Why Good People Do Bad Things

Understanding Our Darker Selves

Author  James Hollis
Why Good People Do Bad Things

Working with the Shadow is not working with evil, per se. It is working toward the possibility of greater wholeness. We will never experience healing until we can come to love our unlovable places, for they, too, ask love of us. 

How is it that good people do bad things? Why is our personal story and our societal history so bloody, so repetitive, so injurious to self and others? 

How do we make sense of the discrepancies between who we think we are—or who we show to the outside world—versus our everyday behaviors? Why are otherwise ordinary people driven to addictions and compulsions, whether alcohol, drugs, food, shopping, infidelity, or the Internet? Why are interpersonal relationships so often filled with strife?

Exploring Jung’s…