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The Nightmare:
An Exploration of the Jungian ‘Shadow’
Jacob Lavallee The subject and purpose of Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare (178 1 ) , which portrays an impish fiend perched atop an unconscious woman in white whilst a dark mare, partially obscured by a veil of red, watches from aside, is of much debate. Should this image instill fear? Is the woman meant to be in discomfort or pain? Perhaps it is meant to be provocative in nature, still meant to discomfort the comfortable, only through a different avenue. Perhaps the answer is both, or neither. Perhaps what The Nightmare is meant to instill within its observer is wholly dependent upon the observer themself. Beyond the outward, grotesque appearance of the impish fiend and the dark mare that haunt the central figure of Fuseli’s painting, an uncanny terror manifests within the subconscious mind, a familiarity of darkness on behalf of the observer is elicited, and Fuseli’s
symbolism is thus displayed in full: The Nightmare symbolizes the ‘shadow’ within us, a subject of analytical psychology discussed in depth by psychiatrist Carl Jung. The shadow, according to Jung, is the metaphorical manifestation of one’s darkest traits, desires, and inclinations. It is the attributes we deem ‘negative’ native to our personality whose existence is rejected at the unconscious level, whilst simultaneously being projected outwards unto the world around us. To elaborate, the shadow is a product of the unknown, and the unknown is often synonymous with the gothic genre. The fear and terror instilled by the anticipation of some force whose nature is not, or cannot, be fully understood naturally blends with the genre’s attempts to disturb and unsettle. The presence of the unknown is, of course, present in Fuseli’s The Nightmare , but this unknown, like so many others within the gothic, is broad and can be subjected to no small amount of interpretation, and this is only heightened by the nature of The Nightmare , that being a painting, whose contents are expressed and subjectively digested visually. Psychiatrist Carl Jung understands the unknown as belonging to “two groups of objects: those which are outside and can be experienced by the senses, and those which are inside and are experienced immediately. The first group comprises the unknown in the outer world; the second the unknown in the inner world. We call this latter territory the unconscious” (Jung, 3). The ‘unknown’ within The Nightmare may begin ‘outside’ as we absorb its contents, analyzing the terrible and provocative imagery on display, but beyond this initial veil lies an inner unknown native not to the painting but to the self. Ever present but often unnoticed, this ‘unknown’ within us is reflected by The Nightmare. To understand why The Nightmare elicits feelings of the uncanny within us is to understand the ‘unknown’ within ourselves. In this case we may refer to this ‘unknown’ as what Jung called ‘the shadow.’ The shadow is that darkness which lurks below the surface of each and every person. It is the negatives that contrast a person’s perceived positives, those unwanted characteristics we deny and suppress within ourselves made manifest almost as a sort of ‘alter-ego,’ whose nature we are oblivious to (to varying degrees) even though at times our thoughts, actions, and intentions can very well be influenced by them (Jung 8). Some of these characteristics comprising the shadow can be recognized with relative ease, others however are much more difficult to identify, let alone accept, thus as Jung explains we often project them outward so as to deny them within ourselves (Jung 8-9). These projections of the shadow’s characteristics, which occur at an unconscious level, “isolate the subject from his environment, since instead of a real relation to it there is now only an illusory one” (Jung, 9).
Works Cited Fuseli, Henry. The Nightmare. 1781. Oil on canvas, 1.02 m x 1.27 m. Jung, C. G. Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self. Princeton University Press, 1959.
