By Royal E. Alsup, Ph.D.

Child abuse in many forms is prevalent in our communities. The main reason for the terrible presence of child abuse is the perpetrating adult's lack of spiritual discipline. Spiritual discipline and divine grace trains and guides a person to develop the ability to control the senses, still the mind, bring gifts of sacred knowledge and selfless service. They are practices such as meditation, repeating the holy name continually throughout the day, prayer and ritual. The spiritual disciplines to which I am referring lead to nonviolence and an increase in love toward self and others.

The shadow is a term that describes an aspect of the personality. It is made up of qualities that do not fit with ones own ego ideal and they are suppressed, pushed into the unconscious. The shadow also contains strengths and positive aspects that are suppressed in order to fit parental or societal expectancy or to gain approval. Shadow work is a life long and ongoing process that involves the transformation of the shadow by learning about and accepting responsibility for those aspects of our personality that are unknown to us if left unconscious. Shadow work is demanding and difficult psychological work that holds enormous potential for the healing of individuals, families and society.

People who present a good-natured persona or mask to the world sometimes abuse children. How can this be so? People who hide behind a mask of being good-natured and kind may have a shadow problem. The problem can be in the form of angry feelings, depression, fears, anxieties, feelings of being an imposter, or, the other extreme, an inflated sense of goodness and entitlement. They try to bury the shadow problem and make the mask stronger by rehearsing their acting on the back stage of home life with their family. The kindly masked person plays their role in the community; the public sees them performing and gives them the recognition that confirms their self-identification with the mask. They begin to feel that indeed they are always good-natured and kind, that they are the mask. The more they identify with their mask, the bigger the shadow problem. The shadow cannot be denied, however, and it will eventually show its ugly head.

Some of the causes of child abuse are unrestrained ego desires, such as cravings for immediate gratification, for the release of tension, to be absolutely in control and to indulge the uninhibited pursuit of pleasure. Practices that can dethrone the ego of its desires are serious spiritual disciplines that create the desire to search and crave for the face of God in the face of the other person. Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi are great models and inspirations. Through the practice of such disciplines one can become aware of one's shadow and it can be transformed into the positive energy of selfless service for others and genuine positive parenting.

Alcohol and drug abuse come from the ego's cravings for pleasure and from the desire to avoid the pain of the shadow. However, the abuse of alcohol and drugs creates a much larger problem. Children are mistreated in the emotional and physical environments that are created by alcohol and drug abuse. Emotional, verbal, physical and sexual abuse of children is often accompanied by or facilitated by the adult's abuse of alcohol and/or drugs. The abused child lives out the pain, guilt and shame of the abuser who is trying to drown the pain of his or her own shadow. Wounded children carry the scars of the shadow when the shadow is not recognized and transformed through some kind of spiritual discipline.

The myth of the perfect parent is enhanced by our technological society's obsession with parenting technique and skills classes that fill workshops and are commercially profitable. Attending classes without doing the work of transforming the shadow through spiritual and psychological disciplines is not enough to change the child abuse situation.

The shadow is the hidden partner in the various forms of abuse that we are witnessing in families today. The Times Standard (Eureka, CA) reported that California leads the states in its frequency of child abuse. Reports of physical, verbal, emotional and sexual abuse of children are on the increase. This is outrageous and is happening in the entire nation. The only way to end child abuse is to work with the shadow. Beware of the person who has lost their shadow. The one who does not want to own their shadow will make their family carry the shadow for them. And the vulnerable ones in the family are the children.

The shadow hides behind various legitimate child-rearing practices. Recently I presented a seminar at Saybrook Institute with graduate students about hidden cruelty in child rearing practices. Graduate students from different cultures, such as Japanese, Native American, African American and eastern European, reported on the hidden cruelties of child rearing practices in their various cultures. The common theme from the different cultural perspectives was that the child does not respond to the adult's conscious life, but to their unconscious. The effects of the unconscious shadow can be seen in families where the children are being abused through family child rearing practices that are not questioned because that was the way the parents were raised. The parents may be carrying depression, anxiety and anger from their own childhood, which resulted from the same child rearing practices that they are using with their own children. The family's unconscious shadow is thus carried from generation to generation.

Hidden cruelties in child rearing practices are condoned by communities and encouraged by societies. One of my Japanese students reported that families in Japan make their children attend school for almost twelve hours a day so that they will have the skills required to compete in the Japanese technological society. The children often stay up until midnight doing homework because they do not get home from school until nine or ten o'clock at night. The Japanese children are learning the information they need to be competitive, but the shadow is seen in an increase in adolescent drug and alcohol abuse in Japan.

The hidden cruelties in child rearing practices can be seen in our society in the form of "tough love" and "getting back into control" and, let us not forget, "natural consequences." The hidden abuses to children couched in these approaches are alarming. Some examples include the use of spanking, humiliation, time out and other kinds of punishment to change behavior. Research consistently shows that punishment is not an effective method of improving behavior. Punishment increases hostility and violent acting out, lowers self-esteem and self-confidence and reduces the child's ability to problem solve effectively in interactions with peers. Another example is authoritarian parenting with its dependence upon the use of control and punishment, rather than influence and guidance. The child is taught to obey rather than to develop empathy, and to hide reactions of anger or fear rather than to develop the ability to clearly communicate feelings and ideas. The creativity and vitality of the child is dampened and sometimes destroyed in such family atmospheres of hidden cruelty.

Until we examine the shadow-the hidden cruelties-in our accepted child rearing practices, children will continue to feel the scars of the unconscious shadow through verbal, emotional, physical and sexual abuse. Serious pathological problems of our day, such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia, personality disorders and the different forms of child abuse, can be healed or helped by working with the individual, family and community shadows.

All the world's bibles tell us, "Be not afraid." Ignorance, which is the shadow, does not have to be feared. We do not have to protect ourselves from the shadow. We have to face it, claim it and transform it. The holy books of the world are great manuals of transformation that teach us the spiritual and psychological disciplines we need to help us transform the shadow into creative, positive life expressions. The cultural heroes of these bibles, like Krishna, Moses, Jesus and Buddha, demonstrate the hidden human image that can be revealed by using the practices to transform the shadow. Carl Jung said in his writings that the shadow contains ninety percent gold, and that the world's spiritual bibles are great containers for the creative archetypes and the way out of the shadow problem. The path toward love is by transforming the shadow of ignorance through spiritual and psychological disciplines.