The Shadow Knows: 8 Books About Shadow Work

As Julie Andrews sings, “let’s start at the very beginning/a very good place to start.” Jung’s seminal work was published in 1912 and was followed up by several other works until his death in1961. It lays out the foundation of analytical psychiatry, upon which most of today’s psychiatric practices are based.

Johnson is widely considered to be the link between Jung’s work and today. He studied under Jung in the early 1950s, worked with Künkel — another heavy hitter in analytical psychiatry — and worked with both Western and Eastern methods. This is his seminal work on the subject of shadow work.

Hadley Walker holds a Master’s degree in Counseling/Psychology and works primarily with Black women. This journal is designed to be used in tandem with a therapist to address the specific experiences of Black women.

Massi wrote this book to help people understand shadow work and to move through the process of integrating the shadow self with the persona.

Cross is a licensed social worker and clinical massage therapist who designed this journal for herself and now shares it. Meant to be revisited, this could be a good option for those who like to track progress over the years.

Caraballo guides the reader (journaler?) through the process of meeting the shadow self and integrating it into general life in order to be more fulfilled.

While not explicitly a book on shadow work, Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation examines the Asian American experience through the lens of the “model minority” myth, among other things, and discusses why therapy is so difficult for Asian Americans to both access and to apply to their lives. For an in-depth review, I recommend “Making Therapy Work for Asian Americans,” by Amy R. Wong.

Wang weaves her own experiences as a Taiwanese American into this work, which addresses the reckoning that Asian Americans are experiencing around racial and cultural identity. Again, this is not explicitly about shadow work; however, one can see how it applies, considering that the range of emotions the Asian American persona is allowed to portray is narrower than other cultures, and that can lead to a more difficult relationship with the shadow self.