehow hidden in the shadow,

Downloaded from http://musictherapy.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on September 8, 2016

guarded by impulses which can be all the more dangerous for being un­
known. “It is not only the shadow-side that is overlooked. disregarded and
repressed; positive qualities can also be subjected to the same treatment”
(Jung, 1958, Vol. 18, p. 221).
Working with the shadow offers possibilities of healing (in the sense of
making whole) and renewing life. Music can be a bridge between con­
sciousness and both the personal and later the collective unconscious.
Since music involves instant physical expression, the emotions realized can
facilitate insights by making defensiveness more difficult. Jung wrote of
the importance of experiencing one’s unconscious, “A running commen­
tary is absolutely necessary in dealing with the shadow, because otherwise
its actuality cannot be fixed. Only in this painful way is it possible to gain a
positive insight into the complex nature of one’s own personality” (Jung,
1958, Vol. 14, p. 496). Improvised music can provide the immediate link in
a directly emotional language, which can afterwards be interpreted with
more reflection, in words.
The following case studies show four of my patients who realized the
possibility of their potentials for development by experiencing musically
an aspect of their shadows.

Case Study: O.B.

O.B.‘s piano playing is a good example of the bright shadow, since it is
energetic and full of hope and joy. That the music is joyous is at first sur­
prising, because it was composed by a person who was quite depressed,
struggling inwardly with suicidal tendencies and outwardly with an ex­
tremely difficult job as teacher of aggressive, maladjusted boys. He spent
his friendless leisure hours sleeping a great deal. He had severe relationship
problems with his aging parents, who lived out of town.
To me, O.B.‘s piano playing, whether of composed music or improvi­
sations, has the quality of a seed. The playing seems packed with potential
for development, with a tension that longs to expand. I have not experi­
enced any other client with such a seed quality in his playing.
O.B. was a single man in his mid-forties. He was brought up in a house­
hold of many women and a father who was often physically or emotionally
absent. His powerful relationship with his mother found expression in his
early aptitude for the piano. During early adolescence his attitude toward
his mother and his music became rejecting. O.B. remained narcissistically
Music and the Shadow 23

stuck at the same stage of adolescence as the boys he teaches. He began

therapy after a long history of self-destruction which endangered all
aspects of his life, including his capacity to use his remarkable musical
gifts. We pursued individual music therapy, focusing on his particular
gifts, at the same time as group analytic and individual psychotherapy.
Interestingly, O.B.‘s improvised music on percussion, with me at the
piano, expressed only his present conflicts, with no joy or hope. When
improvising the destructive aspect of his mother, his music was first
frenzied and confused, then lost and feeble, and, finally, with a sinister

Downloaded from http://musictherapy.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on September 8, 2016

accompaniment on the drum, physically destructive, scattering the loose
xylophone notes over the working area. This improvisation sent cold
shivers down my back. I try to contain this destruction in major chords and
his music ends in sobbing chaos.
O.B.‘s improvisations on percussion instruments were explorations of
conscious situations, expressing his feelings through the creative medium
of our duet music and the discussions that followed. His piano-playing,
with its seed quality, exhibited a different aspect of O.B. It seemed to be a
communication from a totally unknown part of him, equally strange to
both of us. It was a message from his shadow, a messageeven more impor­
tant than the hopeless, angry drum-playing.
Case Study: Z.O.
Z.O. was a married man of sixty-two with children and grandchildren.
He had high blood pressure, was tense and agitated, and scarcely spoke. I
included him in my Movement, Relaxation, and Communication Therapy
Group. Further, he entered individual music therapy because he had the
expression of a desperately sad six-month old baby who wanted to be
picked up. I couldn’t resist it. I picked him up.
From the beginning his improvised music contradicted everything else
about him. It was dynamic and confident, and though he said he never had
any dreams, his imagination exercises were powerful and vivid.
Like most analytical music therapists, I began oursessions with discus­
sion. The theme that emerges during this period is used as a title for our
improvisation. I play the piano and the patient plays on tuned and untuned
percussion instruments. After our music there is more talk.
Z.O.‘s improvised music was an expression of his bright shadow, a dy­
namism evident nowhere else in his life. Our work gradually convinced him
that this creativity was a vital part of himself. It was raging at his redun­
dancy, his inability to keep up with his peers financially, and his envy of his
wife’s enjoyment of her amateur hobbies. It demanded life. He had to take
the responsibility for these feelings as well as his more acceptable positive
Ones.
At the beginning of his music therapy he spent much time lying in bed at
home. He dreaded talking to people he didn’t know, thinking he had
nothing to say and feeling inferior because he had no job and little money.
After one year’s therapy, Z.O. had an apparent setback. undergoing a
period of regressive behavior. He was admitted to the hospital when he
 24 Priestley

refused to shave or dress and even became temporarily incontinent. When

I saw him on the ward, we shared our mutual helplessness. His music had
convinced me, however, that behind this wish to be a baby, and cared for
totally, was a search for wholeness. After four months, he returned home,
continuing to come once weekly to music therapy and biweekly to the
Music, Relaxation and Communication Therapy Group. By his second
year his blood pressure was normal.
During his third year of therapy, improvisational music played an im­
portant part in his communication and growth. For example, the week

Downloaded from http://musictherapy.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on September 8, 2016

before a particular session I reminded him that we had agreed that he
should begin to come monthly at the end of that month. This time he an­
nounced rather triumphantly that he had not been pleased with himself.
His wife, screaming and shouting, had had to pull him out of bed. I inter­
preted that he was feeling abandoned by me as he had been by his mother
who had died when he was a boy, and he wanted to curl up and be a baby.
Being Abandoned was the title of his improvisation. His statement on the
xylophone was almost indignant. Then his trill expressed anxiety and the
drums anger, but he felt that he could and would cope.
After another year of music therapy he had gained in confidence. He
coped with visitors and strangers, played with his grandchildren, helped to
care for disabled people on a regular voluntary basis, and could navigate
for his driving wife. His fear of getting physically lost prevented him from
taking the wheel himself, but it wasn’t the panic it used to be.
Z.O.‘s consultant psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis, was so impressed with Z.O.‘s
progress that he wrote,
I have seldom seen apatient with such a high degree of chronicity and
almost despaired of seeing him well again - or even significantly im­
proved. Over the past eighteen months or so, however, he has shown
signs of considerable and dramatic improvement. This impression
would appear to be the result of intervention by the Music Therapist
and is a significant and dramatic example of what can be achieved by
Music Therapy.
If Z.O.'s music had not shown such vitality, I might have considered him
hopeless when he was admitted. His music, however, had revealed his
shadow to me -a part of him that was seeking an outlet in life. It was an as
yet unrealized part of his being. At that time, I was the only one on the
therapeutic team who believed he could progress. But only I had heard his
music.

Case Study: S.R.

Music can express many sides of the personality. The music of S.R., an
almost mute schizophrenic youth of 18, expressed first a gentle, almost
secret rhythmic sensitivity, then a rigid rhythm on untuned percussion. He
allowed himself so little body awareness that he would have continued with
one rhythm and instrument for SOminutes if I had let him. After several
sessions a feeling of insecurity and distrust of relationships was expressed
\
Music and the Shadow 25

in an unsteady pulse which somehow always avoided my accompaniment.

In later sessions came a feeling of self-affirmation with a full, steady beat,
allowing increasing body awareness.
Over a period of four months came a marked increase in verbal com­
munication and facial expression in therapy sessions. At home his father
reported greater tolerance of body contact, greater cheerfulness and social­
ization, a quite regressive demand for affection by cuddling and holding,
and a surprising walk alone to the library to get books on his favorite
subjects.

Downloaded from http://musictherapy.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on September 8, 2016

S.R.‘s most important impulse from the shadow exhibited itself not in
instrumental music but in body music. One day duringtherapy I decided to
just sit silently: do nothing but just be with him. As I sat, my mind wan­
dered. He suddenly gave me a piercing look and clapped his hands. I was
jerked into awareness and clapped back. He clapped. I clapped. As the
clapping continued, his face was alive and wreathed in smiles. In the ensu­
ing Music, Relaxation and Communication group sessions he would clap
and I would respond whenever he felt that he was being overlooked. It was
his greeting in the morning and his demand for affirmation that he did exist
and that his feelings mattered to me. It was a much morespontaneous and
expressive communication than either his halting, stilted words or his
autistic-sounding improvised music. Most importantly, it was his original
creation. Without using words, S.R. was able to retrieve from his shadow
the long-lost impulse to spontaneously express his longing for a
relationship to someone who mattered to him.

Case Study: B.L.

My final example, B.L., was 55, single, a second-generation white
Russian, bearded, toothless, and of enormous size. He was referred to me
by an art therapist. His singing voice was penetrating and powerful.
At the beginning of our nine months in individual sessions he was manic:
roaring his anger, clashing the cymbals and banging the drum, and singing
Russian and Polish songs in bursts of enthusiasm. Reality, with his now
frail and elderly father (who had formerly been the stable center of his life)
and his girlfriend, who herself had frequent breakdowns, was not
something that he wished to explore. He shared with me his eventful and
happy childhood overseas. It was the best part of his life and in some ways
he had never left it. His mother died when he was 19 years old and he had
his first breakdown some months afterwards. His total lack of grief work
- he played volleyball on the day of the funeral - may have contributed
to his first paranoid psychotic episode.
For nine months in music therapy his improvised music mirrored his
wild escapist stance, but as the months went by he became quieter, more
thoughtful, and more depressed. He awoke dreading each day, but was
more and more able to tolerate examining his external reality and even to
wonder what he would do after the death of his father.
Speaking of his relationship with his father and his girlfriend, he ex-
 Priestley

pressed irritation, “Bloody Hell! I have to do this for her and that for him.”
I asked him what it was he really wanted to do since he felt so irritated by
the work that these two relationships entailed. He didn’t know. He had
never known. We entitled the next improvisation “What I Want To Do.”
Something totally surprising to both of us emerged. His xylophone playing
was weak and indecisive in a childlike treble sound pattern. When I com­
mented that it had never been like that before, he burst out, “That is me. I
am really like that inside. I pretend to be so strong with my great voice sing­
ing and shouting and smashing windows hut really I am very weak.”

Downloaded from http://musictherapy.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on September 8, 2016

This vulnerability was his unrealized potential, long hidden in his
shadow and overlaid by manic behavior.
At this point, B.L. revealed that he was having suicidal thoughts.
Overdosing had been his habitual response to stress in the past. As he was
an out-patient and not under the care of a psychiatrist, I contacted his
doctor, suggesting that he be referred for extra help during this difficult
period. Before help could be obtained, he was overcome by his shadow,
impulsively combining whiskey with all his pills. Luckily, as he was such a
large man, he awoke the next morning, apparently unharmed. He had no
memory of buying the whiskey, showing that his was an identification with
the shadow rather than a deliberate conscious action.
B.L.‘s improvisation had indicated that he wanted to relate to others
from his vulnerability, rather than always defending it by his manic be­
havior. He needed to know this part of his shadow and accept it instead of
letting himself be overcome by it. Our music revealed his shadowed
weakness which held the potential of his true strength and further develop
ment.

CONCLUSION
Music can express any emotion, conscious or unconscious. It can be the
brittle music of defense. the shallow passing mood of the moment or a
hauntingly deep voice from the shadow which may need a great deal of
therapy before it is safely assimilated into the patient’s consciousness. It
takes training and experience to be aware of the seminal nature of these
musical suggestions from the shadow, but when they are answered at the
right moment and in the right way radical healing can take place.
Jung (1958, Vol. 9, I) himself said:
In the case of the individual, the problem constellated by the shadow
is answered on the plane of the anima. that is, through relatedness. In
the history of the collective as in the history of the individual,
everything depends on the development of consciousness. This
gradually brings liberation from imprisonment in ayvoia, “uncon­
sciousness,” and is therefore a bringer of light as well as of healing.
(P. 291)
Music and the Shadow 27

REFERENCES
Jung, G.C. (1958). The archetypes and the controlled unconscious. In H. Read, M. Fordham,
G. Adler (Eds.), C.G. Jung: The collected works, Vol. 9, I. London Routledge & Kegan
Paul.
Jung. C.G. (1958). Aion. In H. Read, M. Fordham, & G. Adler (Eds.), C.G. Jung: The
collected works. “a, 9, I,. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Jung, C.G. (1958). Psychology and religion. In H. Read, M. Fordham, & G. Adler (Eds),
C.G. Jung: The collected works. Vol. 11.London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Jung, C G. (1958,. Psychology and alchemy. In H. Read. M. Fordbam, & G. Adler (Eds).

Downloaded from http://musictherapy.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on September 8, 2016

C.G. Jung: The collected works. Vol. 12. London. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Jung, C.G. (1958). Mysterium conjunctionis. In H. Read, M. Fordham. & G. Adler (Eds.).
C.F. Jung: The collected works. Vol 14. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Jung, C.G. (1958). The development of personality. In H. Read, M. Fardham, & G. Adler
(Eds.), C.G. Jung: The collected works, “a,. 17. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Jung. C.G. (1958). The symbolic life. In H Read, M. Fordham, & G. Adler (Eds.), C.G. Jung
The collected works. Vol. 18. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Lewis, D.M. Letter to author. 22 December 1986.

Mary Priestley, LGSM, has practiced music therapy since 1969. She is an active writer and
lecturer. currently teaching at the Guildha,, School of Music. Southlands College and
London University.