Depth Profile · 27 Questions · 5 Minutes · Free
A 6-axis Jungian assessment of the shadows you cast — and rarely admit to.
Carl Jung called it the part of yourself you’d rather not look at — the impulses, motives, and compensations you’d never claim out loud, but that drive a quiet share of every relationship and decision. Whatever you do not own, owns you.
Click Begin the Test below. Answer with the version of yourself you don’t usually advertise — the test is only useful if you do.
A Jungian depth profile
The Shadow Self Test
Carl Jung called it the part of yourself you'd rather not look at. This test scores six classical shadow patterns — and reveals which of them is loudest in your psyche right now.
Educational tool grounded in Jungian psychology. Not a clinical diagnosis. Scoring runs in your browser; nothing is sent to a server.
Q1
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Your Shadow Profile
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Total Shadow Pressure · 0%
Your Shadow Map
Each axis is one of the six classical shadow types. The further from center, the louder that shadow speaks in you right now.
Your Two Loudest Shadows
Personalized integration practices for the two shadows scoring highest in your profile.
Want to know what each shadow actually does to you? Read the six patterns · See the eight faces
The Six Shadows, Briefly
Each axis on your map is a shadow pattern documented across Jungian and depth-psychology literature. They are not character flaws — they’re compensations. Each shadow exists because something honest about you couldn’t be lived openly, and so it learned to live underground. The point of seeing it is not to delete it; it is to know its weight.
The Sage Shadow
Knowing better as a wall
The Sage Shadow turns understanding into distance. Knowledge becomes a place to hide rather than a place to meet. You see clearly — and the seeing makes you, at times, harder to know.
In the wildQuietly losing interest in conversations the moment you realize the other person can’t follow your reasoning.
The Warrior Shadow
Controlled force, righteous edge
The Warrior Shadow is force kept on a leash. You can absorb a lot before you respond — and when you respond, it lands precisely. Civility coexists with readiness; people feel both.
In the wildHolding back for ten minutes during a tense meeting, then ending the disagreement with one surgical sentence.
The Lover Shadow
Love as territory
The Lover Shadow turns connection into territory. Love is real; so is the watching, the testing, the silent accounting of attention given and withheld.
In the wildFeeling, when a partner is distracted, that you’re being chosen against — even when nothing has happened.
The Rebel Shadow
Defiance as identity
The Rebel Shadow refuses to be claimed. Authority you didn’t choose registers as insult before merit. ‘No’ is the safe answer; ‘yes’ is the suspicious one — even when ‘yes’ is what you’d actually want.
In the wildTalking yourself out of joining something good because the people inviting you are too eager.
The Caregiver Shadow
Help as quiet ledger
The Caregiver Shadow gives, then watches. The help is real, and so is the ledger you don’t admit you keep. Reciprocity that falls short doesn’t read as ordinary; it reads as betrayal.
In the wildHelping someone for months, then quietly cutting them off when one favor goes unreturned.
The Sovereign Shadow
Private rank of everyone
The Sovereign Shadow keeps a private ranking of everyone in the room. You can lead well — better than most you defer to — and the gap between your skill and your role grates when no one names it.
In the wildSitting in a meeting and silently grading every speaker’s competence against how you’d have run things.
The Eight Faces
Most profiles resolve to one of six dominant-shadow faces. Two further results — The Integrated Self and The Many-Faced — are reserved for unusually balanced or unusually reactive scoring patterns.
The Concealed Sage
Wisdom as a wall.
Sage Shadow dominant. Knowledge becomes the wall behind which you keep distance. You’d rather be confidently wrong than openly uncertain. The fix is rarely more knowledge; it’s tolerating the texture of not-knowing without rushing to fill it.
The Banked Warrior
Force always at the ready.
Warrior Shadow dominant. Civility coexists with readiness. People feel the leash before they meet it. The fix is rarely less control; it’s surrendering deliberately, in low-stakes places, until losing stops feeling like erasure.
The Possessive Lover
Love as territory.
Lover Shadow dominant. Love is real, and so is the territory. Possessiveness reads to you as devotion; jealousy reads as clarity. The fix is rarely less feeling; it’s distinguishing what’s love from what’s fear.
The Inner Rebel
Defiance as identity.
Rebel Shadow dominant. Defiance is your default and being claimed feels like erasure. The fix is rarely more freedom; it’s choosing — once — to be shaped by something you didn’t pick first.
The Burdened Caregiver
Help as ledger.
Caregiver Shadow dominant. Care comes attached to a ledger you don’t admit to. Reciprocity gaps register as betrayal. The fix is rarely more giving; it’s saying no, and watching what survives.
The Quiet Sovereign
A hierarchy no one asked for.
Sovereign Shadow dominant. A private hierarchy organizes every room you enter. The fix is rarely better leadership; it’s deference offered to someone you privately rank below you, until the ranking starts to lose its grip.
The Integrated Self
Your shadows are seen.
Rare result. No single shadow dominates and none enters the danger zone. The shadows are still there — but you’ve watched them long enough to know them. The work is to keep watching.
The Many-Faced
All shadows pull at once.
Five or more shadows scored high. This usually reflects a season of stress, transition, or unresolved hurt — exactly when shadows surface most strongly. The work is rarely about picking the loudest one; it’s about giving yourself rest enough to hear them as messengers, not enemies.
Why a Shadow Test Exists
Jung’s central observation was simple: whatever you do not own, owns you. The parts of yourself you can’t acknowledge — the controlling lover, the contemptuous sovereign, the resentful caregiver — don’t disappear when you refuse them. They run anyway, just below the line of consciousness, shaping decisions you’ll later struggle to explain.
Shadow work is not about destroying these patterns. They exist for reasons. The Warrior Shadow protected something in you that was once unsafe. The Caregiver Shadow earned love when love was conditional. The Rebel Shadow kept your selfhood when something larger tried to take it. They are old strategies, kept for old reasons.
What changes when you see them is small but decisive: they stop running you blindly. You can still choose them — but now the choice is conscious, the timing is yours, and the cost is one you’ve actually agreed to pay.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this a clinical or scientific assessment?
No. It’s an educational tool grounded in Jungian and depth-psychology frameworks. The patterns it measures are well-documented in that literature, but the test is not a diagnostic instrument and is not intended to replace one.
How long does the test take?
About five minutes. There are 27 short statements scored on a five-point Disagree-to-Agree scale. You can go back and change any answer until you reach the result.
What does "shadow" actually mean here?
In Jungian terms, the shadow is the part of yourself that doesn’t fit your conscious self-image — impulses, motives, and compensations you’d never claim openly, but that show up anyway in how you relate, decide, and react under pressure.
Why these six shadows specifically?
They are drawn from classical archetypes that recur across Jungian, post-Jungian, and contemporary depth-psychology work. Six is the smallest set that meaningfully differentiates the major shadow patterns without diluting any of them.
How is the score calculated?
Each question maps to one shadow. Raw answers (1–5) are normalized into a 0–100 score per shadow, with reverse-coded items inverted. The face is selected by the loudest shadow, with two special results for unusually balanced or unusually reactive profiles.
Are my answers stored anywhere?
No. The entire test runs in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server, and reloading the page wipes your answers.
What if my top score is tied between two shadows?
The face defaults to the shadow listed first. The ‘Two Loudest Shadows’ section will show both regardless of the tie.
Where can I learn more about shadow work?
Carl Jung’s Aion and The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Robert A. Johnson’s Owning Your Own Shadow, and James Hollis’s Why Good People Do Bad Things are the standard starting points.