The Dark Side of the Mind: True Stories from My Life as a Forensic Psychologist

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http://faculty.washington.edu/agg/ (follow link titled “Studies showing use of the IAT with “real world” subject populations”) Grimly fascinating - a timely and gripping exploration of mental health issues in the criminal justice system from an author intimately acquainted with its dark heart.' Harriet Tyce, author of Blood Orange

Shadow integration leads to a numinous experience; anchoring to the numinosum effect without reality testing can lead to ego inflation (qv., archetypal possession). [57] Sometimes, and perhaps more often than we’d care to admit, the mind travels to places we would prefer it didn’t. When under pressure, when pushed to the limit, thinking we can’t take it any more, the dark side of the mind will reveal itself and, in the process, probably scare us half to death. This is a taboo subject - you’ll rarely find mothers or fathers sharing these tales over a drink - and yet how can we talk about examining the human condition without including the darker, harder thoughts? How can we discuss the qualities of acceptance, openness and forgiveness, while ignoring such intimate feelings? Jung also made the suggestion that the shadow may be made up of many layers. The top layers contain the meaningful flow and manifestations of direct personal experiences. These are made unconscious in the individual by such things as the change of attention from one thing to another, simple forgetfulness, or a repression. Underneath these specific layers, however, are the archetypes which form the psychic contents of all human experiences. Jung described this deeper layer as "a psychic activity which goes on independently of the conscious mind and is not dependent even on the upper layers of the unconscious—untouched, and perhaps untouchable—by personal experience." [35]Perhaps something like these same downstream/upstream options apply in the case of association: either implicit bias starts life as negative affect, and grows into an association from there; or the associations come first, and negative affect comes after.

Humphrey, Caroline (2015). "Shadows Along the Spiritual Pathway". Journal of Religion and Health. 54 (6): 2376–2388. doi: 10.1007/s10943-015-0037-2. JSTOR 24735970. PMID 25794547. S2CID 11733262 . Retrieved 2022-06-25. Learning to [day]dream [...] is advisable for the serious practitioner of shadow work, and Jung developed the technique of active imagination to this end. If we carve out a regular space—time for silence and solitude, we may discern the murmurings of another voice within us or the spontaneous formation of an image in our mind [...] afterwards we need to record our experiences to render the memorable by writing a message, drawing an image, performing a dance sequence or vocalising a melody (cf. Hannah 1991; Rowan 2005, pp. 125-147) Johnson, Robert A. 1993. Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche. Harper San Francisco, 128 pp. ISBN 0-06-250754-0. Humphrey, Caroline (2015). "Shadows Along the Spiritual Pathway". Journal of Religion and Health. 54 (6): 2376–2388. doi: 10.1007/s10943-015-0037-2. JSTOR 24735970. PMID 25794547. S2CID 11733262 . Retrieved 2022-06-25. Jung construed [...] the personal shadow, [as] a biological and biographical shadow unique to each person, consisting of whatever innate instincts and transpersonal potentials we have suppressed in the course of adapting to society, along with archaic and traumatic memories [of the unconscious]. [...] The personal shadow is rooted in the shadow of our social group, which has moulded our ego-ideal and world view[.] Humphrey, Caroline (2015). "Shadows Along the Spiritual Pathway". Journal of Religion and Health. 54 (6): 2376–2388. doi: 10.1007/s10943-015-0037-2. JSTOR 24735970. PMID 25794547. S2CID 11733262 . Retrieved 2022-06-25. Jung construed [...] the collective shadow, an ancestral shadow which [has been] accrued in the course of history in respect of each collectivity [...] both particularistic social groups and the human species as a whole. Welcome to the world of the forensic psychologist, where the people you meet are wildly unpredictable and often frightening.

von Hippel, W. and Trivers, R. (2011). The evolution and psychology of self-deception. Brain and Behavioral Sciences, 34, 1-56. Devine, P. G. (1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 5-18.

So like Susanna and Eric, I’d be very interested to hear more about the way you are thinking about what the IAT measures, and I’d welcome more information about studies that examine the relations among IAT scores and behavior that would independently support a charge of bias. Eric reports finding Payne’s results surprising, but they seem to me to be rather what one would expect if the IAT is not really tapping into the cognitive and affective states that control and explain much of our behavior. Jung, C.G. 1938. "Psychology and Religion". In Psychology and Religion: West and East, Collected Works of C.G. Jung 11. p. 131 Le Guin, Ursula K. (1975). "The Child and the Shadow". The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress. 32 (2): 139–148. JSTOR 29781619 . Retrieved 2022-06-25. The shadow is projected outward, onto others. There's nothing wrong with me—it's them.

Summary

Carl Jung discovered that the Shadow can provide great insight and revelation. He also knew that it can do a lot of damage to one’s psyche if not integrated. Repression, or failure to embrace the Shadow is a recipe for psychological trouble. The Shadow cannot be destroyed, and even if it is repressed into the darkness, its tentacles will still surface. Below, are a few examples of what these tentacles may look like to an observer. As the shadow is a part of the unconscious, a method called Shadow work is practiced through active imagination with daydreaming and meditation—the experience is then mediated by dialectical interpretation through narrative and art (pottery, poetry, drawing, dancing, singing, etc.); analysts perform dreamwork on analysands, using amplification to raise the unconscious to conscious awareness. [39] [40] [41] I believe that even society’s least endearing member has an important story to tell. We don’t have to empathise with their story, but we can learn from it. KERRY DAYNES - Forensic psychologist, campaigner and author of new book,The Dark Side of the Mind Here we are all these years later, both still interested in “trying to figure it all out.” The Implicit Association Test (IAT) has been a tremendously useful tool in directly assessing the presence of implicit biases. Prior to its development, much of the reasoning about the impact of implicit biases was based on indirect evidence that was consistent with the idea that unconscious processes affected perception and behavior. Being able to directly measure these biases has enabled researchers to establish the prevalence of these biases and brought into focus puzzling patterns of data that Mahzarin so eloquently reviewed and challenged us to think about. Having limited time to respond, let me comment on just two issues that have puzzled Mahzarin as she has explored the nature and consequences of implicit biases – the developmental stability of implicit race preferences revealed by the IAT and the question of such biases being malleable. The issues are, I think, very much interrelated. Kerry Daynes is a registered Consultant Forensic Psychologist with over twenty years' experience of working on the frontline of forensic psychology. She was often invited to act as psychological specialist in major police investigations and as a trusted advisor to the British government regarding the safe management of high-risk individuals. Part of her day job still involves acting as an expert witness in court, for parole boards and training the police. But rather than feeling compromised and frustrated within the system, she now spends the majority of her time trying to affect change from the outside - as an engaging speaker and as an advocate for better conversations around crime, justice and mental health. She is a patron of the National Centre for Domestic Violence and Talking2Minds and, as a victim of stalking herself, acts as a spokeswoman for the Suzy Lamplugh Trust's stalking-related campaigns.

A second issue is perhaps less of a criticism than an elaboration of a point well made. Banaji frames her paper, at least in part, by commenting upon the courage it took for Patricia Devine, as well as Banaji and her colleagues, to engage in the probing of unconscious racism in white people, what she terms “the hidden biases of good people.” She does this very early in the paper, as well as at the end, where, after quoting from Martin Luther King Jr., she concludes, “We have told it like it is about the research discoveries, whether palatable or not.” Having taught many undergraduate courses on the subjects of stereotyping, stigma, and prejudice, I agree wholeheartedly with Banaji’s point. It is not easy to tell “good” people that they are not quite as good as they could be on matters pertaining to race (and related social/ethnic/religious groups). Many people do not like this message and they will not like the messenger either. However, I think it is worth noting here that many social psychologists have told it “like it is,” have discovered unpalatable truths, and continue to do so. Historically, the names Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo come immediately to mind, but many others could be added to this large list. Banaji is clearly not claiming a courageous or heroic status solely for the research at issue in her paper, but I do think it should be recognized that many social psychologists have told it like it is, and often paid a severe price for doing so in terms of criticisms leveled at them not only from resistant lay persons but professional colleagues as well. (The same would be true undoubtedly for many research projects in the natural sciences). To a degree, of course, this is precisely as it should be. Some might say the angst instigated by many scientific discoveries is simply part of the scientific enterprise, a natural (if at times vexing) reaction to unexpected, emotion-laden findings.

The IAT data were unexpected. Not so much that we see evidence of ingroup preference at the earliest age we were able to test but rather in the stark stability of the preference across development. Year upon year of greater experience with race seems to have no impact on the IAT attitude. We are left with the conclusion that whatever the nature of the preference detected by the IAT, it is a primitive form of attitude that expresses itself relatively early in life and doesn’t change with increased experience with the attitude object that must occur between age 6 and adulthood. Le Guin, Ursula K. (1975). "The Child and the Shadow". The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress. 32 (2): 139–148. JSTOR 29781619 . Retrieved 2022-06-25. Jolande Jacobi wrote that[.] Neely, J. H. (1977). Semantic priming and retrieval from lexical memory: Roles of inhibitionless spreading activation and limited-capacity attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 106, 226-254.