Three types of psychological shadow with developmental psychologist Kim Barta

Kim Barta is an experienced and versatile developmental psychotherapist, specialising in delivering specific therapeutic techniques to the different developmental stages humans grow through in their lives. He is skilled in working with the ‘shadow’ a term coined by Carl Jung to denote the parts of ourselves that our outside of our conscious awareness. Often the shadow is treated from a single perspective addressing only one aspect of the shadow with a bias towards integration. Kim breaks the shadow into three types: projections (which we do want to integrate back into ourselves for example if we project our own power onto an authority figure), introjections (which we actually want to let go of rather than integrate into us for example many aspects of sexual abuse), and split ego states (which we want to bring into awareness and harmonise for example when we feel conflicted about whether to chill out or work hard). The importance of distinguishing these types of shadow is that if the wrong technique is used it can create more harm than good - for example mistakenly trying to integrate aspects of sexual abuse that should be really be let go of.

For more information on Kim’s work please visit https://www.kimbarta.org where you can find out about his year long, in-depth course on meditation, psychological development and shadow work. 

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