A Sad Truth: Is Evil Necessary for Ego-Self Development?

     Typically, we see the work of the devil as the “shadow of God.” In some social and Jungian interpretations, we see evil as a shadow of an asymmetrical God-image. Then, postulate the corrective for what the Western God-image may impose, i.e., patriarchy, etc. As if once the image is corrected, we will somehow reduce or eradicate the evil we witness as a result of the Western God-image’s shadow.

     Unfortunately, or somewhat realistically, I propose that the Western God-image might also be viewed as the shadow of an era-specific Evil. God says in Isaiah (45:7), “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I, the Lord, do all these things.” (Whitmont, p. 259). In an Answer to Job, we see the necessary developmental path of Whitmont’s Ego-Self Estrangement—a rupture between the God-image-Self through Job-Ego separation via the shadow-devil. In describing the Self as an organizing principle that urges us toward a “union of opposites,” Whitmont says this “includes the conflict with the ‘adversary’ or the ‘evil’ a union…” (p. 258). 

     For the ego to function, there must be a choice “upon a value system of right and wrong, good and evil; the principle of evil is an indispensable element in ego development.” Therefore, “…the mystery of evil is evidently inherent in existence, hence in creation” (Whitmont, p.259). Good and evil are opposite polar pairs. They are two halves of the same whole. Jung reminds us we are “faced with the abysmal contradictions of human nature  … a direct experience of ... Christ and the devil” (Storr, p.269). Sadly, the Western God-image maybe the shadow of the evil necessary for this epoch's Ego-Self development and a shift from one collective consciousness to another.  

References

Jung, C. G. (1973). Answer to Job (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1952)  

Jung, C. G. (1999). The essential Jung (A. Storr, Ed.). Princeton University Press.

Whitmont, E. C. (1978). The symbolic quest: Basic concepts of analytical psychology (Expanded ed.). Princeton University Press.