Exploring Our Shadow by Watching ‘Succession’

What does your “favorite” character in the show say about you?

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” — Carl G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1962Could we learn something about ourselves from watching Succession, the Emmy-nominated HBO “satirical black comedy-drama” (Wikipedia) about the fictional Roy family, owners of Waystar RoyCo, a global media and entertainment conglomerate?

The first of four seasons of the series (2018) begins with the family patriarch, Logan Roy, triggering a struggle between his children for future control of the company. As the show unfolds, we witness the dynamics of the Roy family entangled in business concerns, as Logan’s children Kendall, Shiv, Roman, and Connor, along with Shiv’s husband Tom, Logan’s grandnephew Greg, and Logan’s wife Marcy, compete for power and do anything to prove themselves worthy of the top job and the company that has defined their lives.

Each character has the potential to reveal an aspect of our presence in the world that we would rather not to be true, dislike, struggle with, or simply would choose to ignore about ourselves, such as the difficulty in perceiving reality as it is, in…