---
slug: von-franz-shadow-9899b7f4
title: "von Franz on Shadow"
author: "Marie-Louise von Franz"
work: "Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales"
section: ""
year: "1974"
tradition: jungian-core
themes:
  - shadow
fragment: |
  if the conscious personality is up against the shadow and takes the shadow seriously without cheating and double-crossing, it ends with a complete suspension in the conflict. If the ego takes a one-sided ethical decision and a one-sided moral attitude and gets into real conflict with the shadow, there is no solution. That is one of the problems of our civilization.
lead_in: ""
reflection: |
  Von Franz is not describing a failure of willpower or moral clarity — she is describing what happens when moral clarity is precisely the problem. The ego that takes an upright ethical stand, that commits itself to being the good, the right, the principled side of the conflict, achieves something genuine: it sharpens the opposition until the two forces cannot coexist. And then they hang there, suspended, neither resolved nor dissolved, the tension held by nothing but the ego's insistence on having been correct.
  
  This is the shape of a great deal of suffering that never gets named as suffering — the person who has done everything right, who has genuinely faced the shadow and not flinched, and who finds that facing it honestly has locked them into an impasse rather than releasing them from one. The wish here is old: that integrity would resolve the conflict, that looking clearly at the worst of oneself would purchase some relief from it. Von Franz is saying it does not work that way. The shadow does not respond to being taken seriously with a good-faith surrender. What it requires is something the ego finds nearly impossible — not a moral decision about it, but a willingness to remain in the tension without adjudicating who wins. Civilization, she implies, has never learned this. Neither has the person convinced that the problem is ethical before it is psychological.
reflection_v0_3: |
  The assumption worth pressing here is the one von Franz leaves unargued: that "taking the shadow seriously" is distinguishable from "taking a one-sided ethical decision." For most people, taking something seriously *is* making a moral stand. What she is pointing toward, though, is a third posture — neither collusion with the shadow nor crusade against it, but a willingness to remain in the tension without resolving it through will. Jung called this the transcendent function, and Edinger framed it as the ego learning to be a vessel rather than a judge. The suspension von Franz names is not paralysis; it is the condition that makes something new possible. The civilization she indicts is one that keeps choosing the sword — believing that moral clarity is always the same thing as moral courage.
parent_id: vonFranz_1974_Shadow_and_Evil_in_Fairy__par0024
source: oracle-v3-retrieve
generated: 2026-04-17
regenerated: 2026-04-18
prompt_version: v2.7
status: draft
---

Franz writes:

> if the conscious personality is up against the shadow and takes the shadow seriously without cheating and double-crossing, it ends with a complete suspension in the conflict. If the ego takes a one-sided ethical decision and a one-sided moral attitude and gets into real conflict with the shadow, there is no solution. That is one of the problems of our civilization.

— Marie-Louise von Franz

Von Franz is not describing a failure of willpower or moral clarity — she is describing what happens when moral clarity is precisely the problem. The ego that takes an upright ethical stand, that commits itself to being the good, the right, the principled side of the conflict, achieves something genuine: it sharpens the opposition until the two forces cannot coexist. And then they hang there, suspended, neither resolved nor dissolved, the tension held by nothing but the ego's insistence on having been correct.

This is the shape of a great deal of suffering that never gets named as suffering — the person who has done everything right, who has genuinely faced the shadow and not flinched, and who finds that facing it honestly has locked them into an impasse rather than releasing them from one. The wish here is old: that integrity would resolve the conflict, that looking clearly at the worst of oneself would purchase some relief from it. Von Franz is saying it does not work that way. The shadow does not respond to being taken seriously with a good-faith surrender. What it requires is something the ego finds nearly impossible — not a moral decision about it, but a willingness to remain in the tension without adjudicating who wins. Civilization, she implies, has never learned this. Neither has the person convinced that the problem is ethical before it is psychological.

---

Marie-Louise von Franz · *Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales* · 1974