Romancing the Shadow: A Guide to Soul Work for a Vital, Authentic Life

"Wow!! This book is amazing. Not only do I realize what my parents have done to me in my formative years, but I also realize what I did to my son in forming his shadow. Not all is bad, although as I look at the results I would like to undo some of it.

My main interest was for relationship building and this book has surpassed my expectations. I recommend it to all who are serious about introspection and how they relate to the world around them. It brings cognative understanding to what we choose to do and what we exclude(our shadow) into sharp focus for us to understand and manage."
~ Written on 2008-07-31

"I am enjoying this book tremendously. It is well written and easy to understand for the layman. It doesn't have a "New Age" feel to it and while reading it interesting things from my past came to mind, easily and naturally. I am recommending it to my friends. "
~ Written on 2008-02-18

"It is a wonderful book. It has helped me when many things. Thank you so much."
~ Written on 2005-09-30

"Having just started to read about Jungian psychology, and taken an interest in the concept of the shadow, I approached this book in anticipation after reading Robert A Johnson's 'Owning your shadow'.While Johnson's book was concise and to the point,and very enjoyable to read, this book has been a boring read after the first couple of chapters. The ideas presented are sometimes repetitive and at other times just do not gel. You feel that you've read a profusion of sentences with a sprinkling of punctuations in between but with very little new information or insight as you go from page to page. I don't think I've learnt much, in theory or in practice. Will go to Debbie Ford's "The Dark side of the Light Chasers" now and hopefully find a more satisfying read."
~ Written on 2003-04-27

"I went through a phase of that when I was teen and never really recovered, but this book is different. I don't know if the term depth psychology applies, but it certainly brings the concept to mind. The author works in Jungian concepts of archetype and shadow and seems to assume familiarity with them. Like many books it has a number of examples, but I found them more detailed and better related to one another. By reading this book one spends some time with the concept that a relationship, with oneself, or a significant other, is continuously evolving and never fixed, but that it can be stable. Zweig gives us the idea of a the third person in a relationship who can be a threatening other or the unity created by the couple, but usually both. This combines with the artistic, rather than scientific, analysis of the Shadow, to create a useful tool which encourages the reader to pinpoint what it is they really want from a relationship, as opposed to what they think they want. It's very easy to be confused on that subject, especially in our society where there's no such thing as an emotional education. You have to do your own work though."
~ Written on 2002-06-21