This thesis will examine Jung’s concept of the Archetypal Shadow and its role in evil. Most Jungian work on evil has revolved around the Personal Shadow, those elements of the personality that are rejected for personal, familial, or cultural reasons. Those researchers who have dealt with the problem of evil and the Archetypal Self, including Jung himself, have tended to focus on the God image, as a projection of the Self, as dual in nature, possessing good and evil. This has dissatisfied a small group of Jungians, however, as the discussion of the dual God-image is then treated as a critique of orthodox religious theology, especially Christian theology. The most extreme examples of this came out of theological Jungians writing about Jung’s fascination with Christian mystics. The German mystic Jacob Boehme is one of the most fascinating examples a complex image of God to discuss the Archetype of the Self. None of these writers have attempted to reach a universal definition of “evil” that could be accepted across a diversity of cultures.
I use the latest theoretical research by Robert Moore on the different “Archetypes” of the Archetypal Self, particularly his differentiating of infantile and mature aspects of the King and the Warrior Archetypes. Moore’s work on the Archetypal Shadow involves what he calls “infantile grandiosity” which means possession by an individual Archetype in its infantile form. Moore’s infantile Archetypes are distinguished from their mature forms in that they are selfish, as opposed to social. Using evolutionary Biology I show that selfishness is the closest to a universal definition of “evil” as is currently possible. These evolutionary theories argue that selfishness is a form of individual natural selection, but when animals (including humans) form into groups, these selfish traits are either punished or sublimated into sociality. Finally, I will show that this is the true way to interpret the God-image of Jacob Boehme.