In this video we examine one of the most important elements of Jungian psychology - the individuation process. Carl Jung believed that the quality of one's life is very much a function of the manner in which this natural process unfolds.
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Transcript
Far too many of us are oblivious to the dangers that some of our behavioural patterns pose to our long-term well-being. Instead of facing up to our problems, we either try and convince ourselves that our issues are trivial and so can be ignored, or we pretend that the problems do not exist at all. We can only delude ourselves for so long, as eventually what were once manageable problems turn into problems of unmanageable proportions. For this reason, Carl Jung maintained that a crucial first step toward self-improvement is simply to become more aware of the reality of one’s situation.
Jung, however, is not unique in this respect as many philosophers and psychologists, both past and present, share in this view. Where he is more unique is in his belief that not only do we have to overcome our ignorance regarding the reality of our external situation, but just as importantly we need to become more aware of what he called the reality of our psyche.
“What most people overlook or seem unable to understand is the fact that I regard the psyche as real.” (Carl Jung, Answer to Job)
The psyche, in Jung’s view is not merely a by-product of a certain configuration of matter. Rather the psyche is an irreducible, a priori fact of nature that should be considered as real as the physical world, and just as impactful to our overall well-being. Most people, however, know little of this world within.
One reason for this lack of knowledge can be attributed to our Christian heritage and the associated belief in an omniscient god who not only knew if we were committing bad deeds, but also if we were thinking blasphemous thoughts. While belief in such a god has dwindled, there remains a tendency to repress elements of our personality which run counter to the moral system of our day and thus to strive for a type of moral perfectionism.
Jung was no proponent of this ideal. Striving after perfection is like chasing after wind and far from making us better people it in fact greatly hinders our development. The more we strive for perfection, the further we fuel our dark side and lose control over how it manifests itself in our day-to-day actions. In addition, if we constantly repress thoughts which run counter to the dominant moral system of our society, we will never reach the deeper layers of the psyche, an awareness of which can often substantially improve our lives.
“One should never think that man can reach perfection,” wrote Jung “he can only aim at completion – not to be perfect but to be complete. That would be the necessity and the indispensable condition if there were any question of perfection at all. For how can you perfect a thing if it is not complete?
Make it complete first and see what it is then. But to make it complete is already a mountain of a task, and by the time you arrive at absolute completion, you find that you are already dead, so you never reach that preliminary condition for perfecting yourself.” (Carl Jung, Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930 -1934)
The task of striving toward completeness, or what is also referred to as “wholeness of the personality”, was of such great importance that most of Jung’s career was dedicated to exploring this process, a process he would eventually call individuation.
Jung did not use the term individuation until 1921, however the seeds of this idea reach back to his doctoral dissertation. In this dissertation, titled, “On the Psychology and Pathology of So-called Occult Phenomena”, Jung attempted to explain his observations of a medium who claimed to interact with spirits during seances. To account for this Jung hypothesized that the manifestation of these spirits was the result of “splinter personalities” which lay dormant in the unconscious mind of the medium but which were somehow brought to her conscious awareness by the act of the seance. Rather than accepting that these “splinter personalities” emerged from within, from the reality of her psyche, the medium believed they were spirits manifesting themselves from a realm independent of her.
As Jung’s study of the psyche progressed he came to believe that the experience of this medium was but one example of a more general phenomenon. All of us have unconscious components which reside dormant in our psyche and as Jolande Jacobi explains in her book The Way of Individuation:
“. . .it remained Jung’s untiring scientific and psychotherapeutic endeavor to work out a methodological procedure for bringing these components to consciousness and associating them with the ego, in order to…
Read more:
https://academyofideas.com/2017/10/carl-jung-what-is-the-individuation-process/
