breaks out of her. Her husband usually is shocked by her out-
burst and suddenly starts listening to her.
Evelyn also told us that she has very good relationships
with her colleagues and her boss at work. She is not completely
happy at work though, because several times she has been
passed by for promotion. This puzzles her because she always
completes her tasks diligently. Pushier colleagues, who have
also taken more initiative in certain projects, have been pro-
moted instead of her.
At first it was hard for Evelyn to allow for the possibility
that some of the characteristics she saw in Davis could be part
of her disowned and repressed shadow self. But reflecting on
her family history helped her to open to the possibility.
Evelyn also remembered that she sometimes has a secret
desire to demonstrate stronger boundaries with people who
take advantage of her at work. This desire makes her feel self-
ish — she dislikes it strongly. Evelyn had been aware of her
fear of conflict all along. Now she started to consider that she
might have repressed her anger and aggression as well as her
selfishness. She also surmised that her assertiveness, strength,
and creativity might have also ended up in her shadow bag.
Eric disliked Dee strongly because she seemed needy and
immoral. He was appalled when he saw Dee approaching
Mack romantically while knowing that Mack had a wife and
children. Listening to Evelyn’s discoveries about herself, Eric
already had some ideas about his possible disowned parts. In
his family, independence was encouraged because both parents
were often gone for work. He was very proud of the fact that,
since childhood, he was never needy.
Eric does not see much wrong with this, except that previ-
ous girlfriends as well as his wife sometimes have said he was
aloof. In return, he sometimes found them too needy and did
not always understand what they wanted from him emotion-
ally. Reflecting on this, Eric wondered now whether he might
be afraid of emotional intimacy. He expressed hope that by
gaining a deeper awareness of how he put neediness into his
“Then may come the
joyful acceptance of the
rejected and inferior, a
going with it and even a
partial living of it.”
James HillmanSelf-Discovery Through Film Characters — The Self Matrix 151