The Shadow of the Human Soul is about what lies in the deepest depths of all of us: feelings, memories, experiences that were not completed, aspects of ourselves that were once paralyzed, "yes" and "no" and "I want" or "I don't want" that were not said and suffocated or that were said and brought pain, fear, sorrow, violence, denial and insult to our existence at its foundations.

This book is a thorough study of the "inner" and unconscious architecture of every human existence. It is an exciting journey with intense existential nuances that reaches equally into the recesses of our moments, days and ourselves, into what we are beyond consciousness, logic and the way our mind works.

At the same time, however, it seeks a discreet visit to the shadowy residence of our sad but also enraged "inner child", always through multiple examples, a literary mood, and rich references to legends, myths and fairy tales.

“I am very jealous of those who will read this book. It is an exciting adventure that will take your breath away as they will follow the author on a journey through the most mysterious but at the same time most important aspects of life. The reader enriches his knowledge of the unconscious depths of his and every human being, exactly where our motivations, emotions and behaviors are born. Indeed, the book eloquently highlights how all of this is related to the existential facts common to all of us (anxiety of futility, loneliness, death, choice), which accompany us on our life's journey, just like our Shadows – usually invisible but ever present."

Sergey Kondurov,
Psychiatrist – Director at Integrative Gestalt
Training Institute of Russia

This book becomes sometimes an inspiring fellow traveler and sometimes a wise guide, on a fascinating journey deep within ourselves. An amazing feature of the author is that he awakens in the reader his own inner healer and teacher. The result is to trigger in the reader a polyphony of internal dialogues, images, reflections and dreams.

The book is characterized by combinations of many elements: essential psychological knowledge, abundant and poetic examples of everyday life, completely comprehensible in-depth study of the various aspects of the subject, inventive presentation with a clear order and structure.

Thus, the content is easily absorbed from page to page and becomes a valuable helper, a clear mirror available to the reader to see himself in new ways."

Alexandra Sadokova,
Psychologist, Somato-Psychotherapist
in Bioenergetic Analysis

Author Biography

Petros Theodorou is a psychotherapist who works with the Gestalt approach in Greece and abroad.

It focuses on an existential and relational understanding of life and related themes (loss, loneliness, futility, responsibility, choice). Also, it systematically deals with the relationships of love - love - sexual desire.

For all these he writes steadily. He has published three books, two of which have been translated into English, while his fourth book (on love) is scheduled to be published in the spring of 2021.

Since 2006, he has been systematically holding lectures and experiential self-awareness and psychotherapy groups, in Greece and abroad.

In the past, his first degree was in medical science, while for a long time he was a composer. For many years now he has completed second studies in psychology and as a psychotherapist, he graduated from the "Gestalt Foundation".

He is a member of EAGT – the European Institutional Body for Gestalt Psychotherapy and a certified supervisor. He cooperates, as an external partner, in educational and other programs with various Centers and Institutes of Education and Psychotherapy (Integrative Gestalt Training Institute, Sinergia, Istok, Gestalt Foundation, etc.).

Since 2006, he has developed his own embodied interaction approach, PSP (Process-Stage-Praxis), which can be applied in many areas (psychotherapy, education, work, art, the Playback Theatre), etc.

His other works:

"The dance of miracles: the great journeys in small steps". A journey into existence and the moment, into the mystery of human experience and personal reality.

"Notes for You - Notebook A" – 25 short texts and images about romance, love, lust and life. It is also available in an English translation: "Notes for you".

"In the Shadows of Love". 1st standalone Volume of the trilogy with the general title: "...to the heretics of love: the eyes that looked at me". A journey in love and death, in love and lust, in the relationship with the Other [for publication].

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Contents

IMPORT
Q.1 What is the book about and to whom is it addressed?
Q.2 A brief history and a few words about the motivations and intentions of this publication
E.3 Various features of the book and the "sub-text" of the Appendices
CHAPTER A: Shadow: a first acquaintance
1 What is Shadow
2 The Shadow as "frozen" possibilities of interaction and "unfinished business"
3 A necessary parenthesis: the self and aspects of the self
3.a The corporeal primary self: in the mysteries and undergrounds of "I am"
3.b Consciousness: the penthouse of "I am"
3.c Self: the host of "I am", its aspects and hidden Shadows
4 The energy of the Shadow
5 The uniqueness of experience, the Shadow and the illusion of repeating the past
5.a The uniqueness of our every moment
5.b The past as a model for the present
6 The power of the Shadow, slippage, self-organization
6.a The participation of the Shadow in our journey through a holistic perception
6.b The "wrongful" Shadow
7 Is the Shadow "harmful"?
8 Coexistence with the Shadow: can I "know" my Shadow?
9 The "self" and the Shadow of the relationship
10 The Shadow and the "inner child"
11 What we CANNOT do for our inner child in the Shadows
12 An elegy for "mutated" children
12.a The misery of monsters and the deformed
12.b The "Parasaktos" or, who is afraid of whom?
CHAPTER B: Some Sources of the Shadow Material
13 Introduction of Chapter B
14 The Eyes That Looked Upon Me: The Shadow in Its Birth and Its Early Material
15 The incalculable importance of "mother" for the first architecture of Skia
15.a The "mirror" in the mother's eyes
15.b Distortion mirrors and creativity
16 Shadow and existential loneliness
16.a Existential and interpersonal loneliness
16.b Who do we want to think "cursed" us and are we alone as beings?
17 Shadow and meaning
17.a The meaning production workshop
17.b The braid of emotional and cognitive meaning
17.c Meaning and need for control
18 Shielding the Shadow, when things insist on resisting
19 The Shadow, the relativity and temporality of meanings, the "fertile void"
20. The Shadow, personal responsibility for choices and the question of "ethics"
21 The Shadow and the "lower layers" of our nature
22 The Shadow, our differences, the rules of our collective life
22.a The universal systems of beliefs and values
22.b The fast food meanings and the corresponding consequences of the shielding of the Shadow
23 Shadow and an ancient two-way betrayal as a condition of individuation and life
24 Shadow and the one-way betrayal of death
24.a The continuum of the structure and dissolution of everything
24.b Death, futility, unlived life
24.c In "Digenes the threshing floor" the Charon always wins
CHAPTER C: Attempts to Fortify the Shadow
25 Introduction of Chapter C
26 The intellectualization of experience through the hyperfunction of consciousness
27 An overactive consciousness
28 The excessive zeal of conscience
29 Indicative "semiology" of hyperfunctioning consciousness
30 The projection of the Shadow
31 The "assignment" of the Shadow's movement and the recurring scenarios
32 Two ways of assigning the Shadow, the idealization, a variation, the consequences
33 An example of assigning the Shadow
34 Relationship: the projection, the assignment of the Shadow and the repeated scenarios of the relationship
35 The "end" of repeated scenarios in fairy tales and in life
35.a The "happy end" in fairy tales
35.b The "un-happy end" in life
36 The futility of delegation and repeated scripts:
CHAPTER D: The pitfalls of complementary Shadows and the Shadows of the family
37 The "marriage" of the Shadows
38 Example 1^ο: "Behind closed doors"
38.a The protagonists
38.b The basic plot
39 Example 2^ο: the perpetrator, the victim, the blood cycle
39.a The perpetrator, the victim
39.b The blood cycle
39.c The restart
40 Example 3^ο: the conspiracies of silence
40.a "Model" 1^ο: the voices of the father and the holy mother
40.b "Model" 2^ο: the great mother and the holy father
41 The dependence of the Shadows and the contamination from generation to generation or: the architecture of the family black hole
41.a The bequest of the Shadow through the imitation of its fortifications
41.b The projection of the parental Shadow: the self-sacrifice of the parent, the overprotected and "broken" child, the baton
42 The manipulative mechanisms of the family
42.a Some examples of manipulative tools
42.b The family secrets
43 The eternally stretched bow and the obedient arrow
43.a The "implantation" of the command - the stretching of the bow
43.b The flowering of fear
43.c The plea of the captured arrow and the question of responsibility
44 The Shadow, the 'wrong', the 'explanation' and control, the inner child who is always wrong
45 Shadow, consequences of "wrong" and the non-existence of "wrong"
CHAPTER E: Other Aspects of the Shadow
46 Shadow and the concept of "creative adaptation"
47 The Shadow and "the best I can do"
48 The Shadow as a creative adaptation
49 Relationship, Shadow and creative adaptation
50 The Shadow and the wonder of embodied existence
50.a The "experienced body" or, what happened to "I think therefore I exist"?
50.b Shadow and body
51 The Shadow and our sense of continuity in time
51.a The paradox of the constant reconstruction of our time
51.b The Shadow and our subjective timeline
CHAPTER G: Dancing with the Shadow
52 Introduction of Chapter G
53 What is NOT dancing with the Shadow
53.a The mental "understanding" of the Shadow and the "purification"
53.b The compulsion of positive thinking
54 The proposal for a "good" connection with a moving Shadow
54.a The present as a starting point for connecting with the past and not the past as a model for living the present
54.b The connection with the Shadow and the paradoxical theory of change
55 Embracing our inner child: the "other" ending of fairy tales
56 The Shadow, the fruit plate and the distorting mirror
57 The cold that invades when we open the door to our inner child
58 Our inner child, the trap of "forgiveness" and the inevitable encounter with ancient anger
59 The sensitive issue of "sorry" and "forgiveness"
60 The trap of the expression "I close some of my issues" and what it means for the present to become the background of the past
61 The stages of the dance with the Shadow, the power of "as much as"
61.a A dance without predetermined steps
61.b "As much as"
EPILOGUE: The loneliness of the imprisoned Asterion
APPENDIX: Our Existential Anxieties, the Bottom of the Abyss, and the Wisdom of Sisyphus
P.0 The purpose of the Appendix
P.1 The sinking into the abyss
P.2 The "dishonours" of life and surrender to the inevitable "fall"
P.3 Why surrender to nothingness is saving and produces the cessation of the "fall"
P.4 The "trust in the process"
P.5 The illusion of the "savior"
P.6 Sisyphus and his wisdom: a proposal of acceptance
P.7 The real power of "here and now": I "live" life directly and at the same time "think about life"
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF LISTING 383
INDEX OF TABLES 388
thanks 391