A critical consideration for helping professionals is to be cautious of overidentifying with their role as helpers. When this happens, they only associate with the positive aspects of being a helper, such as selflessness, strength, benevolence, and empathy. From the Jungian lens, we can liken it to associating only with the light pole of the helper, the healer, or the savior archetype. This may give us a feeling of being someone who can bring healing, cure a patient’s life, or save them from their burden.
It is natural and expected that the light aspects of the helper role influence one’s choice of profession. No one (or very few) enters into the demanding field of helping professions to live out its darker, negative aspects, such as power, control, and possession.
The archetypal polarity
The helper role can be associated with both positive and negative aspects. In other words, the helper archetype, like all archetypes, carries a polarity: selflessness, benevolence, empathy vs. power, control, and possession.
When one chooses to become a helping professional, they automatically get in touch with waters carrying both positive and negative aspects of the helper archetype.
One-sidedness
One’s strong efforts or obsession towards being a benevolent helper is what we call in Jungian psychology a one-sidedness – that is, forcing oneself to be in a specific manner. This refers to one’s conscious orientation towards a fixed and idealized attitude, called Persona identification. In our case, it is a fixation on being selfless, benevolent, and empathetic. What makes this orientation problematic is its rigidity.
Enantiodromia
The danger of extreme one-sidedness becomes clear when we realize what process it triggers in the psyche. According to the concept of enantiodromia, one-sidedness leads to its counterpart being constellated in the unconscious. Jung stated:
[Enantiodromia] occurs when an extreme, one-sided tendency dominates conscious life; in time, an equally powerful counterposition is built up, which first inhibits the conscious performance and subsequently breaks through the conscious control. [1]
Therefore, one’s conscious one-sided position induces a powerful counter-position to build up in the unconscious. This counter-position, hosting the rejected, unwanted, and dark aspects, forms the shadow of the helper.
Expressed in its most functional way, the Shadow is composed of all those aspects of ourselves that have a tendency to make us uncomfortable with ourselves. The Shadow is not just what is unconscious, it is what discomforts the sense of self we wish to have. It is not synonymous with evil, though it may contain elements that the ego or the culture considers evil.”[2]
The shadow
The shadow of the helper will operate despite one’s most benevolent intentions. This is how believing our efforts will help someone, we may end up exerting control and power. This happens more often than we realize. To make a sobering point on this topic, Guggenbühl-Craig reminds us of an old but chilling story, that of the Medieval Christians whose “primary goal was not to raise healthy, un-neurotic, socially well-adjusted people, but to save their souls and help others to attain the Kingdom of Heaven.”[3]
When Christianity established itself in its medieval form, there were many who did not hold with the predominant views. Values other than the salvation of the soul in the Christian sense were meaningful to them – which often proved to be a fatal attitude. At certain times and under certain circumstances, those who deviated in this manner, or advocated a different value hierarchy, were persecuted, martyred, and killed by the Church. Today the word ‘Inquisition’ has an ominous ring. But the Christian Inquisitors were able to justify their deeds with absolute conviction and were considered, by themselves and their society, as well-meaning men. Leading Christians were absolutely certain that their views on the soul’s salvation were the only correct ones. … Through the shock of imprisonment and torture, they had to be made to see that their souls were in need of saving. … Thus, the primary task of the Inquisition was not to persecute, torture, and kill; its lofty aim was to protect and help humanity in general and the individual in particular. And the Inquisitors believed that all possible means were considered justified in promulgating the official doctrine, which was the only right one.[4]
Contemporary examples
Like the Medieval Christians, seeing themselves as saviors blinded them to the harm caused by their good intentions; other helpers continued to run into the same dynamics. We hear of:
- Parenting coaches abusing their children– Utah mother and parent coach Ruby Franke
- Psychoanalysts convincing their patients to sleep with each other, forbid them to form ties, and subdue to their directives– The Sullivanians
- Spiritual guides isolating their followers from their families, exploiting their vulnerability, abusing them financially – The Twin Flames Universe
- Boarding schools designed to rehabilitate troubled teens abusing students – Ivy Ridge
The common thread among these examples is that these helpers consciously aimed to have good intentions and believed in helping people. On this path, they allowed themselves to go to extreme lengths; their unconsciousness caused great pain and suffering to the very people they were attempting to help.
We are reminded that “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
If you are a helping professional and would like to learn more about the dynamics of helping professions from a Jungian perspective, the Helping Professionals Process Group may be for you.
[1] Carl Jung, Psychological Types
[2] James Hollis, Why Good People Do Bad Things: Understanding Our Darker Selves
[3] Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig, Power in the Helping Professions
[4] Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig, Power in the Helping Professions
Image: Meret Oppenheim, Glove, 1986. Courtesy of Kunsthaus Zürich, Collection of Prints and Drawings, Donated vy Ursula Hauser, 2004.