A key concept in Jungian psychology can help attorneys survive life in a firm and avoid disastrous self-sabotage (see, for example, Gen. David Petraeus). It’s the concept of the shadow.
Carl Jung saw the shadow as containing all that has been polished away by parents, family, school, society, culture, church, etc. The shadow is the bearer of instinct and negative emotion: rage, lust, envy, grief, etc. It is all that people must learn to master to take up membership in society. Inability to master the shadow marks a person as an outcast: a dangerous position to occupy and a dangerous person to be.
