I doubt the psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), in all his prescience, would have predicted that his work would one day fuel a TikTok trend called “shadow work”.
Life coaches and self-help gurus on the platform promote the exploration of shadow as a path to self-development. The exercises they recommend include thought experiments imagining parental rejection, journal exercises recalling a misunderstood talent that was neglected, and the accomplishment of perfect peace through radical self-acceptance.
All of this is apparently based on a premise of Jungian psychology: if we accept the parts of ourselves we despise or disown, they can become assets to us. Our uncontrollable rage, when welcomed, can become powerful positive self-assertion. Our habitual lying, put to good use, may be the ability to write an engaging novel. The monster that chases us in a recurrent dream may have wisdom for us if we stop and turn to consult it.
Jung apparently said that 90% of the shadow is pure gold. There are riches to be found in the darkest corners of human consciousness. The kinds of exercises touted on TikTok as shadow work, though, can be found in many therapeutic approaches. It is not unusual, for example, in cognitive behavioural therapy (a type of talk therapy) to ask anxious clients to imagine the worst that could happen to explore the resourcefulness they possess to cope with it.
Existential psychotherapy finds that while anxiety about dying can make people more defensive and prejudiced, deeper reflection on mortality brings people to a more accepting stance as they consider how they would like to be remembered.
