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Popular Culture Review
obsessively make lists, step over cracks in the sidewalk, and mow the lawn in
recurring patterns (197-198). When she confronted her father with the
likelihood that he too suffered from OCD, he at first was in denial, but later
consulted a psychiatrist who prescribed medication and provided therapy (200201).
For Wilensky, self-awareness proved to be the most important
treatment of all, enabling her to confront the inferiorities at the core of her
shadow, as well as draw out into the light of scrutiny the endless litany of
denials that prevented her from seeking treatment for her disorders for so many
years. This reflects Carl Jung’s (1971) shadow concept, in which the shadow
represents one of three archetypes of the collective unconscious. Jung views the
shadow as a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, and he
stresses that no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable
moral effort. Jung observes:
To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark
aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the
essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge, and it
therefore, as a rule, meets with considerable resistance.
Indeed, self-knowledge as a psychotherapeutic measure
frequently requires much painstaking work extending over a
long period (145).
Jung refers to it as “tragic” how blatantly human beings bungle their lives, all
the while remaining incapable of realizing how much of the tragedy originates in
themselves. Consciously, Jung declares, humans bewail and curse a “faithless
world” that would let such tragedy befall them; subconsciously, though, the
mind spins the illusions that veil the world. “And what is being spun is a
cocoon,” Jung writes, “which in the end will completely envelop him” unless
insight and self-knowledge are attained (147). With her denials exposed through
therapy and a level of self-awareness achieved through the recognition of her
inner demons, Wilensky concludes her memoir feeling liberated from the
enveloping cocoon that had darkened her world since childhood.
In a similar vein, Marya Hornbacher’s (1998) Wasted: A Memoir of
Anorexia and Bulimia, describes, often in blunt detail, her 14-year battle with
anorexia and bulimia. She became bulimic at age nine, anorexic at age 15, and it
wasn’t until age 23 that she was able to control the disorder and escape from
what she termed “the darker side of reality” (1-5). Anorexia is defined as
voluntary self-starvation, while bulimia describes a pattern of binging and
purging through self-induced vomiting, compulsive exercise, and laxative and/or
diuretic abuse. During those 14 years, Hornbacher’s weight fluctuated from 135
pounds to 52 pounds, inching up and then plummeting back down. She says an
eating disorder is not a phase and not indicative of madness, but is something
that will haunt one forever. “1 would do anything to keep people from going