Shadow work

In 1913, the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung broke with Sigmund Freud, his mentor and friend. In the difficult years that followed, he turned inward, recording his dreams and fantasies in what became known as the Red Book.

Out of that work came one of his best-known ideas: the shadow. It's the part of ourselves we don't want to see, the traits we were taught were unacceptable and pushed out of sight. Jung noticed that the shadow rarely disappears. Instead, we tend to spot it in other people.

Some reactions are bigger than the situation deserves. A colleague who talks about their achievements, a friend who always says no: if it gets under your skin more than it should, that charge can be a clue.

Sometimes the trait that bothers us is one we've forbidden ourselves. The person who can't stand "show-offs" may never let themselves be proud. The one who resents people saying no may never say it themselves. Jung called this projection.

The point isn't to blame yourself, or to excuse the other person. It's to ask, with curiosity, whether there's something here you've disowned, and whether a little of it, in a healthy form, might be worth reclaiming.

• Christianity

  "Why do you see the speck in your neighbour's eye, but do not notice the log in your own?" (Matthew 7:3)

• Literature

  Hermann Hesse, who had Jungian analysis, wrote in Demian (1919): "If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself."

Think of someone whose behaviour irritates you more than it probably should (someone annoying, not someone who has harmed you).

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You find a confident coworker unbearably arrogant. What would shadow work ask?