Robert Strauss’s Watergate Secret

[David Guyatt]

The problem as I see it David, is that the US has been involved with - mostly started - around 100 big and small wars since 1945. War has become its geopolitical and economic raison d'être. Not by chance but rather by conscious design of the elite leaders of the US. And the number of wars it was involved in prior to WW11 is pretty impressive too.

There's probably no one on this forum who would more happily get into a Jungian discussion than I, and as you probably know I often bang this particular drum. It is a malaise of the shadow. My position would be that for the great mass of people of any nationality, learning to absorb their own personal shadows is a vital ambition - because the evidence is uncomfortably clear that our leaders have completely abandoned peace and consciousness as a meaningful way of life.

Instead they have knowingly grasped war, fear, greed and misery as their personal totems.

David, I conversed with a Jungian psychotherapist a while back. In the context of the US starting wars, etc., he would have called what you call just "the shadow", the collective shadow. This simple change of language helped me see that how the work of coming to terms with one's own shadow is never simply a private affair.

Lauren yes, it is the Collective Shadow at work, but each of us contributes to that collective - if we all confronted and absorbed our personal shadows, the collective shadow would diminish correspondingly because all the energy/libido acquired by it would be used elsewhere for more positive outcomes.

Jung always thought that politicians should undergo analysis for the shadow, as a requirement of taking office, but also realised this was impractical. But it gives you an idea how important it is.