#SHADOW WORK JOURNAL JESSICA CROSS PDF FREE#

This paper offers an introduction to larp, its transcultural history, and its disruptive and creative possibilities, as well as key aspects, such as immersion. Live-action role-play (larp) has been named a “new performative art,” an immersive experience, and an educational tool, but it is much more: A playground of intermingling social and cultural realities, a door to new worlds. This awareness can help players, larpwrights, and organizers to make informed decisions as to how they write, run, and play larps. Providing a structure with which to identify, categorize, and understand shadow can contribute to the overall awareness of the psychological processes that occur within and because of larp. Shadow enactment has the potential for both positive and negative effects on players and the community as a whole. I will investigate the possible consequences of group shadow enactment, as the individuation process is not possible for group consciousnesses. From there, I will move on to a wider perspective of the group shadow and its engagement. In the case of the individual, I will explore the relationship between shadow work in larp and individuation. However, because of how relevant and heavily related Jungian concepts of archetype and other depth psychological perspectives are to the issue at hand, and because of the sheer lack of previous academic exploration of this topic through this lens, they will be the primary models through which the issue is viewed. There are many models and methods through which to interpret this concept.

This paper is an examination of shadow within larp.

In a manner that is somewhat unique to this subculture, group shadow is engaged directly when groups of players play games that evoke shadow issues through their structure. Just as players may delve into their individual shadows within the frame that archetypal enactment provides them, so too does the subculture as a whole have its own group shadow that can be enacted. Shadow is a Jungian concept of the repressed, the unknown, or unrecognizable within a consciousness.

#SHADOW WORK JOURNAL JESSICA CROSS PDF FREE#

Because of the “safe space” that is often created during these forms of play-sometimes referred to as the “magic circle”-participants often find themselves free to explore psychic materials that would be considered part of the shadow. Within live action role-playing, players both consciously and unconsciously engage in and enact archetypal roles in a liminal and communal setting. Due to the unique qualities of the activities in which participants within this subculture engage, indeed because of the very fabric of the subculture itself, it becomes imperative to examine issues of psychological repression and engagement of repressed materials. The live action role-playing community as a subculture within the United States represents an aspect of repression within the greater society, just as most subcultures in some way do.

Shadow work journal jessica cross pdf