Reading Lists for Emotional Wellness: Essential Books About Shadow Work
Explore these powerful books about shadow work to help you uncover the whole, authentic you.
A reading list of books for shadow work
Learning more about the human shadow and how to do shadow work can be a game-changer for personal growth and development, I know it was for me, so I’ve put together this list of books about shadow work to help you learn more. You can also check out my article, What Is Shadow Work?: How Your Shadow Self Can Free You To Live Authentically and the other shadow work resources on this site.
If the concept of shadow work is completely new to you, here’s a quick introduction. Psychologist Carl Jung described the shadow as unconscious aspects of personality. These shadow parts of our personalities are not necessarily good or bad, they are simply parts of who we are that we aren’t aware of. The shadow self is composed of aspects of our personalities that it feels too scary to see. Our shadows are made up of parts of ourselves that we don’t think should be there. Our shadow self could contain desires we don’t think we should have, emotions we don’t think we should have, and needs we don’t think we should have. The idea that these aspects of our personalities are undesirable might come from childhood, our culture, or significant experiences or relationships. Shadow work is the process of learning about what your shadow contains and accepting these aspects of yourself as part of the whole that is you. In other words, shadow work is the process of bringing personality traits, desires, needs, thoughts, and emotions that were once hidden in the dark into the light.
Alright, now that you know a little bit about shadow work, let’s talk about a few books about shadow work that can help you learn more.
#1 Book About Shadow Work - The Dark Side of the Light Chasers by Debbie Ford
This book about shadow work encourages readers to stop pretending to “be good” and recognize the gifts that come with accepting that “bad” qualities are part of who you are, too. The Dark Side of the Light Chasers will teach you how to recognize your shadow by identifying your emotional triggers and recognizing how your shadow projects onto others. This book about shadow work also provides practical tools and exercises for doing your own shadow work. If you’re looking for a more traditional “self-help” book about shadow work this is the book I recommend.
“All of your so-called faults, all the things which you don’t like about yourself are your greatest assets,” she said. “They are simply overamplified. The volume has been turned up a bit too much, that’s all. Just turn down the volume a little. Soon, you—and everyone else—will see your weaknesses as your strengths, your ‘negatives’ as your ‘positives.’ They will become wonderful tools, ready to work for you rather than against you. All you have to do is learn to call on these personality traits in amounts that are appropriate to the moment.”
– Debbie Ford, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers
#2 Book About Shadow Work - Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche by Robert A. Johnson
Owning Your Own Shadow is a quick introduction to shadow work from Jungian analyst Robert A. Johnson. This is a great introductory book about shadow work that provides an easy-to-understand explanation of what the human shadow is, how our shadows develop, and what shadow work is. This is more of an introduction to the psychological theory of shadow work than it is an introduction to the nitty gritty of doing shadow work, so keep that in mind, but this book about shadow work is still a very valuable introduction to the topic.
“To honor and accept one’s own shadow is a profound spiritual discipline. It is whole-making and thus holy and the most important experience of a lifetime.”
– Robert A. Johnson, Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche
#3 Book About Shadow Work - Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature edited by Connie Zweig & Jeremiah Abrams
Meeting the Shadow is a collection of essays on the human shadow written by a wide variety of writers. This book about shadow work explains what the shadow is, how it develops, and how the shadow shows up in individuals, relationships, and society. It also includes information about how to recognize your own shadow and how to do shadow work. The nice thing about Meeting the Shadow is that it’s a good way to get an introduction to shadow work while being exposed to the viewpoints of many different writers. A lot of the essays that appear in this book about shadow work are excerpted from larger works, so if you find a writer or two who really speak to you, you’ll have some great ideas about what to read next.
“In so far as the shadow renders us our first view of the unconscious part of our personality, it represents the first stage toward meeting the Self. There is, in fact, no access to the unconscious and to our own reality but through the shadow. Only when we realize that part of ourselves which we have not hitherto seen or preferred not to see can we proceed to question and find the sources from which it feeds and the basis on which it rests. Hence no progress or growth is possible until the shadow is adequately confronted and confronting means more than merely knowing about it. It is not until we have truly been shocked into seeing ourselves as we really are, instead of as we wish or hopefully assume we are, that we can take the first step toward individual reality.”
- Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature
#4 Book About Shadow Work - Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales by Marie-Louise von Franz
This book about shadow work by Marie-Louise von Franz, who worked closely with Jung, is one of my personal favorites. In Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales, von Franz explains how fairy tales are symbolic maps for our inner psychological processes; in essence von Franz explains how fairy tales can show us how the human shadow shows up, and how it can be acknowledged, integrated, and transformed. In this book about shadow work, a variety of fairy tales are symbolically analyzed from a Jungian lens to explain what the fairy tale tells us about the human shadow. Reading about how the shadow shows up in fairy tales is a really fun, low-pressure way to learn about shadow work. One of my favorite things about this book about shadow work is that once you see how von Franz analyzes the shadow in fairy tales, you can apply these same principles to your dreams and use that information to learn about your own shadow.
“With a certain amount of insight, and with the help of dreams, it is relatively easy for people to recognize these elements, and that is what we call making the shadow conscious–and with that analysis usually comes to a stop. But this is no achievement, for then comes the much more difficult problem where most people have great trouble: they know what their shadow is, but they cannot express it much or integrate it into their lives.”
– Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales, Marie-Louise von Franz
#5 Book About Shadow Work - Pathways to Bliss by Joseph Campbell
Pathways to Bliss isn’t just about shadow work, but it does contain some really great insights about the shadow. It also situates shadow work within a powerful story about how myths and psychology can empower our personal development. Joseph Campbell was a mythologist and professor and this book about shadow work reads like you’re a student in one of his classes; the book has a bit of an informal air that I like. It’s so dense with insight and material, that I’ll probably re-read this again at some point. Pathways to Bliss is a good choice if you’re looking for a book about shadow work that combines philosophy, mythology, psychology, and self-help.
“The shadow is that which you might have been had you been born on the other side of the tracks: the other person, the other you. It is made up of the desires and ideas within you that you are repressing – all of the introjected id. The shadow is the landfill of the self. Yet it is also a sort of vault: it holds great, unrealized potentialities within you.”
– Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss
#6 Book About Shadow Work - Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams by Lisa Marchiano LCSW, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee
I absolutely loved Dream Wise. I loved it so much that it’s my new favorite book to gift! Dream Wise is an introduction to Jungian dream interpretation written by three Jungian analysts. You might ask, is this really a book about shadow work? Yes, the book is primarily about dream interpretation, but it does explicitly discuss the shadow and how it shows up in dreams. It’s also worth noting that Jungian thought also recognizes that dreams are an incredible way to learn about your own shadow. From personal experience, I know that once I started to pay attention to my dreams and better understand them, my own shadow work really took off.
This is a dense, meaty book without a lot of pointless fluff and it’s really practical and easy to understand. Dream Wise is straightforward enough that it’s a great introduction to dream interpretation if you’re brand new to learning how to interpret your dreams, but it also has enough depth to be helpful if you’ve been interpreting dreams for a while, even if you’re already familiar with Jungian ideas about dream interpretation. This book also contains a summary list of practical “keys” to help you learn how to interpret dreams which I found really helpful.
“At night, the dream maker shows us a shadowy truth we would rather avoid. Shadow is often a shame- and fear-ridden aspect of ourselves that, during waking hours, we can minimize, intellectualize, or attribute to that annoying neighbor, colleague, or in-law. But at night, the dream maker brings us images of what has been cut off from consciousness. Working with shadow images in dreams allows us to harness parts of ourselves that appear undesirable but contain valuable energy for life.”
#7 Book About Shadow Work - Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung
A lot of Jung’s writing can be difficult to understand if you’re just getting in to Jungian ideas like shadow work, but Man and His Symbols was intentionally written to be an introduction to Jungian ideas for everyday people. I’ve heard people recommend reading Jung’s biography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections for an introduction to Jung, but having read both the biography and Man and His Symbols, I heavily lean towards recommending Man and His Symbols as your first Jung read. Jung collaborated on this work with others including Marie-Louise von Franz and Aniela Jaffé, and it’s divided into five parts written by Jung or one of his collaborators. References to shadow work and the human shadow are scattered throughout and situated within the larger context of the Jungian understanding of human psychology, the unconscious, and the individuation process. If you want to read a book about shadow work straight from Jung, this is my pick.
“The shadow is not the whole of the unconscious personality. It represents unknown or little known attributes and qualities of the ego—aspects that mostly belong to the personal sphere and that could just as well be conscious. […] When an individual attempts to see his shadow, he becomes aware of (and often ashamed of) those qualities and impulses he denies in himself but can plainly see in other people—such things as egotism, mental laziness, and sloppiness; unreal fantasies, schemes and plots; carelessness and cowardice; inordinate love of money and possessions—in short, all the little sins about which he might previously have told himself: ‘That doesn’t matter; nobody will notice it, and in any case other people do it too.’”
– Marie-Louise von Franz in Man and His Symbols
#8 Book About Shadow Work - King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine by Robert Moore & Douglas Gillette
This is a really incredible and enlightening read for both men and women. In this book about shadow work, Jungian analysts take a look at four archetypes associated with positive and mature masculinity. They then discuss the shadow sides of each of these archetypes and how integrating these shadows actually helps to create the fullness of the positive desirable archetype. Not only does this result in some amazing insights, but it provides great examples that really help you understand how the shadow works and how it’s connected to positive qualities. This is a great read for men doing shadow work, and for women further along in their shadow work who have begun working on integrating their animus (qualities in a woman that the woman would generally associate with masculinity rather than femininity).
"In our view, patriarchy is not the expression of deep and rooted masculinity, for truly deep and rooted masculinity is not abusive. Patriarchy is the expression of the immature masculine. It is the expression of Boy psychology, and, in part, the shadow—or crazy—side of masculinity. It expresses the stunted masculine, fixated at immature levels.”
- Robert Moore & Douglas Gillette, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine
#9 Book About Shadow Work - Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estés
This book about shadow work deals with a particular set of ways of being/traits that many modern women have repressed into their shadow; this set of traits is represented by the “wild woman” archetype. The wild woman archetype encompasses things like intuition, creativity, sexuality, wisdom, and instinctual femininity. In my own personal experience and my conversations with other women, this is a set of traits that seems to come screaming out of the shadows when you begin to seriously get into shadow work. This book about shadow work is poetic; it uses fairy tales, myths, and folklore to help modern women bring the “wild woman” out of the shadow and into an integrated psyche. This book about shadow work is also a recommended read for men who are working with their anima (qualities in a man that the man would generally associate with femininity rather than masculinity).
“Fortunately, no matter how many times she is pushed down, she bounds up again. No matter how many times she is forbidden, quelled, cut back, diluted, tortured, touted as unsafe, dangerous, mad, and other derogations, she emanates upward in women, so that even the most quiet, even the most restrained woman keeps a secret place for Wild Woman, even the more repressed woman has a secret life, with secret thoughts and secret feelings which are lush and wild, that is, natural. Even the most captured woman guards the place of the wildish self, for she knows intuitively that someday there will be a loophole, an aperture, a chance, and she will hightail it to escape.”
- Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
#10 Book About Shadow Work - A Little Book on the Human Shadow by Robert Bly
This book about shadow work adopts a poetic approach to introducing the human shadow and an explanation of how and why to do shadow work. This short book (less than 100 pages) by poet and author Robert Bly offers an insightful introduction to the shadow in Jungian psychology.
“We notice that when sunlight hits the body, the body turns bright, but it throws a shadow, which is dark. The brighter the light, the darker the shadow. Each of us has some part of our personality that is hidden from us. Parents, and teachers in general, urge us to develop the light side of the personality – move into well-lit subjects such as mathematics and geometry – and to become successful. The dark part then becomes starved. What do we do then?”
– Robert Bly, A Little Book on the Human Shadow
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