Authenticity and shadow

'The only person who gets to torture my brother is me', Wednesday informs Pugsley's bullies from the side of the pool, while coolly dropping piranhas into the water. Subsequent expulsion, and the need to avoid charges, sees Wednesday reluctantly join a new school, Nevermore Academy, a kind of Hogwarts for 'outcasts'… gothic-tinged, elegantly creepy, housing an array of teen creatures from vampires and werewolves to sirens, mermen and gorgons. The show's take on the Addams Family character weaves together tropes from fairy tales, murder mystery, the YA genre and high school coming of age movies. 

In a twist on Red Riding Hood, Wednesday sets about solving a string of murders to catch a supernatural serial-killing beast lurking in the woods. Wednesday exemplifies Rogerian and Jungian themes of living as your authentic self and integrating shadow elements of the psyche. We are unsure who is secretly the murderous monster, but we have a sense many of the characters have secrets or a shadow side. Everyone is hiding something. The students have secret societies, while the headmistress exudes a chillingly incongruent charm. Wednesday's (court-mandated) therapist is impossibly nice, the nearby 'normie' town's mayor and sheriff hide information about the killings and Wednesday's parents have a secret. Even the local town shrouds its colonialist, witch-hunting past in a saccharine persona for tourists. 

Wednesday stands out as a staunchly authentic, truth-seeking detective figure, guided by powerful visions that reveal past events. She appears to be always herself, needing no one, nor caring what anyone thinks ('Honestly I wish I cared a little more'). As the show progresses Wednesday reluctantly gains friends and allies, much to her bemusement. Her unwavering indifference to werewolf roomie Enid, who has a date, begins to falter, with a promise, 'if he breaks your heart, I'll nail gun his'. 

Wednesday's coming of age struggle explores tensions between individual authenticity and relationships, a dynamic central to Carl Rogers seminal body of work in humanistic psychology. For Rogers, acknowledging, feeling and authentically expressing our real experience of the world enables us to be psychologically healthy and self-actualise, or fully develop our potential. Paradoxically, our own potential unfolds best when we have accepting and caring relationships with others. Wednesday's struggle exemplifies this ongoing challenge, to fulfil one's potential through integrating individual and relational growth. 

For psychologist Carl Jung, monsters present archetypal representations of our shadow side, symbolising unwanted feelings and desires that we disown as socially unacceptable. At first glance, this does not appear to be a problem for Wednesday, as she seems to fully embrace her own darkness. Yet her archetypal hero's journey to face the shadow by slaying the monster – for Jung, a rite of passage into psychological maturity – plays out in her hunt for the murderous creature in the woods. In conversation with Thing, Wednesday reflects that her single-minded obsessiveness is typical of great writers, 'yes, and serial killers, what's your point?' Perhaps the serial-killing creature symbolically embodies the darker potential of her nature. 

For Jung, the shadow also holds disowned lighter elements of our personality. Wednesday's journey uncovers her potential for friendship. Psychologists may consider the appeal of the show to a generation journeying into adulthood during an age of social media, pandemic, war and fake news, where determining what is true and who can be trusted seems increasingly difficult. Themes of authenticity and relationship, truth, persona and shadow, all feel increasingly pertinent in the modern social and psychological landscape. 

About the author

Jenny Hamilton, a Senior Lecturer in Counselling/ Psychological Therapies at the University of Lincoln and a counsellor and mindfulness teacher in private practice.