Why Good People Do Bad Things: Understanding Our Darker Selves

Working with the Shadow is not working with evil, per se. It is working toward the possibility of greater wholeness. We will never experience healing until we can come to love our unlovable places, for they, too, ask love of us.

How is it that good people do bad things? Why is our personal story and our societal history so bloody, so repetitive, so injurious to self and others?

How do we make sense of the discrepancies between who we think we are—or who we show to the outside world—versus our everyday behaviors? Why are otherwise ordinary people driven to addictions and compulsions, whether alcohol, drugs, food, shopping, infidelity, or the Internet? Why are interpersonal relationships so often filled with strife?

Exploring Jun‛s concept of the Shadow—the unconscious parts of our self that contradict the image of the self we hope to project--Why Good People Do Bad Things guides you through all the ways in which many of our seemingly unexplainable behaviors are manifestations of the Shadow. In addition to its presence in our personal lives, Hollis looks at the larger picture of the Shadow at work in our culture—from organized religion to the suffering and injustice that abounds in our modern world. Accepting and examining the Shadow as part of on‛s self, Hollis suggests, is the first step toward wholeness. Revealing a new way of understanding our darker selves, Hollis offers wisdom to help you to acquire a more conscious conduct of your life and bring a new level of awareness to your daily actions and choices.

Many seemingly unexplainable behaviors are manifestations of what Jung termed the Shadow, that unconscious part of the self that contradicts the image of the public self. Hollis suggests that becoming more attuned to the complexity of behavior is the first step toward wholeness.

James Hollis received an A.B. from Manchester College and a Ph.D. from Drew University. He taught humanities for twenty-six years in various colleges and universities before becoming a Jungian Analyst at the Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, where he received a diploma in Analytical Psychology. He has a private analytic practice and is Executive Director of the Jung Educational Center of Houston.