Kay Newell Plumb

Q. TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOURSELF:

A. I'm extremely lucky. Healthy, with a large, loving family and dear friends. I live in a quirky little house my husband and I rebuilt with our own hands that sits on 3 acres of wooded hillside which we passionately garden. Perhaps most important to the creation of this book, I'm a scholarly person by nature--a hermit and a forest dweller--who's been focusing on one area of study for the last eighteen years.

Q.TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE BOOK:

A. SHADOW IN THE USA is an illustrated book introducing a serious psychological subject. Which sounds odd, until you realize that as far back as the Middle Ages serious books were heavily illustrated. So people would pay attention to them. And although we call it graphic non-fiction nowadays, it still operates on the same principal: a spoonful of beauty makes the medicine go down. MAUS, by Art Spiegelman--which tells his father's Holocaust story--would have been very hard to bear without Art's illustrations.

Of course in modern times some works of psychological importance have been illustrated to great effect: THE POWER OF MYTH by Joseph Campbell; MAN AND HIS SYMBOLS, by Carl Jung. It just isn't the norm to illustrate books about psychology. But since the shadow is such a gnarly subject, such a terrifying subject, as well as a subject most of us would rather not know anything at all about... I thought artwork would help. Particularly since our culture is so utterly inundated with visual images.

And I knew I would need a good story, a vehicle, to keep the subject moving. That, of all apparent contradictions, an introduction to the human shadow for the general public would have to be entertaining. The vehicle I chose is a classic version of "Beauty and the Beast," which gave the artist Bob Hobbs plenty of room for illustration.

Q. WHAT DO YOU HOPE YOUR READERS WILL GAIN FROM READING YOUR BOOK?

A. A better understanding of how the human shadow operates in their own hearts and minds, as well as a better understanding of how the human shadow operates in the hearts and minds of others.

Q. WHY IS THE SUBJECT IMPORTANT?

A. It would be one thing--and bad enough--if "the pot calling the kettle black" only happened at a personal level. But it doesn't. Pots and kettles regularly blacken themselves at national levels. Particularly at national levels. It's us versus them, you know. Our perpetual "War on Something."

We seem to have taken an awkward turn, to be de-volving. Rather than using our intelligence to correct whatever it is we don't like about ourselves, we now mostly use our intelligence to project whatever we don't like about ourselves onto other people.

And we've become so good at it--projecting blame, waging warfare, producing deadly weapons--that when one country points an accusing finger at another country, all countries have to duck. We're reached the point where humanity's destructive capabilities exceed its overall consciousness. NOT GOOD.

Q. WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO ACCOMPLISH WITH THIS BOOK?

A. I hope to slow the de-volution a bit. I HOPE TO PROMOTE A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF THE HUMAN SHADOW IN THE GENERAL PUBLIC.

We all know that something is seriously amiss in our country. In the world. And glossing it over, or calling it the devil, or blaming it on another group of people, or simply ignoring it while we play the latest video game, is not going to fix it.

At this stage, only an increase in awareness and in consciousness, only self-inspection, will help. Only an honest attempt to take responsibility for all of our actions, both positive AND negative, will make a lasting difference. As Jared Diamond (GUNS, GERMS & STEEL)said in COLLAPSE, societies succeed or fail as a direct result of the choices they make. The USA simply cannot afford to make any more crazy choices. To prosper we're going to have to start using our hearts and our heads, not just our bottom lines.

Q. WHAT IN YOUR PERSONAL LIFE LED YOU DOWN THIS PATH?

A. My husband and I each went through rough divorces in our 40s, and our remarriage put six children--three from each family--together under one roof. That took a bit of counseling! And at one of those family counseling sessions a very wise woman, Joanne Helterline, gave us a copy of Robert Bly's classic lecture on "The Human Shadow." So you could say our family found out about the shadow because we were willing to admit we didn't know it all, and to ask for help sorting things out.

You could also say, as someone who's known me since 7th grade does, that uncovering and facing the human shadow has been my life's work, that "Beauty's story" is my story. I was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1951, and grew up in a fundamentalist Christian household. Where things were really black and white. No paradox allowed. But the questions raised by that upbringing, by a world view of "us and them," "saved and lost," haunted me from childhood. I could not accept such rigid divisions between people, and thankfully I was bookish enough to read beyond them. So I ended up making a very painful break--no doubt overly melodramatic, as the young are wont to do--from my family before I was 20--which is now mostly healed, thank goodness--and have been on my own voyage of personal discovery ever since.

Or, you could cut through all that and just say I've used a personal tendency toward scholarship to explore the issues that mean the most to me.

Q. WHAT IS THE HUMAN SHADOW?

A. It's part of the unconscious mind. To quote the book, the shadow holds "the parts of a human being that the person doesn't want to, or can't, think about or acknowledge. It refers to the repressed, unlived side of your normal daytime personality--the stuff you don't like about yourself, the stuff you don't want anyone to know about you. Thus your shadow contains negative qualities, such as envy or prejudice or insecurity. Or it could even contain positive qualities, such as compassion or artistic ability. But the qualities, whatever they are, stay in your shadow because you don't like to--in fact most of the time you simply can't--admit you possess them. Some parts of ourselves we like to show off to others--put out into the light--and some parts of ourselves we like to hide--keep in the shadows."

Q. SO WHAT IF THESE QUALITIES DO STAY IN MY SHADOW?

A. Problem is, they don't. They get projected out onto other people. You can't avoid running into parts of your own psyche. Since the things in your shadow are a part of your own psychological make-up they have to, they will, show up somewhere in your own life. If you just can't stand to face some of your own stuff, you will end up seeing your own stuff on someone else's face.

The word psychologists use for this, "projection," is very apt. We're all familiar with movie projectors. We all know how those work and what those look like. YOU'RE the projector, when it comes to unexamined shadow material. You're that little machine in the back creating the image. The image is coming from you. But the only place where you can see that image is on the screen in front of you. You can only see it in another person, or in another group of people. Causes a lot of heartache in the world.

Q. HOW DID YOU DEVELOP THE IDEA FOR THIS BOOK?

A. It could be that the idea developed me. The zeitgeist we live in simply demands an introduction to the human shadow. Our species is not going to make it unless we smarten up--get more psychological, more self-introspective, a bit more conscious.

But my actual starting point were those audiocassettes of Robert Bly lecturing on the human shadow. Bombshell. The tapes stayed in my car for over 6 months. Started up whenever I turned on the ignition. Played continuously, over and over, because I just couldn't believe what perfect, soul-shattering sense they made. The kind of sense that hits you right in the gut. The kind of information that starts changing your life, whether you like it or not.

And because I just couldn't believe I'd never heard of what Bly was talking about before. Nor had any of my well-read and intelligent friends ever heard of it before... Hhm... Odd... So I started looking around for the shadow. And when you start looking around for the human shadow, you run into quotes like the ones below:

"The task of confronting the brutal, destructive elements of the shadow has become the inescapable destiny of our species: if we fail, we cannot hope to survive." --ANTHONY STEVENS

"Projection of shadow material causes most of the misery, injustice and warfare in the world." -ROBERT BLY

"The only devils in the world are those running around in our own hearts. That is where the battle should be fought." --MAHATMA GANDHI

"Learning to integrate shadow material is the single most important task facing mankind, as failure to do so will lead to the extinction of the human race." -CARL JUNG

"We need an essentially new way of thinking if mankind is to survive." -ALBERT EINSTEIN

"We might just be in time to stop the apocalypse. But it will be touch and go." --KONRAD LORENZ

"We are responsible for the effect of our actions, and we are also responsible for becoming as aware as we can of these effects." --ROLLO MAY

"It is only when we have the courage to face things exactly as they are, without any self-deception or illusion, that a light will develop out of events by which the path to success may be realized."--I CHING

You spend enough time with quotes like that, you start thinking you ought to try to promote a better understanding of the human shadow.

Q. HOW LONG DID THE BOOK TAKE FROM START TO FINISH?

A. On one hand, about 18 years now. You can get the best sense of this by perusing the "Recommmended Books" section at the end of SHADOW IN THE USA. (This book list also appears on the website, www.shadowintheusa.com) It's huge, and it is by no means all the books I've read while trying to get a grasp on this subject. It's just the ones I thought others might particularly enjoy or benefit from reading, too.

On the other hand, I never WILL be finished writing this book. Trying to integrate one's own shadow is a life-long task. You're never done. We can never understand our shadows completely or get rid of them entirely. Every ego casts a shadow. As Ursula K. LeGuin says in THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS: "Light is the left hand of darkness, darkness the right hand of light."

Q. WHAT ASPECT OF WRITING THE BOOK DID YOU FIND PARTICULARLY CHALLENGING?

A. Being human. And admitting it. Learning about the human shadow means learning about your OWN shadow. That you're not just the Goddess of Wisdom, you're also the Village Idiot. That, as Leonard Cohen says in "Bird on the Wire," "I've torn everyone who reached out for me." The form that unrecognized shadow material takes in our psyches--denial, projection, blame--is the fundamental, the single greatest stumbling block, to greater awareness and individuation that each of face in life. We don't WANT to know what is and isn't our fault! We don't WANT to see the darkness in our own hearts. We want to be right! We long for the enemy to be elsewhere...

Problem is, the enemy ain't. "The enemy are us," as Pogo said. Whatever it is, it's in your shadow because you don't want to acknowledge it. Some parts of ourselves we like to advertise, to put out into the light, and some parts of ourselves we try to hide, to keep in the dark. Yours truly is no exception.

Getting to know your own shadow is one of those delightful and inexplicable paradoxes that make life worth living: it's the best--and the worst--thing that could possibly happen to you and your family. As with any other worthwhile endeavor, it can be painful. Plus, our friends and family like us as we are. They may not want us to start seeing ourselves (or themselves) any more clearly. So as Robert Bly says, "Just mention the word 'shadow' in your family. There'll be a fight in 20 minutes."

Q. WHO WAS YOUR PUBLISHER AND HOW DID YOU CHOOSE THEM?

A. This is quite a story, and I'll tell it like a story because that way I cry less. Let's call this story THE PERILS OF SELF-PUBLISHING...

I first started trying to interest publishers (and agents) in publishing a version of this book at least a decade ago. Right...

Pretend, for a moment, that you're a woman without a PhD. That you've been studying in obscurity all by yourself for years now while your friends have begun to wonder what in hell is wrong with you. Pretend you're someone no one's ever heard of, and that you're writing on a subject no one wants to hear about...

You can see how I managed to collect a stack of rejections. Several years passed at this stage. People were unfailingly polite: "Unique and original idea! Charming writing voice!" But they also unfailingly declined: "Unfortunately, I do not feel that I would be exactly the right person to represent this title..." Even when they loved it--one man sent my book proposal back years later, saying it was so beautiful he'd kept it on his desk all that time--no one would take a chance on me, or on a topic as scary as the human shadow.

Then my mother died--who knew she was worth anything?--and I received a small inheritance. That whole inheritance, due to my inexperience and naivete and whatever else you want to call making a ton of mistakes while putting all your money on the wrong horse, went to a "self-publisher" that we will simply refer to from here on out as He Who Must Not Be Named.

The man was as unscrupulous as he was unskilled. In the worst kind of way, the most dangerous kind of way, because he could not admit to either aspect of his being. Speaking of human shadow... as a Jungian psychologist said to me during this stage, "Well, what did you expect? Whatever you write about will constellate in your life! Why do you think there aren't more books written on the human shadow? Because most Jungians are afraid to take it on!" GREAT.

When things started feeling really wacky I made a surprise visit to his place of business in Texas and discovered that HWMNBN's "office suite" was a corrugated building on a gravel road 20 miles outside of Austin. His "design team" turned out to be an 18 year old daughter with a laptop. It was a nightmare. A living, breathing NIGHTMARE, for months. We're talking my life's work, my soul's mission, and $5,000 of artwork by a fantasy master, being screwed up daily by someone who had taken every last bit of my money and had no more idea what to do with it than I did.

Really!! Could I have been any dumber? Was I walking around with a "Fleece Me" sign on my back in those days?

I found myself with no editor, no designer, and 20 or 30 new mistakes every time he sent me a proof. Terrifying. And I ended up with a work of graphic non-fiction on a serious psychological subject that looked like a children's book, with no more money left to fix it. I only managed to get away from HWMNBN with my own copyright and ISBN# by having a friend of mine who's a patent attorney write him threatening letters. Otherwise, he would have ended up owning MY book. (The one I had just paid him twice what I should have to produce and print.) Otherwise, I would never have been able to produce a second, far better version, SHADOW IN THE USA. (Moral: we should all have at least one friend who will write nice threatening letters for us on legal letterhead whenever we really need it, for free.)

But then I had to form WorldView Press. Overnight. ISBN#, LCCN#, all the other business--overnight. The book was actually lying on the press at the printer's, waiting for my new copyright information, before it could be bound. You see why my hair is so gray. And then I had to start trying to sell that poorly produced little book, called USING BEAUTY AND HER BEAST TO INTRODUCE THE HUMAN SHADOW, all by myself and without any more money.

Thank god for Peter Bowerman (self-publishing guru). I made every mistake "in the book" at least once, even following Bowerman's directives. Yet somehow or other, despite the book's flaws and my inexperience, people liked it. It won a BRONZE MEDAL in 2008 in the Independent Publisher Book Awards, in the Self-Help category. It won a SILVER MEDAL in 2009 from The Young Voices Foundation, in the Inspiritational/Spiritual category. Psychologists liked it. Social workers liked it. The dern experts even liked it, and began to give me blurbs and good advice.

But I still wasn't proud of it. Winced over the ridiculously long title and the children's book, fairy tale feel. Winced over some of the text. Knew it could be better. And I knew it would HAVE to be better if I were actually going to reach the general public, if I were actually going to promote a better understanding of the human shadow, which was the whole point of this exercise.

So when the POD and ePub craze started, I called Bob Hobbs, the artist, who was not any more thrilled with what HWMNBN had done to our work than I was, and said... "Ah... Bob... what if we did it over, ourselves? With a real book designer, and in full color? With a revised and updated text that won't go stale?" Because POD means Print On Demand. It means you no longer have to print up a bunch of books at one time and then store them in a warehouse somewhere until they sell. You only print them up as you need them: print on demand. And an ePub is instant. Once the original InDesign file is converted properly, an ePub is just a download.

And bless his dear, hard-working, faithful heart, Bob said "Yes." Which is no small thing, since every one of those full page illustrations took him over 20 hours to digitally colorize, and since he also went back over every piece of line art, too, cleaning up and re-defining them for the new book. In fact, there's absolutely no way I could afford to pay him up front for doing that much artwork, so Bob will be getting a 30% share of the net profits of SHADOW IN THE USA.

So here we are. Poorer, wiser, a bit battered but far more experienced, publishing SHADOW IN THE USA.

Q. WHAT CAN WE LOOK FORWARD TO IN YOUR NEXT BOOK?

A. Probably more of the same. The human shadow is a bottomless subject.

Q. IS THERE ANYTHING WE HAVEN'T COVERED YOU WOULD LIKE TO INCLUDE?

A. Yes. Modern life requires entirely too much sitting down. We should all get up now and go play outside for a while.