Jungian psychology is having a moment, owing to the self-published The Shadow Work Journal that rode a TikTok-powered wave to become a surprise publishing behemoth.
The slim workbook, authored by a 24-year-old, outsold every other book on Amazon a few weeks ago and sent Google searches of "shadow work" soaring. Both the book and the notion of the shadow are inspired by Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung, whose view of the mind was that our conscious selves —our egos — are but a sliver of who we are, and that the vast forces of the unconscious are where to find our souls — our truest, most potent selves. Problem is, the unconscious is by its very nature not conscious, which means understanding ourselves requires interrogating the seemingly insignificant detritus of our minds. Hundreds of thousands of young readers have bought into Jungian shadow work because of the journal, but the notion of such work is a hundred years old.
