This book made available by the Internet Archive.

This book is dedicated to my grandson Christian, for his life's journey

PREFACE

n a letter to me dated 24 September 1948 Jung wrote: "The systematic

elaboration of my ideas, which were often just thrown out, is a task for those
who come after me, and unless it is accomplished there will be no progress
in the science of analytical psychology." This statement was a challenge I
have tried to meet, to the best of my knowledge and ability, with this little
book as a modest contribution to Jung's expectations. It is the product of
many years of reflection and observation, of careful study, of quiet hours of
meditation and, not least, of personal and practical experience. The way of
individuation as the keystone of Jung's widely ramifying work is particularly
suited to signalize the position which distinguishes it from other schools of
psychology. It amounts to a comprehensive view of life which embraces the
all-too-human as well as the personal and the suprapersonal. Individuation,
understood as the growing self-awareness of the individual and society, and
expressed also in the transformation of man's idea of God in
correspondence with the ruling state of consciousness, is a social, ethical,
and religious problem which is more important for us than ever today if we
are not only to endure the present but also shape a better future. Yet,
precisely because Jung's concept of individuation is so interwoven with the
many-sidedness of human existence, it has often been mis-

understood or, more often, not understood at all. The methodical

clarification of this centrepiece of Jungian psychology, which is of the
greatest significance not only in psychotherapy but also as the goal of
human development in general, therefore seemed urgently called for. It was
a task I had much at heart, moreover, as the confession of a life rich in
experience. Much of the joy and sorrow of a long life was built into it and
applied to the supplementing and rounding out of Jung's ideas.

If, nevertheless, certain things could not be brought into clear enough focus,
and others have still remained dark to logical, rational thinking, I would, by
way of exonerating myself, quote Jung's own words, in which he points out
the difficulties of presenting such a theme. In his memoirs he says: "The
reality of life, with all its abysses and terrors, its unpredictable qualities,
cannot be covered by so-called 'clear concepts.' " And again: "I strive quite
consciously and deliberately for ambiguity of expression, because it is
superior to singleness of meaning and reflects the nature of life. My whole
temperament inclines me to be very unequivocal indeed. That is not
difficult, but it would be at the cost of truth." At the same time he
emphasized that he "took great care to try to understand every single image,
every item of my psychic inventory, and to classify them scientifically—so
far as this was possible."

As a creative person, as an artist, one might say, Jung was conditioned

through and through by spiritual forces and open to their influences. But as
a man of science, to whose requirements he felt the deepest obligations, all
his efforts were directed towards systematizing his experiences and ideas
and expressing them in the clearest possible concepts. The present book
could not ignore this dual nature of Jung's work, and it must therefore
appeal to the goodwill not only of those who devote themselves to
understanding both these realms, but also to the devotees of the rational
and of the irrational.

In the preparation of the book I am indebted for much help to the editor
and faithful recorder of Jung's memoirs, Frau Aniela Jaffe\ Dr. Josef Rudin
read the text, with particular

attention to the religious aspects. Dr. Ernst Spengler and my son Andrew
gave helpful support in correcting the manuscript and the proofs. To all I
would like to express my warmest thanks.

Thus, not without inward emotion, and mindful of the necessary

inadequacy of my work, I set forth on this exacting theme: habent sua fata
libelli. Let it fare as fate wills.

JOLANDE JACOBI

Zurich, summer 1965

THE WAY OF INDIVIDUATION

The Forerunners

rue scientific knowledge does not consist only in answering the question of
the What. It reaches fulfilment only when it is able to discover the Whence
and to combine it with the Whither. Knowing becomes understanding only
when it embraces the beginning, the continuation, and the end."

These words of J. J. Bachofen (1815-1887), C. G. Jung's great countryman,

taken from the introduction to his book Mutterrecht (1861), might serve as
a motto for that unitary, teleological view of the psyche from which is also
derived Jung's concept of the "individuation process". They anticipate by
some eighty years an attitude which, after the atomistic, mechanistic views
of the late nineteenth century had been superseded, moulded the vision of
the homogeneity of all psychic events. Basic to this attitude was the idea
that psychic life should be regarded as a meaningfully ordered process
containing its goal within itself. Ever since the broad sweep of the Romantic
view of the world, with its feeling for the unity of life, this vision has never
quite been lost. We meet it already in C. G. Carus (1789-1869), in whose
work we find many features that have an affinity with Jung's ideas. Thus R.
Marx writes in the introduction to Carus' Psyche (1846): "Indeed, looking at
life more closely, we see that in its continuous striving there must remain
present a feeling, an unconscious memory of what

was present before, otherwise it would be inexplicable how, at the peak of

development, after passing through many phases, something can come back
again formed in exactly the same way as the germ from which the
development started (e.g., the egg or the seed); and again, we perceive that
there must dwell within it a definite, even though unconscious
foreknowledge of whither its course of development is tending and what it is
seeking, otherwise the sure progress, the regular preparation of numerous
phenomena that in themselves can only be transitional phases, and that
subordinate themselves to ever higher aims, would be wholly inexplicable."
* In these sentences we cannot but hear a spiritual note struck which also
echoes in Jung's writings.

With the endeavours to understand personal development as a goal-

directed unfolding and organization of innate tendencies and dispositions,
there arose in the nineteenth century a number of psychological theories
which treated the subject in all sorts of variations; there were, for instance,
a deterministic, a vitalistic, a personalistic, a developmental, a genetic, a
Gestalt psychology, among others. They are associated primarily with the
names of W. Wundt, F. Krüger, K. Koffka, W. Stern, Charlotte and K.
Bühler, E. Spranger, and many more besides. It would, however, be wrong
to regard the view which sees life as a unity, even though with various sub-
divisions, as an invention of scientific psychology.

Human life considered as a homogeneous process, as a development in

"stages" each with its own peculiarities and distinguishing marks, is an age-
old view which crops up again and again in the literature of the West. There
are, as the case may be, two, three, four, and even ten segments or stages
into which our life is divided from the cradle to the grave.

The simplest form, division into two, consists only of youth and age. The
division into three follows the course of the sun: morning, noon, evening,
their parallels being youth, manhood, age, as portrayed for instance in the
pictures of the three Magi: Caspar is the youth, Balthazar the man, Melchior
the grey-

beard. 2 The famous picture of "Prudentia", attributed to Titian, represents

the same situation, but here the three human heads are correlated with
three animals—wolf, lion, dog. 3 The division into four is based on the four
seasons. It corresponds to the ancient Roman sequence: puer, juvenis, vir,
senex. To these is added, in the division into five, virilitas, dignified
maturity, or, as in Varro, infantia. In the fivefold division the stages last
fourteen years; they therefore go in cycles of twice seven. The commonest
sub-divisions are into seven or ten stages. The former are correlated with
the planets, it being said that the first ten years come under the influence of
Mercury, the second ten under that of Venus, the third under that of Mars,
etc., the last ten under that of Saturn. 4 After seventy one would come under
the influence of Uranus.

Here we may quote an amusing folk-poem which says:

A fence lasts three years,

A dog outlives three fences,

A horse outlives three dogs,

A man outlives three horses,

A donkey outlives three men,

A wild goose outlives three donkeys,

A crow outlives three wild geese,

A stag outlives three crows,

A raven outlives three stags.

Thus to man are allotted 81 years,

But to the phoenix 177,147.

"The years of our life are threescore and ten, and even by reason of strength
fourscore," says the Psalmist. 5 In the ten-stage sequence, life goes on till a
hundred and witnesses to man's unfading hope for the longest possible
existence on earth. 6 Another folk-poem says:

He who in twenty years does not get thin, And in thirty years does not get
sick, And in thirty-five does not get strong, And in forty does not get mean,
And in forty-five does not get brave,

And in sixty-five does not get rich, And in seventy-five does not get wise,
And in eighty-five does not go gray, And in ninety-five does not get caught,
And in a hundred does not get hanged, And should outlive all this span,
God! He's been a lucky man.

Man's fate unfolds itself stage by stage, like a bud that harbours within it a
blossom. The idea of these stages has penetrated deep into the soul of the
people, leaving its deposit in countless documents of folk-literature and
often also in poetry and the arts. It has given rise to an infinity of sayings,
stories, pictures, all fraught with symbols. The following Oriental fairytale is
a delightful example:

"The Lord God, wishing to fix the life-span of his creatures, gave the
donkey, the dog, and the ape, and finally also man, thirty years apiece. But
that was too much for the animals, and God took pity on them and gave the
donkey only eighteen years, the dog only twelve, and the ape only ten. But
for man thirty years was too little, and God took pity on him and gave him
in addition the eighteen, twelve, and ten years of the animals. That is why,
for his first thirty years, man lives a human life; then, one after another, he
is overtaken by the burdensome years of the donkey, the snarling years of
the dog, and the foolish years of the ape, a thing for children to laugh at. The
thirty human years are followed by forty animal years, and thus man has
seventy years to live." 7

Life as the wheel of fortune, the spokes symbolizing its individual phases, or
as a tree with widely ramifying branches— these are ever recurrent images.
Often it is described as a "journey" or a "wandering", or as La
Rochefoucauld says: "Our life is like a jaunt in the mountains with
unexpected views, turns in the way, resting-places, and a goal we do not
know." 8 Being an optimist, he does not mention the dangers and the
abysses. Plausible and apt as these images are, they remain in the realm of
the biological and the everyday and do not shed light on the deeper meaning
of life's course.
With the steady mounting of man's life-expectancy during the last century
and, as a result, the unusual increase in the number of old people, the
problem has shifted its ground in a fundamental way. It is evident that a
completely new relation to the course of life has to be found, above all to the
problem of growing old, which must be accorded a new value. If the ancient
Romans called the first thirty years of life aetas, i.e., a generation, this
meant that the reproductive capacity and the family, or the biological and
social task, occupied the foreground. But when there is an average life-
expectancy of seventy years, the spiritual and psychic task also makes its
demands if man is to win a satisfying meaning for his life and to find its
destination.

Charlotte Bühler deserves credit for her scientific attempts to investigate the
problems connected with the course of human life viewed as a unity. From a
careful evaluation of answers to questionnaires and from a mass of
biographical data she describes in her book 9 a series of typical life-courses,
or life-structures, which display a certain regularity. Her conclusion that
man's creative task, the specifically human criterion of a fully valid
existence, is "to be there for something, whether this be a human being, a
thing, a work, an idea," 10 hits the mark. She proposes a biological ground-
plan (A) of the course of life, supplementing it with a spiritual-psychic
ground-plan (dotted line) whose course, depending on the individual's own
efforts, his gifts and his fate, can take a different direction from the
biological. This line of development can surpass and transcend it, meeting it
again only at the moment of death.

Within the biological ground-plan Charlotte Bühler distinguishes two main

directions: the period of expansion up to about the forty-fifth year, and the
period of restriction from then till the end of life. The life-course is divided
into three main phases: from birth to the twenty-fifth year (phase I), from
the twenty-fifth to the forty-fifth (phase III), from the forty-fifth to the
seventieth (phase V), and into two transitional phases, in which the change
of direction and the alternation of generations occur: from the fifteenth to
the twenty-fifth year

The Way of Individuation

A. The biological ground-plan.

B. The "normal structure" for the course of spiritual life. Here the spiritual
culmination coincides with the biological, in phase III, rising and falling
equally rapidly.

C. Here the spiritual culmination occurs already in phase II, the first
transitional phase.

D. Here an early culmination continues until the end of life.

E. Here the culmination occurs only in phase IV, the second transitional
phase, and lasts till death.

(phase II), and from the forty-fifth to the fiftieth or sixtieth (phase IV). In
the first transitional phase reproductive capacity sets in, in the second it
ceases. In the so-called "normal structure" (B) the spiritual-psychic
culmination coincides with the biological: it occurs in the third, middle
phase, between the twenty-fifth and the forty-fifth year. 11 In special cases
the culmination can be reached earlier, as early as in phase II (C), and then
suddenly sink or, more rarely, last a very long time, right up to phase V (D).
But it can also occur rather late, in the middle of phase IV, and then last till
death (E). The diagrams on page 8 may serve as illustrations.

A represents a life based wholly on the vital, D a life based wholly on the
spiritual. 12 It is obvious that compared with the biological ground-plan the
course of spiritual life can be either premature or retarded and can lead to a
culmination in relatively early years (C) or in late age (E). In spiritual life
the possibility of growth ceases only at death. In sum, Charlotte Bühler was
able to show that there are typical differences in the life-course as well as
differences in the time and duration of its culmination, and that a
meaningful existence is possible whether life be short or long.

With these theses Charlotte Bühler took an important step in the direction
of a unitary view. It comes close to Jung's own. Nevertheless her researches,
despite her genuine attempt to penetrate more deeply, still remain
exclusively based on a psychology of consciousness and its specific methods.

Alfred Adler, at one time a pupil of Freud's, likewise spoke in his individual
psychology of a "guiding fiction" which stamps the whole life of man with a
finalistic striving and is meant to satisfy his demand for an entrenched
power position. "Power" in Adler's view is the aim that guides all human
desires and actions, and to it is subordinated, consciously or unconsciously,
everything a man does and feels. One cannot deny this view a certain
justification, yet it is too one-sided and allows only a fragmentary grasp of
human existence. It oversimplifies by reducing it to a single instinct or
drive.

Hence it was reserved for depth psychology, 13 the new science that arose at
the turn of the century, to paint a completely different picture of man and to
investigate the psyche, in its totality and unity, empirically. This picture not
only embraced the contents and processes of the conscious mind, but also
took into account those which are to be found in the limitless realms of the
unconscious psyche. This meant a revolutionary change in our
understanding and assessment of psychic modes of behaviour, since the
recognition was forced upon man that, besides his voluntary and knowing
actions, there also exist in him impulses of which he is not the master and
over which he has no power. It can readily be understood that depth
psychology was, and often still is, hard put to it to make any headway.

With the rise and development of depth psychology the genetic-analytical

viewpoint of Freud, and the teleological-synthetic viewpoint of Jung—both
attained on the basis of bold pioneer work—acquired a special significance.
It is true that Freud's view was directed exclusively to the "fate of the
libido", of "sexual energy", on which, he maintained, sickness and health,
indeed the whole life of man, depended and by which it was formed. He
traced success or failure in the life of an individual to its instinctual basis
and to the state of its development. He overlooked the paramount
importance and independent role of spiritual, creative impulses and needs
whose fulfilment is not tied to any particular age. These and the whole
course of life were in his view determined—one might almost say
predetermined—-by the impressions and experiences of childhood. Thus
later life became as it were an epiphenom-enon of childhood events, having
no genuine task of its own. Jung, on the other hand, directed his attention
to the whole of human existence as such, from its beginning to its end, and
endeavoured to reveal from within its aspect as a totality. We can trace in
him the ideas of a meaningful, hidden "life-plan" with its "phases", which,
as we saw, had always been present in the germ in folk-wisdom and had
also been taken up in part by

The Forerunners u

scientific psychology, but were now illuminated from a new vantage-point

and put in a new context. The results of Charlotte Bühler's investigations of
the life-course as a psychological problem point in the same direction,
though she did not, like Jung, follow up the ways and means of inner
development and try to realize them systematically in practice.

If one wishes to make clear Jung's position and to hear his answers to the
questions raised by these problems, this can best be done by giving an
account of what he has termed the "individuation process" and of its
phenomenology. The nature, content, laws, and manifestations of this
process, which he gained by years of careful observation and worked out by
systematic comparative researches, constitute the pillars of his teaching,
and the conclusions that may be drawn from them are highly characteristic
of his position as a whole.

Individuation

he term "individuation process" occurs for the first time in Jung's book
Psychological Types (originally published 1921), but the idea of it can be
found in his doctoral dissertation "On the Psychology and Pathology of So-
called Occult Phenomena" (1902). It was a guiding idea that was to hold
him in its grip all his life, and reached its culmination in his last major
work, Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955-56). In that early dissertation he
concluded, from his observations of a medium, that the "spirits" which
manifested themselves during the stances represented an invasion of
autonomous "splinter personalities" into the medium's field of
consciousness, components of a more comprehensive personality hidden in
the unconscious psyche. He says: "It is, therefore, conceivable that the
phenomena of double consciousness are simply new character formations,
or attempts of the future personality to break through, and that in
consequence of special difficulties . . . they get bound up with peculiar
disturbances of consciousness" (i.e., somnambulistic phenomena). 1
Therefore it remained Jung's untiring scientific and psychotherapeutic
endeavour to work out a methodological procedure for bringing these
components to consciousness and associating them with the ego, in order to
realize the "greater personality" which is potentially present in every
individual.

To describe in any detail Jung's widely ramifying work, which runs to some
two hundred major and minor writings, would far exceed the scope of this
book. But as the individuation process is the core of his teachings,
containing many of his most essential discoveries and views, it may do duty
for the rest. Further expositions must be left to other, more detailed studies
of this field of work, which is far from having been thoroughly explored.

In scientific usage, the principium individuationis is defined as that

principle on which depends the breaking up of the general into the
particular, into single beings or individuals. It is "the raison d'etre of
individuals or particulars". 2 It is found in Aristotle, Albertus Magnus,
Thomas Aquinas, Leibniz, Spinoza, Locke, and Schopenhauer—to name
only a few great thinkers—and has been the passionate concern of many
brilliant minds, prompting them to a wide variety of explanations and
correlations. 3 In so far as the human individual may be regarded as a
unique and indivisible whole, he embodies in its highest form the power
inherent in that principle. At the same time, the principium individuationis
can manifest itself in full force only when the building up of the personality
it unconsciously anticipates is undertaken by the conscious ego.

So when Jung speaks of an individuation process that characterizes a

possibility of development immanent in everyone and that culminates in
rounding out the individual into a psychic whole, 4 his conception, though
following the same line as the other philosophical definitions, is both
broader and deeper, since it takes account not only of the conscious but also
of the unconscious components of the psyche in their delicately balanced
and creative interaction with the conscious mind. The beginning and end of
psychic life are in his view inseparable, bound together at every moment in
the thousand-branched stream of psychic energy which pours without
cessation through all the reaches of the psyche.

In this psyche the energy is kept in a state of constant dynamic mobility by a

subtle mechanism of self-regulation and

compensation, balanced between tension and stagnation. Birth and death

are only two poles of a homogeneous chain of being whose individual links
—the days and years of life—rise out of the mists of fate and become visible
in the foreground. These links are from the beginning determined by a
common meaning, which strives ceaselessly and autonomously for
realization, no matter whether they belong to the dark, unconscious side,
the shadowland of the past or future, or to the daylight of the conscious
present. The meaning manifests itself as the maturation process of the
psyche and has as its aim the completion of the personality through the
maximal extension of its field of consciousness. This presupposes the
gradual integration of unconscious contents that are capable of becoming
conscious.* The psyche is the theatre of all our struggles for development. It
is the organ of experience pure and simple. The affirmation of these
struggles is "life"; negation of them means isolation, resignation,
desiccation.

The Two Kinds of Individuation

J? undamentally, individuation is a natural process immanent in every

living organism. It can even be observed in inorganic matter, albeit only in
basic outline. In crystals, for instance, something initially unformed moulds
itself into a definite form in accordance with some hidden ground-plan.

The individuation process can either take place unconsciously, or it can be

made conscious in various ways and brought to a high degree of
differentiation. It goes without saying that there are any number of
intermediate stages. Two main forms may be distinguished:

1. The natural process, occurring more or less autonomously and without

the participation of consciousness, and

2. The "artificial" process, aided for instance by analysis, developed by

definite methods, and consciously experienced.

In both forms the same power is at work, striving for maturation and self-
realization from the seed to the fruit, to the invisible goal immanent within
them. But the two forms are as different as, say, a wild fruit and a highly
cultivated one. In the first case everything is left to the-natural process; in
the second, this is assisted, intensified, and consciously realized by the
application of a specific technique.

Everything that lives matures; human beings mature, machines do not.

Thus the natural process is goal-directed dyna-

mism, a way of development to which all life is subject. To this form belong
most of the psychologies that seek to understand human life as a
homogeneous process, likewise the theories of Charlotte Bühler. "The urge
and compulsion to self-realization [i.e., individuation] is a law of nature and
thus of invincible power, even though its effect, at the start, is insignificant
and improbable," 1 says Jung.

Like a seed growing into a tree, life unfolds stage by stage. Triumphant
ascent, collapse, crises, failures, and new beginnings strew the way. It is the
path trodden by the great majority of mankind, as a rule unreflectingly,
unconsciously, unsuspectingly, following its labyrinthine windings from
birth to death in hope and longing. It is hedged about with struggle and
suffering, joy and sorrow, guilt and error, and nowhere is there security
from catastrophe. For as soon as a man tries to escape every risk and prefers
to experience life only in his head, in the form of ideas and fantasies, as
soon as he surrenders to opinions of "how it ought to be" and, in order not
to make a false step, imitates others whenever possible, he forfeits the
chance of his own independent development. Only if he treads the path
bravely and flings himself into life, fearing no struggle and no exertion and
fighting shy of no experience, will he mature his personality more fully than
the man who is ever trying to keep to the safe side of the road. As
Schopenhauer says: "The first forty years of life furnish the text, while the
remaining thirty supply the commentary; without the com-mentärywe are
unable to understand aright the true sense and coherence of the text,
together with the moral it contains." 2

The more biological a life is, particularly in its second half, the more it can
be said to "come to an end", and the more powerfully those late years are
shaped by the spirit, the more it can be said to "come to completion".
Generally speaking, there is a polar relationship between the two forms of
life, since the one often develops at the expense of the other. We observe, for
instance, that spiritually strong, creative people, the so-called "geniuses",
are often weak biologically and compensate this weakness by their
outstanding spiritual achievements, as

though Nature did not permit them to belong to both realms in equal
degree. For every plus on one side must be paid for with a minus on the
other.

Even within the limits of the natural individuation process, however, there
are people who, entirely by themselves, without using special methods or
needing any guidance, let alone the help of analysis, win to that wholeness
and wisdom which are the fruit of a life consciously experienced and
assimilated, all its battles fought. Or are there perhaps people who had a
highly developed individuation granted them even in the cradle, as a gift of
grace? Yet we know that among primitives no one can become a medicine-
man or the wise man of the tribe without going through a hard lifelong
discipline, that no saint is spared wrestling with his inner demons, and that
no great artist ever accomplished his work without toil and sweat.

In view of these high demands it is not surprising that the majority of men
follow the line of least resistance and confine themselves to the fulfilment of
biological and material needs, and for the rest are intent on gaining the
greatest possible number of pleasurable experiences. Most people look
unremittingly for "happiness", and it never occurs to them that happiness is
not the goal of life set them by the Creator. The true goal is a task that
continues right up to life's evening, namely, the most complete and
comprehensive development of the personality. It is this which gives life an
incomparable value that can never be lost: inner peace, and therewith the
highest form of "happiness".

But because man fears the mighty and continuous effort bound up with this
task and if possible shuns every sacrifice, there are even in the "natural"
individuation process all kinds of degeneracies and deformations. Precisely
because it is nature-bound, its manifestations may be "sick" and defective. 3
It may for instance be blocked (by psychosis), inhibited (by alcoholism or
other cravings), it may be bogus, superficial, infantile, or prematurely
interrupted (by death, accident, war), it may be hindered by degeneration,
perversion, etc.

It is not the length of life and not its freedom from disturb-

j8 The Way of Individuation

ances which are the decisive factors in the success of individuation but, as
we have seen, the draining of life to the full, in the good and the difficult
alike. Thus even a "short life", which compresses all the phases into a short
time, can be brought to full maturity and rounded out, as we can see from
numerous examples of outstanding personalities who were wise already in
their youth. Among short lives, therefore, we have to distinguish between an
individuation process that was broken off for some reason and remained
incomplete, and one that is the result of a life lived to the full. 4

The validity of man's psychic development considered as the "natural

individuation process" in its manifold forms, and also as the subject of
various psychological theories, is not called into question by Jung. His aim
is rather to supplement and deepen the "way of nature", to ennoble it as it
were, by demonstrating the possibility of an opus contra naturam. Or as
Gerhard Adler has expressed it in a trenchant formula, "to resolve the thesis
of pure nature and its antithesis of the opposing ego into the synthesis of
conscious nature". 5

What we are here concerned with is a deepening of the personality by a

process adapted specifically to the nature of Western man, as is also
attempted in other spheres of culture by corresponding rites and religious
forms. Jung is not of the opinion, however, that alien cults and forms of
religion should be taken over unheedingly by Western man. For example, he
is against Europeans' practising yoga or indulging in other "mysteries"
designed for totally alien psychic structures. They do not correspond to the
European's state of consciousness and consequently lead him not to
individuation but only into error.

The way of individuation, as understood by Jung, differs from the "natural"

process, which simply "happens" to a man and of which he is the passive
object, in that it is followed and experienced consciously and is actively
shaped by him. 6 Between "I do" and "I am conscious of what I do" there is
not only a vast difference but, at times, an outright opposition. As

we know, the healthy man is healthy usually without being conscious of his
healthiness. We see and hear a great variety of things all the time, we accept
them without paying any particular attention to them, without performing
the seeing and hearing as conscious acts. The senses perceive, and our
consciousness takes cognizance of the perceived almost automatically,
without knowingly integrating it. It is the same with our thinking, which
often goes on spontaneously, without being consciously recognized as such
and consciously elaborated. This is even truer of our actions. "Consequently
there is a consciousness in which unconsciousness predominates, as well as
a consciousness in which self-consciousness predominates." 7 Most people
confuse self-reflection, the sine qua non of psychic development, with
knowledge of their conscious ego-personality, although it is only by
illuminating the unconscious psyche and relating to it that an apprehension
of the complete personality becomes possible.

Jung lays great stress on the decisive role played by consciousness and its
capacity for insight, though he rigorously rejects its dictatorship and
constantly demands that attention be paid to the "messages" sent up from
the unconscious depths. Work on the psyche in his view aims at giving these
messages their due and, over and above that, at strengthening
consciousness so that it shall be equal to the demands made upon it on the
great journey of life, the "quest of the hero", through encounters with the
contents of the unconscious.

It is therefore quite wrong to suppose that Jungian psychology recommends

the exclusive observance of the voice that comes from the unconscious
realms and announces itself, for example, in dreams. Statements like "I
must get divorced" or "I must wind up this business" or "I must go to the
United States because my dreams have told me to" are in complete
opposition to Jung's view, unless the conscious standpoint coincides with
what is suggested by the material coming from the unconscious. But when
consciousness and the messages of the unconscious are in opposition, and
no reconciliation is pos-

sible, the watchword is: Wait, persevere until a tolerable solution suddenly
presents itself, as if it were a third possibility that does justice to both sides.
Whether it will be the "right" one cannot of course be determined, but at
least it will be in harmony with the totality of the psyche, with the
statements made by both its realms, the conscious and the unconscious. At
bottom one never knows in advance whether one has done the "right" thing.
One must therefore be prepared to accept responsibility for everything one
does, even if it should later turn out that the "right" thing was the wrong
one. But one can only do that if one is always quite clear in advance about
the meaning and possible consequences of one's deeds. In this sense it can
be said that every conscious decision is at the same time an ethical decision.

The peculiarity, then, of the second kind of individuation process lies in the
intervention of consciousness in the spontaneous, automatic flow of psychic
life. An ethical decision is sought, each time in the interests of developing
what is singular or unique in the personality.
The Two Main Phases of the Individuation Process

'oth variants of the individuation process can be divided into two main
phases containing numerous sub-divisions: that of the first and that of the
second half of life. Each phase is the opposite of the other, but stands to it in
a polar relationship. Their duration, the kind of task that has to be solved in
them, and the depth and intensity of the experience vary with each
individual. "At the stroke of noon the descent begins. And the descent
means the reversal of all the ideals and values that were cherished in the
morning," * says Jung.

The transition from one phase to the other is of special importance. The
"change of life" is a conflict between the onset of biological ageing,
expressing itself in the psychic functions as well, and the urge and
possibility for further spiritual and psychic development. It is a critical
situation in which one has reached the zenith of life and, suddenly or
gradually as the case may be, is then confronted with the reality of the end—
death. Often a "balance account crisis" arises at this point. 2 The word
"crisis" is very apt: it comes from the Greek, krinein, which means "to
discriminate" and also "to decide". For here the great reversal takes place,
which Charlotte Bühler has termed the "change of dominance", because it
can give life an entirely new direction. Involuntarily one takes stock of one's
assets in life, a sort of final reckoning is made regarding what

has been achieved and what has still to be achieved, and this results in an
unmistakable credit and debit account. At the same time one sees equally
clearly what was missed and should still be recovered, as well as all the
things that can be recovered no longer. To look such truths in the eye is a
test of courage. It demands insight into the necessity of growing old, and the
courage to renounce what is no longer compatible with it. For only when
one is able to discriminate between what must be discarded and what still
remains as a valuable task for the future will one also be able to decide
whether one is ready to strike out in the new direction consciously and
positively. If the "change of dominance" fails to appear, the psyche knows
no rest; it gets into a state of discontentment and uncertainty, finally ending
in neurosis. Everything cries out for readjustment. That is why these years
are rightly called the "change of life".

It is no longer disputed today that men as well can be subject to this change.
Yet, though its effects in a man are often stronger than in a woman, they run
their course as a rule only in the psychological realm. Although those
affected may not care to admit it, they undergo during their "change of life"
specific psychic—and often psychosomatic—disturbances characterized by
increased lability, anxiety states of all kinds, depressions, crises of
impotence, etc. Men find it even more difficult to accept growing old than
women, for whom the menopause is something that can be neither kept
secret nor got rid of nor reversed. Men fear the loss of virility, which they
identify with vitality. This can drive them to the most astonishing antics and
to all kinds of attempts to hang on to being young. They equate instinct,
potency, and strength with their human value and their capacity to work,
and their self-confidence becomes precarious even though this may not be
immediately noticeable because of skilled disguises. There are, of course,
exceptions, but they are fewer than one thinks. The picture of primitives
who kill the leader of the tribe as soon as he is no longer capable of
begetting progeny and has thus

become totally useless still lives unconsciously in the soul of modern,

civilized men and throws them into agitation.

Try as one may to turn a blind eye to growing old, sooner or later it can no
longer be overlooked. Some sort of psychic readjustment becomes
unavoidable if one does not wish to succumb to a neurosis. That is true of
both forms of the individuation process, the "natural" and the "analytically
assisted", and it is also true of both sexes. "To the psychotherapist an old
man who cannot bid farewell to life appears as feeble and sickly as a young
man who is unable to embrace it. And as a matter of fact, it is in many cases
a question of the self-same infantile greediness, the same fear, the same
defiance and wilfulness, in the one as in the other." 3

Often the transition from the first to the second half of life is accompanied
by other kinds of disturbances and serious upheavals. Divorce, change of
profession, change of residence, financial losses, physical or psychic
illnesses of all kinds characterize the readjustment or forcibly bring it about.
Naturally a great deal depends on one's situation and on whether one is
prepared in advance for the coming change. The less mature a person is
when he reaches the change of life, the more powerfully the upheaval will
affect him, provided of course that the change sets in at all and he does not
remain stuck in an infantile or pubescent state; this can lead to a
smouldering, chronic neurosis. There are indeed people—and perhaps they
are in the majority—who slip into the second half of life slowly, almost
unnoticeably. But they seldom attain the same broad maturity of
personality as those who have to begin life's afternoon with much toil and
suffering, and are thereby driven to an intensive reckoning between the ego
and the unconscious components of the psyche. This also gives them a
better chance to attain psychic wholeness. Hence difficulties in life, sudden
entanglements, dangers and tests of courage, all of which have to be faced
and conquered, form as it were an organic part of the analytical work.

These years of change should not be understood only as a

shifting of accent, but also, in the deepest sense of the word "change", as a
transformation. The extent, intensity, and duration of this transformation
vary from individual to individual. Nevertheless, the discovery of a new life-
form which goes hand in hand with the successful conduct of life as a whole
depends on the degree to which a person is gripped by this transformation,
adopts a positive attitude towards it, and is able to accomplish it. Very often
the capacity for such a transformation does not depend on the objective
bigness or small-ness of the personality, but on the extension or
"reconstruction" of its psychic "dimension". It is a question of moving from
an "ego-centred" 4 attitude to an "ego-transcending" 5 one, in which the
guiding principles of life are directed to something objective, and this can be
anything from one's children, one's house, one's work to the state,
humanity, God.

The transformation can, according to Charlotte Bühler, be either sudden or

gradual. It can take place in a short time or require several years. The
greater the difference between the initial and the end situation, that is, the
greater the areas of experience encompassed by the transformation, the
more sudden it will be. On the other hand, the smaller this difference is, the
more gradually the transformation will take place. It then has the character
of a slow process of maturation and psychic approfondissement.

The possibility of a maturation and rounding out of the psyche is in

principle inherent in every individual. Whether he is able to accomplish it or
not depends on the inhibiting factors which stud the path of man's outer
and inner life. The important thing is not the widened scope which
consciousness attains, but its "roundedness". In alchemy the "rotundum" is
a symbol of wholeness and completeness which expresses concretely what is
meant in a metaphorical sense with reference to the psyche. It is therefore a
matter of indifference whether the rotundum be a big or a little one; what
alone matters is the "roundedness", i.e., a state in which the greatest
possible number of man's hidden qualities are made conscious, his psychic

capacities developed and condensed into a unity. This is a goal which

generally can be reached—if at all—only in life's late evening.

Generally speaking one can say that whereas the first half of life is, in the
nature of things, governed and determined by expansion and adaptation to
outer reality, the second is governed by restriction or reduction to the
essential, by adaptation to the inner reality. "Man has two aims," says Jung.
"The first is the natural aim, the begetting of children and the business of
protecting the brood; to this belongs the acquisition of money and social
position. When this aim has been reached a new phase begins: the cultural
aim." 6 "A young person has not yet acquired a past, therefore he has no
present either. He does not create culture, he merely exists. It is the
privilege and task of maturer people, who have passed the meridian of life,
to create culture." 7 And one can add with Schopenhauer: "Life may be
compared to a piece of embroidery, of which, during the first half of his
time, a man gets a sight of the right side, and during the second half, of the
wrong. The wrong side is not so pretty as the right, but it is more
instructive; it shows the way in which the threads have been worked
together." 8

Once firmly anchored in one's profession, with the family founded and one's
position in the outer world secured—a situation which applies primarily to
the man and becomes acute for a woman only when house and home are in
order and the children provided for—one is faced with the question: What
now? What's all this leading to? For a moment, still veiled in the mists of
the future, a premonition of the questionableness and transience of all
existence rise up in one, something one had not thought of before. This
question, growing ever louder, may present itself already at the end of the
thirties. But once the forties are past, it becomes more and more urgent and
is increasingly difficult to brush aside. 9 Naturally there are also people who
even in their youth seek more for the meaning of life, for inner spiritual
values, than for the external, the material, the earthly. They are the
introverted, the seekers, the

quiet and reflective ones, who nevertheless in the end feel they are the
losers, because the promises of youth have flown away, because the first half
of their life was actually lived under the sign of the second, a situation not
lacking in tragedy. Many artists and scientists, however, have derived from
such an unusual fate inspiration and strength for the creation of spiritually
important work.

Much attention has been paid to the problems of the first half of life in
scientific quarters, both theoretically and practically, during these last
decades. Though they do not figure very prominently in Jung's work, the
place they occupy in it is important. Frances Wickes 10 was the first of his
pupils to venture into this territory, and since the Second World War she
has been followed in England by Michael Fordham 11 and his pupil Eve
Lewis, 12 in Israel by Erich Neumann, 13 and in Switzerland by the author,
14 who have all made independent contributions that explored new ground.
Jung turned his researches principally to the psychological problems of the
second half of life, which until recently had been unduly neglected by
science. In the investigation of these phenomena as well as in the discovery
of their meaning he acted as a pioneer.

When, therefore, he speaks of the individuation process as a gradual,

conscious process of transformation, he has, though constantly bearing in
mind the whole course of human life with its two great phases, in most
cases tried to delineate it as a task for the years following the change of life.
15 This task should help people to give their lives a new meaning and should
at the same time include a psychic preparation for death. "Seen in correct
psychological perspective, death is not an end but a goal." 16 To confront
this goal with the full force of the capacities for growth immanent in the
psyche constitutes the real meaning of the second half of life and the highest
dignity of man. Therefore Jung says: "In the secret hour of life's midday the
parabola is reversed, death is born. The second half of life does not signify
ascent, unfolding, increase,

exuberance, but death, since the end is its goal. The negation of life's
fulfilment is synonymous with the refusal to accept its ending. Both mean
not wanting to live, and not wanting to live is identical with not wanting to
die. Waxing and waning make one curve." 17

Jung's psychology has repeatedly been attacked for having nothing to say to
young people, and for being suited only for those who are already in the
autumn of life. This seems unjustified when one considers his work as a
whole. Besides the essays contained in his book Psychologie und Erziehung,
1 * which are specifically devoted to the problems of the young, the valuable
interpretations he has given of the symbols of the "divine child" 19 or of the
puer aeternus, 20 the discovery of the archetypal background of the
mother-child relationship, his observations on the development of the ego,
on the role of introversion and extraversion 21 as well as of the functions of
consciousness 22 in the development of young people, are all of
fundamental importance for an understanding of, and therapeutic approach
to, the conflicts of the first half of life. Jung constantly emphasizes that the
overcoming of the tasks of youth is a prerequisite for psychic development
during the second half. Only then is a person capable of submitting himself
to the far-reaching process which the second half of life requires of him. The
validity of this is apparent when a man who already stands on the threshold
of the change of life has, with respect to his conscious personality, only
reached the degree of development of an adolescent, a state of affairs that
occurs more frequently than one thinks. In this case too the first requisite
for maturation is the stability of the ego and the strengthening of
consciousness, a typical task for the first half of life. Only then are the
preconditions met for the venture which the second phase of the
individuation process entails. This means that an eventual analysis must
work with the viewpoints that apply to the first half of life even though the
analysand is fifty years old but still possesses the psyche of a puer aeternus.
In spite of his age he has no ego-stability and is miles away from

the realities of life. So long as these defects are not removed it is better not
to take too deep a plunge into the myth-haunted depths of the soul or to
gallop away on a stout spiritual Pegasus—one could easily become the
victim of inflation and lose the earth altogether from under one's feet. 23

In our time this has become a particularly thorny problem. For the type of
man who is intellectually developed but has remained affectively and
emotionally a boy is a widespread phenomenon which is characteristic of
our epoch, and which perhaps is connected with the emancipation of
women in the twentieth century. The influence of the intellectually
independent and mature woman, who in this way became a dominating
force and often pushed the father's authority into the background, can have
an exceedingly oppressive effect on her children, particularly on boys. One
knows countless cases where this influence unconsciously and unwittingly
prevented the development of the masculine ego to full responsibility. The
man then remains fixated on the level of a pubescent, not infrequently has
homosexual leanings, and remains a puer aeternus, an infantile adult, for
the rest of his life. Alarming indeed, since often, if he is in an official
position, he holds the fate of the world in his hands.

There are, of course, people who cannot be fitted into any category,
exceptional people like artists, whose art often towers far above their
personal development and who have something childish, youthful about
them, or some physical weakness. These develop the individuation process
in their work, instead of in the material of their own psyche. Maybe their
constitution is inadequate, too sensitive to respond in the same way to both
worlds, to their psyche and to their work. In many cases, therefore, it seems
to make sense that some people should accomplish the individuation
process on their own psyche, others in their artistic work, the work
reflecting the process in its progressive unfolding and maturity. We can see
this in the paintings of Rembrandt and Titian, in the writings of Goethe and
Thomas Mann. The ego-personality of a great artist can, how-

ever, remain retarded; it is above all the medium through which inspiration
is revealed and it is often formed under daemonic pressures. "Being
essentially the instrument of his work, he is subordinate to it, and we have
no right to expect him to interpret it for us. He has done his utmost by
giving it form." 24 "How can we doubt that it is his art that explains the
artist, and not the insufficiencies and conflicts of his personal life? These
are nothing but the regrettable results of his being an artist, a man upon
whom a heavier burden is laid than upon ordinary mortals. A special ability
demands a greater expenditure of energy, which must necessarily leave a
deficit on some other side of life." 25 "Great gifts are the fairest, and often
the most dangerous, fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang on the
weakest branches, which easily break." 26 "In most cases . . . the gift
develops in inverse ratio to the maturation of the personality as a whole,
and often one has the impression that a creative personality grows at the
expense of the human being. Sometimes, indeed, there is such a
discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask
oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better." 27

These quotations show what a ticklish thing it is we are dealing with. They
shed light on the difficult problem of the unity or disunity of the artist's
work and his personality, a problem that cannot be solved by any general
rule. The longing to idealize the artist as an ordinary person too, to identify
him with its "heroes", is deeply ingrained in the public. This idealized
picture is passionately defended and the visible deviation from it, which so
often occurs, is either sharply condemned or not taken notice of at all.
Actually the real artist is outside all such categories. Geniuses are "monads",
unique and unrepeatable phenomena, and every yardstick that is applied to
them can easily become questionable.

For this reason the equally controversial question as to whether an artist

should submit to being analyzed and whether analysis would conjure up a
danger to his creativity can receive only an unsatisfactory answer and in no
case an

exhaustive one. Presumably an artist will take refuge in analysis, if at all,

only when the flow of his creative ideas dries up for some reason, when he is
cut off from the source of his images or sounds and wants to get them
moving again. But if his creative powers are unbroken, a systematic
realization of the unconscious contents of his psyche, such as occurs in an
analytically assisted individuation process, may not be indicated at all.

For unless the analysis is conducted very carefully with cat's-paw

sensitiveness, and if, for instance, the deeper-lying psychic material is
interpreted too rationalistically and too little room is left for the symbol to
live in, the conscious ego may then be able to gain the ascendancy and
enrich itself, thereby stopping up the "porosity" of the psychic layers and
inhibiting any spontaneous productivity by too much criticism. In a
properly conducted analysis consciousness has to learn to tolerate contact
with the contents rising up from below. In this matter Freud and Jung were
of the same opinion: if an artist cannot stand analysis there is something
wrong with his artistry. Jung says: "True productivity is a spring that can
never be stopped up. Is there any trickery on earth which could have
prevented Mozart or Beethoven from creating? Creative power is mightier
than its possessor. If it is not so, then it is a feeble thing, and given
favourable conditions will nourish an endearing talent, but no more . . . No
breaking down of repressions can ever destroy true creativeness." 28 Even
when an artist had to go through a severe psychic crisis—like Goya, Klee, or
van Gogh —the urge to create never let up. Would an analysis have been any
help? What a presumption that would be, to say the least!

The course of the first half of life has its own form and follows its own laws,
which one could describe as an "initiation into adulthood" or an "initiation
into outer reality". It forms the first phase of the way of individuation. The
operative factor behind both phases is the Self, that transconscious, central
authority of the psyche, which seems from the beginning to be in a priori
possession of the goal, and, with a kind of foreknowledge, 29 aims at the
"entelechy, the unity and wholeness

of the human personality". 30 It is the organizing centre upon which all

psychic phenomena depend, including the psychic course of life, the main
features of which at this stage are the development of consciousness and the
crystallization of the ego.
Emerging from the original psychic "unitary reality" 31 of inside and
outside, from the identity of subject and object, the ego, in its encounter
with the surrounding world, must grow together into a solid nucleus. 32 It
must emancipate itself from the Self and from the absorptive powers of the
collective psyche to the point where it becomes relatively self-contained.
"For a moment I had the feeling that I carried a crystal in my heart, and I
suddenly knew it was my ego." In this arresting image Hermann Hesse, in
his novel Demian, ss captures an experience which must be known to many
young people.

The emancipation of the ego necessarily increases the distance and tension
between the ego and the Self, so that often it comes to an actual "split". For
when the ego, or conscious portion of the psyche, develops too one-sidedly
and barricades itself against everything coming out of the unconscious, it
may easily land itself in a kind of hypertrophy, in a rationalistic attitude cut
off from the world of inner images and emotions. But for that very reason it
calls them up and mobilizes them, because the self-regulating mechanism of
the psyche immediately answers any one-sidedness with another one-
sidedness. If this attitude continues or gets stronger, it involves
considerable psychic dangers. A feeling of emptiness, isolation, insecurity is
the result, with corresponding neuroses. But it is no less menacing if, by
contrast, the ego remains weak and fragmentary and does not achieve
independence, for it may then fall a defenceless victim to uncontrollable
impulses and ideas and be inundated and extinguished by a flood of
unconscious contents. When that happens, one is well on the way to a
psychosis.

These dangers may be guarded against by a circumspect endeavour to

consolidate the ego and broaden the field of con-

$2 The Way of Individuation

seriousness. Careful work on his dreams and a systematic enlargement of

his knowledge can help the analysand to gain a greater capacity and
readiness for experience. At any rate, once he has set foot on the path of an
analytically assisted individuation process he must summon up a positive
attitude and spare himself no effort. Unfortunately it frequently happens
that, with the best will in the world, no co-operation follows from the
unconscious, and that an insurmountable resistance prevents any progress.
This is found chiefly with pathological cases, with people whose psychic
balance is constantly about to tip over. Nevertheless, in Jung's view, even in
such cases patient work on the psyche is indicated, for it can be extremely
helpful.

Even schizophrenia can be viewed in the context of the individuation

process. Jung sees it as an attempt at individuation going on in itself,
without the participation of consciousness; as an ever-repeated, fruitless
attempt of the unconscious to force the conscious mind, by the very
intensity of the archetypal images and motifs, to understand and assimilate
them, and thus to free the individual from the pressure of menacing
unconscious contents. Those who become schizophrenics, one might say,
are people whose ego is too weak and whose psychic background is too
explosive, so that its contents cannot be worked through by the ego. Jung
says: "At bottom we discover nothing new and unknown in the mentally ill;
rather, we encounter the substratum of our own natures." 34 Further: ". . .
psychiatry, in the broadest sense, is a dialogue between the sick psyche and
the psyche of the doctor, which is presumed to be 'normal' ", 35 And
elsewhere: "It is a fact that psychological preparation in schizophrenia
results in a better prognosis. I therefore make it a rule to let those
threatened with schizophrenia, or mild schizophrenics or latent
schizophrenics, have as much psychological knowledge as possible, because
I know from experience that there is then a greater chance of their getting
out of the psychotic interval again. Equally, psychological enlightenment
after a psychotic attack is in certain condi-

tions extraordinarily helpful ... I would always recommend psychological

education as a prophylactic measure with schizoids. Like neurosis,
psychosis too in its inner course is a process of individuation, but one that is
not associated with consciousness and runs on like an ouroboros 36 in the
unconscious. Psychological preparation links the process with
consciousness, or rather, there is the possibility of such a connection and
hence of a curative effect." 37

The Stages

he individuation process, as the way of development and maturation of the

psyche, does not follow a straight line, nor does it always lead onwards and
upwards. The course it follows is rather "stadial", consisting of progress and
regress, flux and stagnation in alternating sequence. Only when we glance
back over a long stretch of the way can we notice the development. If we
wish to mark out the way somehow or other, it can equally well be
considered a "spiral", the same problems and motifs occurring again and
again on different levels. Erich Neumann described the individuation
process as an interior Odyssey which he called "centro version". Jung spoke
of it as a "labyrinthine" path, and said of it that the longest way is at the
same time the shortest.

If we now set out to observe and describe this way in its various stages, we
can on the one hand do so with reference to the development of the basic
typological characteristics of the individual as established by Jung; in other
words, we can describe it as the progressive differentiation of his attitudinal
and functional modes of being. We can, on the other hand, consider it in
terms of the symbolism of the most important figures that manifest
themselves along this way, and describe it as the systematic confrontation,
step by step, between the ego and the contents of the unconscious.

The development of the ego demanded during the first half of life, stage by
stage, must run parallel with the differentiation of the individual's attitude
and of the constitutionally predominant function of consciousness, as well
as with a corresponding expansion of the field of consciousness and the
formation of a suitable "persona", 1 if the ego is to achieve a stability that is
at once elastic and capable of resistance.

Jung distinguishes two types of attitude in relation to the object: extra

version and introversion. The first is oriented by the object, the second by
the subjective impression which the object releases. Both types are inherent
in the psychic structure of the individual, but one of them is congenitally
predominant and, by its preferential use, marks the type of character. The
other, unused or used only rarely, remains more or less undeveloped and
unconscious, but comes to the surface in a more or less inferior form as
soon as the threshold of consciousness sinks. Whenever this sinking occurs,
whenever our attention slackens and consciousness is no longer
concentrated, i.e., when we become distracted, we notice that all sorts of
ways of behaving, associations or ideas which are normally suppressed rise
up and forcibly obtrude themselves on us. We may, for instance, be reading
a book word for word and suddenly notice that we are occupied with quite
irrelevant thoughts and no longer remember what we have read. The
stronger and solider the ego is, therefore, the better it will be able to
withstand or resist these intruders.

The same is true of the functions of consciousness: thinking, feeling,

sensation, intuition. Jung has described them as die four "modes of
apprehension" by which the ego takes in and assimilates the material
coming from without and within. Here again there is one main function
which is as a rule congenital and is the most clearly differentiated. Of the
other three, two are less conscious, the so-called "auxiliary functions", and
one is the "inferior function", which is the most closely associated with the
unconscious. They too take part in

$6 The Way of Individuation

the assimilation of material from outside and inside. But as consciousness

and unconsciousness are not constants but are in continual interplay—one
may even speak of a "sliding scale" 2 between the full luminosity and
complete obfuscation of consciousness—the main attitude and the main
function have only "predominantly" the leading role. Again and again the
other, less developed modes of behaviour can come into play. This shows
itself in the sometimes kaleidoscopic change of our moods, in the
fluctuation of attention, and in the lability of our psychic manifestations,
when, under the pressure of circumstances, the other components of the
psyche appear alongside the ruling and differentiated ones. That is why
Jung's typology gives admirable expression to the ceaseless, dynamic
mobility of the psyche; it is fundamentally different from all other type
theories, which are related only to consciousness.

As the four functions of consciousness can, depending on the "attitude-

type", be either introverted or extraverted, we have eight basic types, which
seldom appear in pure form. Usually one meets them in any number of
transitional and mixed forms. The development of the individual type to
relative strength and stability takes place also in the course of the natural
individuation process, but can be accelerated and intensified in the
analytically assisted process, side by side with the expansion of the field of
consciousness.

If a person avails himself all his life only of a single—the main—function,

there is a danger of neurotic disturbances arising from the partial or
complete repression of the other functions, and the same is true of the
"attitude-type". It is no less a matter for misgiving when none of the
functions is properly differentiated, that is, when they all remain at the
adolescent level. This may be taken as a symptom of retarded ego-
development. If it continues, it leads as much as the other to serious psychic
complications. In such cases, the person concerned remains without a
standpoint, torn between extremes like so many adolescents. The
differentiation of "attitude" and "function", according to the person's age—
first the dominant

ones, and then in later years the others that have been too little used—is
therefore a criterion for the successful course of the individuation process.
From this it can be seen what station of the way he has reached.

By the "persona" Jung means that segment of the ego which is concerned
with relations to the surrounding world. Its task is to build up a relatively
stable facade adapted to the demands of present-day civilization. An elastic
persona that "fits well" belongs to the psychic wardrobe of the adult man,
and its lack or its rigidity is an indication of psychic maldevelopment.
Contrariwise," there is always some danger of identifying with the persona,
e.g., the professor with his textbooks, the tenor with his voice, the general
with his rank. Then one can no longer do anything in a human way, one is
glued to one's mask. But if one has no proper persona, one strikes other
people as vague and vacillating, and no one knows what to make of such an
individual. Jung writes: "One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the
persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as
others think one is." 3 If the persona is lacking, one has no protecting "face",
and is exposed to the world with all one's moods like a child.

As the persona, if it is one that "fits well", makes use of the predominant
attitude and function, it grows and consolidates itself at the same rate as
they do. This gives it the suppleness it needs if it is to maintain itself
without robbing the psychic qualities that lie "behind" it of their vitality.
The persona can be chosen only up to a certain point. It is formed by a
successful union of the ego-ideal, i.e., what one imagines one ideally is, with
the ideal of the surrounding world and what it expects of one. If the persona
is unable to do justice to one of these factors, it will not function properly
and often acquires an unnatural, neurotic aspect.

The development and differentiation of the predominant "attitude" and

main "function" as well as of the persona generally go hand in hand with
experiences and conflicts which are indispensable for the maturation of the
psyche. They

}8 The Way of Individuation

broaden a man's knowledge of himself and of life and in that way extend the
scope of his consciousness.

A "rounding out" of the psyche is not yet called for at this stage of
development; indeed, a certain degree of one-sidedness is still necessary
and valuable. It gives a young person the verve and initiative he needs in
order to attain independence and weather the inner and outer storms which
accompany his psychic growth. The unreflecting activity and spontaneity
that carry him along help him to win his position in the world; though they
entail the drawback of unconsciousness, they supply the drive and push
needed in the struggle for existence.

During the first half of life there is also formed, as a result of the necessarily
one-sided development of consciousness, the shadow, which is the sum of
all the qualities conforming to our sex that were neglected or rejected while
the ego was being built up. The growth of the shadow, like that of the
persona, keeps pace with that of the ego; it is, as it were, the ego's mirror-
image, and is compounded partly of repressed, partly of unlived psychic
features which, for moral, social, educational, or other reasons, were from
the outset excluded from consciousness and from active participation in life
and were therefore repressed or split off. Accordingly the shadow can be
marked by both positive and negative qualities.

Besides the "personal shadow" there is in Jung's view also a "collective

shadow" in which the general evil is contained (as in the figure of
Mephistopheles, for instance). It gives expression not to the contents
belonging to the personal life-history of the individual but to everything
negative, everything that opposes the spirit of the time, and represented in
the Christian Middle Ages, for instance, by witches and sorcerers. Even
today, the qualities of the collective shadow are imputed either to capitalism
or to communism, according to one's political beliefs.

The shadow qualities may appear personified in dreams. They often appear
in projection, as the qualities of some ob-
ject or person with whom there is a correspondingly strong positive or
negative tie. Mostly they are projected on persons of the same sex as the
projicient, as can be observed among brothers and sisters or pairs of friends
(this is particularly striking in homosexual relationships). When we lose
conscious control of ourselves for one reason or another, the qualities of the
shadow appear on our own persons, in the form of blunders, asocial
behaviour, egoisms, rudeness, etc., which can no longer be projected and
show that there are other powers in us besides the ego.

People who believe their ego represents the whole of their psyche, and who
neither know nor want to know all the other qualities that belong to it, are
wont to project their unknown "soul parts" into the surrounding world—for
everything unconscious is first experienced in projection, as qualities of
objects. These are those well-known people who always think they are in the
right, who in their own eyes are quite blameless and wonderful, but always
find everybody else difficult, malicious, hateful, and the source of all their
troubles. Nobody likes to admit his own darkness, for which reason most
people put up—even in analytical work—the greatest resistance to the
realization of their shadow. As Ulrich Zwingli long ago remarked very aptly:
"Like an octopus hiding behind its black juice to avoid seizure, a man, so
soon as he observes we will be at him, suddenly envelops himself in such a
dense hypocritical fog that the sharpest eye cannot perceive him . . . His
impudence in lying, his readiness to deny and disown, is so great that, when
you think you have laid hold of him, he has already slipped out by the back
door." 4

We learn by experience, mostly unpleasant, through collisions of all kinds,

through disappointments and illnesses, that we as much as other people
have shadow qualities. This insight leads to self-knowledge, which has
always been considered the supreme spiritual goal, as witnessed by
tradition. Schiller, too, describes in his poem, "The Veiled Image at Sais", 5
how the great secret, hidden from him all his life, was himself, his own

"truth", which he suddenly recognized in this image; from that moment:

. . . gone Was all the former gladness of his life, And sorrow bore him to an
early grave.

The ego and its antagonist, the shadow, represent an archetypal motif that
plays a role not only in our daily life, but also for instance in mythology. The
"twins" or "unlike brothers", such as Castor and Pollux (the Dioscuri), the
Mithraic Cautes and Cautopates, Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu, Apollo
and his brother Dionysus, illustrate this bi-polar relationship as also do
Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, etc. We meet them again in literature as
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Dante and Virgil, Faust and Wagner, etc.
The sacred physicians Cosmas and Damian exemplify the same motif. As
they form a pair of opposites which taken together constitute a "whole",
healing power is attributed to them. And indeed experience confirms that
the conscious realization of the shadow, the disclosure of its qualities, and
the integration of its contents always have a therapeutic effect because this
is a step on the way towards man's wholeness.

The concept of integration involves more than a mere knowledge of the

shadow's qualities. For example an alcoholic, in order to be cured, must not
only be conscious of his tendency or compulsion to drink—which many of
them deny—but must also discover the deeper reasons that have induced
his craving. These reasons are always shadow qualities which he cannot
accept, which he flees from in order to rid himself of the pangs of
conscience their recognition would entail. The precondition for a cure,
therefore, is that the alcoholic should keep these shadow qualities
constantly before him, seeing in his mind's eye this drinker in himself as his
unswerving companion, until he can no longer forget his presence. For "a
content can be integrated only when its double aspect has become conscious
and when it is grasped not merely intellectually but

understood according to its feeling value". 6 Only then has he accepted it

completely and integrated it as his own possession and so gained power
over it. Truly a task which one fears, understandably enough; for fulfilling it
means nothing less than sharing the life of one's antagonist, who may be
dark or light, evil or good, but will always be undifferentiated, undeveloped,
and unadapted. This is not surprising as he spends his whole life, so to
speak, "in Coventry".

During the first phase of the individuation process, which properly comes to
an end with the crystallization of the ego, one should, according to Jung,
have recourse to analytical assistance only if there are special therapeutic or
"fateful" reasons for it. Such is the case, for instance, when there is a psychic
complication, a special fear of life, a neurosis, or a difficult situation which
cuts the individual off from the natural and necessary experiences and trials
of life or imposes on him a burden he is unable to carry alone.

In general, if there are difficulties in the first half of life an analysis of the
repressed "ontogenetic" contents (i.e., those pertaining to the life-history of
the individual) is sufficient. They correspond roughly to the problems of
childhood and youth considered by Freud, and for this reason Jung too, in
such cases, would take account of the Freudian viewpoints, though giving
them rather a different accent. Hard-and-fast rules cannot, of course, be
made. With younger people one can usually manage with Freudian and
Adlerian aims and help them to adapt to the circumstances of their lives.
But with people over forty this is no longer true in the majority of cases.
"The basic facts of the psyche undergo a very marked alteration in the
course of life, so much so that we could almost speak of a psychology of life's
morning and a psychology of its afternoon." 7 Hence in analytical work very
much depends on the age of the patient and naturally also on the kind of
material his associations and dreams present.

Usually it is easier for an extravert to adapt to the demands of outer reality

—the specific task of the first half of life—than

it is for an introvert, whose nature is moulded rather by his inner

experiences. This frequently leads to difficulties with adaptation and even to
neurotic disturbances. In the nature of things the introvert will feel drawn
to the "inward way". But as this way presupposes a stable ego, the
acquisition of which is particularly difficult for the introvert because of his
fear of concrete reality, it is chiefly introverts who resort to
psychotherapeutic help in the first half of life.

Just as the tasks of the first half of life present difficulties to the introvert,
those of the second are a particularly thorny problem for the extravert. The
successful extravert who has remained one-sided will frequently notice,
when he approaches the afternoon of life, that he is dried up inside, just as
the inveterate introvert, when he is getting on in years, cannot fail to
recognize that he has really missed half his life in the outer world. Both then
realize that the inner anchor is lacking which would hold them steady in
face of the ever-nearing reality of their life's end.

At this point the second phase of the individuation process begins, when the
ego, having become consolidated during the first phase, turns back in order
to gather new vitality from contact with its origin, the creative background
of the psyche, and to cast anchor in it this time for sure. After having broken
away from the domain of the Self, the ego must re-establish a connection
with it so as not to remain rootless and lifeless. "The goal of psychic
development is the self. There is no linear evolution; there is only a
circumambulation of the self. Uniform development exists, at most, only at
the beginning; later, everything points towards the centre." 8 In this sense
one can regard the individuation process as a growing of the ego out of the
Self and as a re-rooting in it.

This turning-point, which normally begins with the transition from the first
to the second half of life, cannot be pinned down to a definite year or to a
definite period, but varies from individual to individual. It summons up the
more or less un-

conscious, hitherto neglected sides of the psyche. Unless they participate in

life and become relatively differentiated, the wholeness the individuation
process is striving for cannot be reached, although it is, of course, quite
impossible to bring all the repressed and unlived material to light, as well as
all four "functions" in equal degree, and make it accessible to consciousness.
The neurotic and psychotic breakdowns of this period are often due,
according to Jung, to the inability to follow up the demand for conscious
realization; they are crises pertaining to the change of life and are not the
result of problems in childhood. In most of the cases the lack of a tenable
philosophy of life or of a religious foundation is also apparent— which, in
this critical phase, when everything gets unsettled and needs to be built up
again, would provide a secure foothold. As a rule there is no proper
relationship to the suprapersonal as a support, so that the crises are due to
actual conflicts in the present and not to those rooted in the past.

Practical work in the individuation process centres on the observation of

dreams and fantasies, the interpretation of their imagery with the help of
the method of amplification, 9 and the distinction between their personal
and their archetypal aspects. This work can result not only in the removal of
the crisis but also in an activation of the creative powers of the unconscious
psyche. By confronting the long' repressed contents of the unconscious the
ego is able to objectify them so that they can now be recognized and
understood. There is no conscious realization without discrimination of the
intrapsychic oppo-sites. "The essential thing is to differentiate oneself from
these unconscious contents by personifying them, and at the same time to
bring them into relationship with consciousness. That is the technique for
stripping them of their power. It is not too difficult to personify them, as
they always possess a certain degree of autonomy, a separate identity of
their own. Their autonomy is a most uncomfortable thing to reconcile
oneself to, and yet the very fact that the unconscious presents itself in that
way gives us the best means of handling it." 10 "Conscious and

unconscious stand in a reciprocal, dynamic relationship; out of the

unconscious rise contents and images, and they show themselves to the
conscious mind as though secretly asking to be grasped and understood, so
that 'birth* may be accomplished and 'being* created/' says Aniela Jaff6. "If
consciousness fails, the images sink back again into the dark, into
nothingness, and everything remains as if unhappened. But if it succeeds in
grasping the meaning of the images, a transformation takes place, and not
merely of consciousness in the sense of an expansion or an illumination,
but, strangely enough, of the unconscious as well; there is an activation of
the 'nothingness'." u

Whereas the psychic features pertaining to the shadow derive from the
personal life-history of the individual, and their conscious realization is the
task of an analysis in the first half of life, one of the main tasks of the second
phase of the individuation process—unless there are exceptional reasons
against having to penetrate into the deeper transpersonal layers of the
psyche—is a confrontation with the unconscious feminine features of the
man, which Jung calls the anima, or with the unconscious masculine
features of the woman, the animus? 2 Both are archetypal powers and
besides personal elements also contain collective ones. Being so constituted,
they form the natural bridge to the deepest layers of the psyche.

We find ourselves confronted with the figures of anima and animus either in
the outer world (when they are projected on persons) or in dreams and
fantasies. In this respect they behave just like the shadow. In addition, they
are embodied in mythology and art, in legend and fairytale, by figures
known to everyone, and their manifestations include every conceivable
quality of man and woman, from the lowest to the highest. Their first
representatives, for the child, are father and mother in their everyday
reality. Yet, as Jung has shown from the dreams of earliest childhood, the
child brings into the world with him an a priori knowledge, unconscious at
first, of the paternal and maternal as perpetually repeated, archetypal

forms of being. The individual component and the collective ground-plan

immanent as a structural element of the psyche together constitute that
psychic image which we call "mother" or "father" and which, as we have
said, represents the earliest form of anima or animus.

In the first half of life it is natural and logical that these intrapsychic figures
should appear in projection, and that we are thus attracted to the men and
women who are their carriers, and fall in love with them. The projection
produces a mutual attraction, it is the "trap" that embroils us with the other
sex and so ensures the continuation of the species. Conversely, it is the task
of the second half of life to withdraw the projections. It belongs to the
second phase of the individuation process, when a man must learn to stand
by himself, to discover the contrasexual element in himself and to fecundate
it, thus rounding out his personality without impairing his faculty for
relationship as such. If the "bodily child" is born of the first form of
relationship, the fruit of the second is the "spiritual child". That is why we
can observe that creative, spiritually productive people are often
congenitally endowed with a relatively large share of contrasexual features,
that they are "hermaphroditic" by psychic constitution, so to speak, and, as
a result, not infrequently exhibit "narcissistic" tendencies.

The encounter with anima and animus makes it possible for us to apprise
ourselves of our contrasexual traits in all their manifestations and to accept
at least a part of the qualities projected on the male or female partner as
belonging to our own selves, though as a rule this is not accomplished
without violent resistances. What man will recognize or accept his
moodiness, his unreliability, his sentimentality, and all the other allegedly
"feminine" vices, as his own characteristics instead of chalking them up to
the nearest female in his vicinity? And what woman will be persuaded to
admit that her immovable opinions and arguments are begotten by a bogus
logic which stems from her own unconscious masculinity? Once they are
made conscious and are no longer projected, but are expe-

rienced as belonging to oneself, as realities and agencies within the psyche,

anima and animus become symbols of its power to procreate and to give
birth: everything new and creative owes its existence to them. They are the
fount from which all artistic productivity flows.
In the course of further development, it is necessary to delineate the
experience of these masculine or feminine traits more sharply, to separate
what is individual and unique in the man or woman from the collective
foundation of the psyche as well as from the external collective situation.
Expressed in the language of symbols, this means adding a depth-
dimension to the archetypal figures of the "Fatherly" and "Motherly" that
appear at the beginning of life. Jung speaks of them, in this later,
differentiated phase of the individuation process, as the "Wise Old Man"
and the "Great Mother", principles of the primordial, masculine, spiritual
Logos and of the primordial, feminine, earthly Eros. Their realization brings
final detachment from the concrete parents. The conflicts with father and
mother, the relations with them, which occupy a central place in Freudian
theory, play—in Jung's psychology—a decisive role only in an analysis
during the first half of life; in the second, once they are worked through,
they become the gateway into the "realm of the Mothers", the collective
unconscious. 13

For once a man has reached a certain state of maturity through the
individuation process it becomes possible for him to see his apparently
insurmountable personal problems in the light of objective problems
common to all humanity, and this not infrequently robs them of their
urgency and their sting. "What, on a lower level, had led to the wildest
conflicts and to panicky outbursts of emotion, now looks like a storm in the
valley seen from the mountain top. This does not mean that the storm is
robbed of its reality, but instead of being in it one is above it." 14 One is no
longer directly affected by it, having gained the necessary detachment.

The meeting with the "primordial images" is not without its dangers,
because the archetypal motifs which are constellated

by the analytical work, if it goes deep enough, prove to be charged with a

powerful numinosity. 15 Not for nothing is the individuation process said to
be an analogy of the "quest of the hero", or of the dangers which he must
overcome before he can gain the king's throne. In this phase of the work it is
no exaggeration to say that the ego enters the realm of those figures which,
in Jung's commentary on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, are called the
"devouring, blood-drinking gods" who conjure up the danger of psychosis.
16 The archetypal material that comes up is the same as that of which the
delusions of the insane are composed. 17 The shattering effect of these
borderline phenomena, of these inner experiences and confrontations,
brings about a transformation which enables the matured personality to
take the "middle way" and finally win to psychic peace. That such an
undertaking requires a strong and resilient ego, and also, if all the dangers
are to be overcome, the constant surveillance of a skilled and perceptive
therapist with a stable personality, should need no further stressing.
The confrontation with the shadow and its integration must always be
achieved first in the individuation process in order to strengthen the ego for
further laps in the journey and for the crucial encounter with the Self. That
is why the shadow qualities must first be made conscious, even at the risk of
neglecting other aspects and other figures presented by the psychic
material. We find the same thing in myths and fairytales, where the hero
always needs a friend, his own shadow side, as a companion in order to
overcome the dangers of his quest. Ego and shadow together form that
comprehensive consciousness which alone is able to meet and come to
terms with the archetypal powers, and the contrasexual figures in
particular.

The sequence of archetypal symbols that are constellated in the course of

the analytical work, and the conscious confrontation with them, should not
be imagined as a normative process which remains constantly the same.
The principle is unchanging—namely, to pay attention to whatever the
depths may present; only the accent, the interpretation one gives the ma-

terial, changes according to situation and age. In the first half of life the
material of the collective unconscious is neglected in favour of that from the
personal unconscious; in the second it is the other way round. Generally
speaking, the shadow blocks the view of the other figures in the psyche so
long as it is not differentiated from the ego, and the same is true of anima
and animus. So long as they remain undifferentiated, the field of
consciousness is not broad enough to accommodate the other archetypal
images and figures with their particular dynamism.

Ego and Self

he aim of the individuation process is a synthesis of all partial aspects of the

conscious and unconscious psyche. It seems to point to an ultimately
unknowable, transcendent "centre" of the personality, which—paradoxically
—is at the same time its periphery—and is of the "highest intensity",
possessing an extraordinary power of irradiation. This centre and periphery
Jung calls the Self, and he terms it the origin and fulfilment of the ego.

It appears to be the origin of the ego because the ego, as a "part" of the Self,
is the centre of the field of consciousness through which alone we
experience and perceive. Everything that does not pass through the ego is
"unconscious", not known to us. The degree to which the ego is affected by
its perceptions varies, and the luminosity of consciousness, i.e., the
sharpness of its focus and its powers of assimilation, will vary accordingly.
The ego is, however, also the "fulfilment" of the Self, since it is the only
authority in the psyche which can know of the Self, relate to it, and remain
in constant, living connection with it. A strong, consolidated ego is fed not
only by the material of consciousness but also from the source of the Self,
having a share in both realms.

Jung explains the relation of ego to Self as follows: "The term 'self seemed
to me a suitable one for this unconscious

$o The Way of Individuation

substrate, whose actual exponent in consciousness is the ego. The ego

stands to the self as the moved to the mover, or as object to subject, because
the determining factors which radiate out from the self surround the ego on
all sides and are therefore supraordinate to it. The self, like the unconscious,
is an a priori existent out of which the ego evolves. It is, so to speak, an
unconscious prefiguration of the ego." * It is more encompassing than the
ego, which is as it were the executive organ within the great sphere of the
self. "When I call this unknowable thing the self," Jung says elsewhere, 2
"nothing has happened except that the operations of the unknowable have
received a comprehensive name. But this is not to prejudge its content. A
large unknown portion of my own being is included in it, but, because this
portion is unconscious, I cannot indicate its extent and its boundaries. The
self is therefore a borderline concept, which is far from being covered by the
known psychic processes."

The Self is always there, it is the central, archetypal, structural element of

the psyche, operating in us from the beginning as the organizer and director
of the psychic processes. Its a priori teleological character, its striving to
realize an aim, exist even without the participation of consciousness.
Although the infantile ego grows out of the Self, it is at first unconscious of
this fact; many people remain unconscious of it all their lives, and this
harbours considerable dangers. Either the Self then appears in projection
and meets us as an alien thing attached to some external object, or else it
produces an inflation of the ego, because the ego is then not separated from
the figures in the unconscious and is still wholly contained in the Self,
identical with it, which amounts to megalomania. But if the Self is
withdrawn from projection and recognized as something operative in
ourselves, if it is understood as an autonomous reality and is differentiated
from the other psychic elements, "then one is truly one's own yea and nay.
The self then functions as a union of opposites and thus constitutes the
most immediate experience of the Divine which it is psychologically

possible to imagine." 3 It then represents the unity in which all psychic

opposites cancel out.

Its inherent metaphysical aspect, its fateful character, give the Self a godlike
power in the psyche. It is only natural, therefore, that Jung should draw
parallels between the images in which the Self becomes visible and can be
perceived by us and those in which God appears. This had led many people,
above all theologians, to the mistake of thinking that with his concept of the
Self Jung wanted to give God himself a name, although time and again in
his writings he has emphasized that his statements about the Self refer only
to the manifestation of the God-image and of the God-concept in the human
psyche. "At all events," Jung says, "the soul must contain in itself the faculty
of relationship to God, i.e., a correspondence, otherwise a connection could
never come about. This correspondence is, in psychological terms, the
archetype of the God-image/* 4 Since God-images are the products of
religious fantasy they are unavoidably anthropomorphic and therefore, like
every symbol, capable of psychological elucidation. But psychology can
make no statements about the nature of God. On the other hand, it can very
well observe and describe the phenomenology of his "reflection" in the
human psyche, and explore it scientifically.

Jung has repeatedly explained that psychology, as an empirical science, is

not competent to do more than establish whether the factor found in the
psyche may, on the basis of comparative research, legitimately be termed a
"God-image". "Nothing positive or negative has thereby been asserted about
the possible existence of God, any more than the archetype of the 'hero'
posits the actual existence of a hero." 5 "In physics we can do without a
God-image, but in psychology it is a definite fact that has got to be reckoned
with, just as we have to reckon with 'affect', 'instinct', 'mother', etc. It is the
fault of the everlasting contamination of object and image that people can
make no conceptual distinction between 'God' and 'God-image', and
therefore think that when one speaks of the 'God-

image' one is speaking of God and offering 'theological' explanations. It is

not for psychology, as a science, to demand an hypostatization of the God-
image. But, the facts being what they are, it does have to reckon with the
existence of a God-image." 6 "The idea of God is an absolutely necessary
psychological function of an irrational nature, which has nothing whatever
to do with the question of God's existence. The human intellect can never
answer this question, still less give any proof of God. Moreover such proof is
superfluous, for the idea of an all-powerful divine Being is present
everywhere, unconsciously if not consciously, because it is an archetype." 7 "
'God' is a primordial experience of man, and from the remotest times
humanity has taken inconceivable pains either to portray this baffling
experience, to assimilate it by means of interpretation, speculation, and
dogma, or else to deny it. And again and again it has happened, and still
happens, that one hears too much about the 'good' God and knows him too
well, so that one confuses him with one's own ideas and regards them as
sacred because they can be traced back a couple of thousand years. This is a
superstition and an idolatry every bit as bad as the Bolshevist delusion that
'God' can be educated out of existence." 8

The transcendent God will remain the object primarily of theology and
faith, but his operation in the depths of the psyche, as the "immanent God",
is also the concern of scientific psychology, since he can make himself
known directly through the symbols of the Self. People do not listen to their
inner voice, however; only a few are able to believe that something divine is
contained in their soul. "Christian education has done all that is humanly
possible, but it has not been enough. Too few have experienced the divine
image as the innermost possession of their own souls." 9 "If the theologian
really believes in the almighty power of God on the one hand and in the
validity of dogma on the other, why then does he not trust God to speak in
the soul? Why this fear of psychology? Or is, in complete contradiction to
dogma, the soul itself a hell from

which only demons gibber?" 10 Although the Bible says "The kingdom of
God is within you," u most people seek it only outside. Nevertheless, from
the encounter with the "immanent God" the "transcendent God" can be
spontaneously inferred, for the God-images "imprinted" in the psyche, the
symbols of the Self, logically presuppose an "imprinter". God can naturally
be outside as well as inside. He is everywhere, but it is only in the psyche
that his workings can be perceived through the symbols of the Self.

If the ego ceases to be at death, then it ceases to be aware of the existence of

the Self and can no longer establish a relationship with it. The God-images
are then extinguished; the manifestations of the Self perish with the ego.
Whether the divine essence, reflected and manifested in the living soul,
continues to exist independently of the individual, timelessly and non-
spatially, is again a question of belief and not a matter for scientific
investigation.

It is one of the foremost tasks of the individuation process to raise the God-
images, that is their radiations and effects, to consciousness and thus
establish a constant dynamic contact between the ego and the Self. This
alliance bridges over the tendencies to personality dissociation which arise
from the instincts pulling in opposite directions.

Erich Neumann has called the relation between ego and Self an "axis",
because the whole development of the personality revolves round it and is
inherent in the psyche from the very beginning. Not only the development
of the ego and of consciousness, but every change or transformation of the
individual is, according to him, accomplished with the help of this ego-Self
axis. 12 At first, in childhood, and often long afterwards, sometimes even till
death, the ego is unconscious of its relation to the Self. Only when it has
become conscious of it as a living thing is the reciprocal action between ego
and Self established, only then does the axis function in a dynamic way and
give the individual an inner certainty and feeling of security, as though

he were contained in an all-embracing whole. It amounts to "a quasi-

conscious or supra-conscious, at any rate no longer unconscious, experience
that world and psyche, outside and inside, above and below are only two
aspects of a unity sundered by consciousness", says Neumann. 13
This axis is the vehicle also for the formation and development of
consciousness, without which God may perhaps be "felt" but cannot be
perceived in his manifestations. Wherever we may encounter God, we shall
be able to apprehend him only with the help of our human, limited psychic
structure, which is our "receiving apparatus". His real essence can, of
course, never be grasped within the confines of the psyche, since it
transcends them; at most it can be divined when we meet it in the images
and symbols of the Self, or when it reveals itself to faith. Always the
plenitude of the divine radiance has to pass through the filter of our human
nature and reaches us obscured and refracted.

What Jung speaks about, therefore, is always only the "reflection"—the

imagery in which God, the inapprehensible, portrays and communicates
himself to us. Truth and life can be grasped only in similitudes, and the
twofold task of man is to "perceive the unearthly in the earthly, to give it
earthly form in work, word . . . and deed; this is the essence of the true
symbol", 14 and hence also of the Self as the reflection of the unearthly, the
ineffable.

This reflection, this image indwelling in the human heart from time
immemorial, expresses that virtual centre in the psyche which possesses the
greatest charge of energy. Every content that is anywhere near this
supercharged centre receives from it a numinous power, as though
"possessed" by it. Again and again man has experienced that from this
centre he could sense God's workings in his psyche at their most
overwhelming, that "the voice of transcendence resounds through it". 15
And as often as he put another content in his centre in place of God—
whether it were a beloved partner, money, nation, party, or any other
"ism"—and made it a surrogate for God, he became its victim to his own
destruction.

In a psyche that is "in order" the various psychic components balance one
another and are grouped round the centre. If it is not the God-image but
another content that occupies this centre, the content gets blown up with
the accumulation of energy, often to bursting point. The God-image is then
thrust aside from its rightful place, loses its efficacy, and can become so
etiolated that it vanishes from consciousness altogether. The result is loss of
psychic balance, leading to neurosis or psychosis. For it is then no longer a
knowledge of God, his influence, that possess the individual, but the content
he has put in the psychic centre instead of the God-image.

A man "possessed" is always a religious person in the negative sense, so to

speak. He does not notice that, for sheer terror of "falling into the hands of
the living God", he has sold himself body and soul to God's devilish
counterpart. For the Self, too, has a shadow, a dark half, like everything
human. "In the empirical self, light and shadow form a paradoxical unity,"*
says Jung. 16 When the occupant of the psychic centre is smaller than the
God-image, or when this centre is still walled in by convention or petrified
beliefs, void within and ruled by fear, the relationship to the God-image is at
an end, the ego-Self axis broken. Either the ordering consciousness is then
separated by a deep rift from the dark powers of the unconscious psyche,
now become autonomous, each of them going its own way and involving the
individual in a labyrinth of conflicts, or else they have already succeeded in
seizing control and in reducing the ego to impotence. The growing number
of people who have lost their relation to the Self provides a shattering object
lesson as to where such a separation may lead.

"By his care for the psyche of his patients Jung tries to understand the
meaning of philosophical, religious, and metaphysical statements and their
relation to life, in order to apply them in his psychotherapy," says Jung's
colleague and namesake. 17 Thus theology becomes a discussion of the
imago Dei in man, and "trinitarian thinking is fettered to the reality of this
world". 18 The "fetter" of this world adds itself as the fourth to the
metaphysical Trinity, thereby making it a quaternity. 1 *

The quaternity, above all in the form of the square, is one of the oldest
symbols besides the circle for wholeness and completeness, symbolizing the
parts, qualities, and aspects of unity, 20 and it is therefore natural to regard
it as a God-image, as a representation of the Self. By manifesting itself in the
psychic substance of man, the trinitarian divinity acquires a "body" and no
longer pertains to the abstract, metaphysical world but to the physical world
of concrete reality. Through the inclusion of this fourth dimension the
extreme psychic op-posites are combined in the Self and united in a
paradoxical unity. "The self," says Jung, "is absolutely paradoxical in that it
represents in every sense thesis and antithesis, and at the same time
synthesis." 21 However, "only the paradox comes anywhere near to
comprehending the fullness of life. Non-ambiguity and non-contraction are
one-sided and thus un-suited to express the incomprehensible." 22

Actually the Self is everywhere and behind everything. It is as though, all his
life, man were circling round it, ever drawing closer in narrower and
narrower circles, perceiving its effects and its actuality ever more clearly,
but without ever unveiling its ultimate secret. "We are all in God's hands" is
a saying that is often on men's lips, though they do not reflect that it also
expresses their total abandonment to an unpredictable fate. Summing up
what people have to say about their experience of wholeness, Jung puts it
like this: "They came to themselves, they could accept themselves, they were
able to become reconciled to themselves, and thus were reconciled to
adverse circumstances and events. This is almost like what used to be
expressed by saying: He has made his peace with God, he has sacrificed his
own will, he has submitted himself to the will of God." 23 The right relation
between ego and Self conveys something of this attitude of humility. For
through the Self there speaks an authority which, as God's representative,
has the character of fate. That is why the union of the ego with the Self is
indistinguishable from a unio mystica with God, and is a shattering and
profoundly religious experience.

An encounter with the Self is ecstatic because it gives man the experience of
a trans-subjective reality that bursts the bounds of his ego. But therein lies
its danger. The union of the ego with a suprapersonal, numinous power like
the archetype of the Self means an expansion of personality which, if the ego
does not immediately return to its place, leads to inflation, to a loss of the
ego, and in the worst case to a psychosis. "The great psychic danger which is
always connected with individuation, or the development of the self, lies in
the identification of ego-consciousness with the self. This produces an
inflation which threatens consciousness with dissolution . . . We have before
our eyes as a warning just such a pair of friends distorted by inflation—
Nietzsche and Zarathustra—but the warning has not been heeded. And what
are we to make of Faust and Mephistopheles? The Faustian hybris is already
the first step towards madness." 24 To linger in a unio mystica, as it were
"egoless", is the supreme goal of Buddhist meditation, equivalent to
"entering into nirvana", but, because it means the loss of an ever-renewed
dialectical discussion between the ego and Self, it does not, according to
Jung, correspond to the way of individuation for Western man.

The "ultimately unknowable", as Jung has called the Self, manifests itself at
all stages of the individuation process, from birth to death, in specific
symbols which, however varied, always reflect the state and attitude of the
conscious mind. As a rule they manifest themselves when the ego has run
into a cul-de-sac, when consciousness is confused and needs the guidance of
a transpersonal authority, whether in youth or age. With the appearance of
a Self-symbol the balance between the ego and the unconscious background
can be restored. To be cut off from the helpful source of the Self always
means isolation for the ego and loss of security. For this reason it is
essential for psychic health—above all in maturer years—to keep the ego-
Self axis unbroken and in constant dynamic mobility. Special methods used
for this purpose in an analytically assisted

individuation process, such as "active imagination" 25 in its various forms—

writing, painting, sculpting, modelling, dancing, etc.—help to activate the
psychic depths, to maintain the vital contact between conscious and
unconscious contents, and to express the emerging symbols in plastic form.

In the course of these "imaginations", as also in dreams and fantasies, the

"uniting symbols" will appear. These are the symbols that most vividly
represent the fundamental order of the psyche, the union of its polaris tic
qualities. The most important among them are the mandalas. 2 * They are
the prime symbols of the Self, of psychic wholeness; Jung calls them
"atomic nuclei" 27 of the psyche. They belong to the oldest religious symbols
and are to be met with even in palaeolithic times. We find them in all
cultures and among all peoples, but more particularly in the sphere of
Buddhism, where the most artistically beautiful and most impressive
examples may be found. Their commonest form is the circle or square, but
many of them take the form of a flower, a cross, or a wheel, with a distinct
inclination towards a quadratic structure. The peculiar symbolism of the
mandala shows almost universally the same regularity, expressed in typical,
symmetrical arrangement of its elements, these being always related to the
centre. These structures not only express order, they also create order.
Consequently, in the East, meditation on them is traditionally said to bring
about an inner, psychic balance with healing powers.

If mandalas occur in dreams, it always means that there is a

latent'possibility of order. But if "disturbed mandalas" are produced—
mandalas that are asymmetrical or disorganized in some way—this may be
taken as a symptom of the momentary incapacity of the unconscious psyche
to create order and achieve a state of balance. In other words, the self-
regulating and self-curing powers of the psyche are disturbed. 28

Apart from mandalas, other symbols of the Self are the sphere, the pearl,
the diamond, crystal, flower, child, chalice, Anthropos, hermaphrodite, etc.
It depends on the position of an object or figure in the dream context
whether it should be taken as a symbol of the Self or not. In accordance with
the

high value laid on the Self, figures of great religious significance often
occupy the centre of the picture, e.g., Christ with the four evangelists or
Buddha with his disciples.

Depending on the psychic disposition of the individual, however, and the

degree of development he has reached, everything in creation, great or
small, sublime or ridiculous, concrete or abstract, can become a symbol of
the Self and compel the conscious mind to react to this directive centre.
"Mille sunt nomina" it is said of the lapis philosophorum, the stone of the
wise, an alchemical symbol of the Self. The criterion for symbols of the Self
is their numinosity. This is their constant characteristic, for they represent a
coincidentia oppositorum, a union of opposites, in particular of conscious
and unconscious contents, and thus transcend rational understanding.
Through this union they bridge the dissociated portions of the psyche by
creating a tertium, a "third" thing, supraordinate to both sides. Thus, for
example, in alchemical symbolism this union is represented as the royal
brother and sister pair, i.e., as a union of opposites, from whom the "divine
child", the symbol of unity, of the Self, is born. All these symbols are the
vehicles and at the same time the product of the "transcendent function", 29
that is, of the psyche's symbol-making capacity, of its creative power.

Fateful as the confrontation with the Self may be, it is no substitute for the
trials of patience which the individual has to go through during the stages of
the individuation process, any more than is the production of mandalas
however numerous and of visions however ecstatic, as many people seem to
think. "Everything good is costly," says Jung, "and the development of
personality is one of the most costly of all things. It is a matter of saying yea
to oneself, of taking oneself as the most serious of tasks, of being conscious
of everything one does, and keeping it constantly before one's eyes in all its
dubious aspects—truly a task that taxes us to the utmost." 30 Patience is its
main postulate, for one must learn to "let things happen in the psyche"
without the continual interference and correction of consciousness.

The Archetype of the Individuation Process

A he individuation process, as a universal law of life, exhibits an archetypal

pattern which remains more or less constant and regular. The signposts and
milestones on the way are specific archetypal contents and motifs whose
sequence cannot, however, be determined in advance and whose
manifestations vary from individual to individual. The personal equation is
also decisive for their understanding and assimilation. For "the method is
merely the path, the direction taken by a man; the way he acts is the true
expression of his nature." *

The symbolism of birth, life, death, and rebirth is part of the pattern of the
individuation process. From the remotest times man has tried to express it
in the imagery of myths and fairytales, in rituals and works of art, to capture
the archetypal events in forms that are valid for all men.

Most of these myths and rituals have a phylogenetic, i.e., collectively valid,
aspect as well as an ontogenetic one relating to the life-history of the
individuals. 2 Many hero-myths, for instance, are a paradigm not only of the
way of individuation of a single individual, but also of the evolution of
consciousness in the course of history. The mythological fate of the hero,
who was often a "sun-hero", symbolizing the rising and setting of the sun,
may be regarded as a parallel of the archetypal development of the ego or
consciousness of a single individual

as well as of a group-consciousness. The evening, the sinking into the

darkness of night, was the "death" of the sun; its rising in the morning,
renewed, its "rebirth". For every rebirth is preceded by a death.

The fact that men speak of rebirth at all, that there has always been such a
concept, allows us to infer that "a store of psychic experiences designated by
that term must actually exist", 3 although not directly perceivable by the
senses. This store of experience is a psychic reality substantiated by a
consensus of opinion among all peoples at all epochs. "Rebirth is an
affirmation that must be counted among the primordial affirmations of
mankind." 4 It is not, however, always used in the same sense. 5 In the
present context it means psychic rebirth within the lifetime of the
individual, a renewal of personality in the sense of its growing completion,
its tendency towards wholeness. Consequently, there can be a rebirth of the
suppressed, unlived "nature" in man, as well as a rebirth of the neglected
and undeveloped "spirit", 6 both of which must be sought in order to round
out the individual into a whole. 7 But it will always be a "spiritual work" in
so far as the cooperation of consciousness is the indispensable condition for
both. Also, for most Westerners renewal in the sense of the Christian ideal
will mean reaching a higher spiritual level, a casting off of the fetters of a
technicized world.

Even so, rebirth can only proceed step by step, affecting the individual first
in one part and then in another, until it finally encompasses his whole life.
That is to say, the great arc of life whose ultimate aim is the rebirth of the
whole personality will consist of many little "rebirth moments" and "rebirth
events". Rebirth is not confined only to the analytically assisted
individuation process, it relates also to the "natural" one. For every rebirth
is an essential change, a transformation, and the possibility of this is
inherent in all living organisms. It must be noted, however, that not every
transformation is a process of individuation, though every individuation
process consists of a chain of transformations. Transformation and
individuation

are closely connected but are by no means identical. Equally, it must be

emphasized that transformation does not necessarily mean development. A
transformation is usually a sudden occurrence; it can point in all sorts of
different directions. But as a renewal or rebirth is always of its essence,
transformation is an integral component of the individuation process,
which in turn follows a line of development whose goal is psychic totality.

In the individuation process, as understood by Jung, the primary concern is

the individual experience of "death and rebirth" through struggle and
suffering, through a conscious, lifelong, unremitting endeavour to broaden
the scope of one's consciousness and so attain a greater inner freedom. As
well as going this personal way, the individual may also be transformed by
taking part in or witnessing a collective rite or ceremony, but without the
active participation of consciousness. Jung calls this "indirect rebirth". 8
The common factor here with the individuation process is the
"transformation", but this does not represent a process of development
though it may help to bring it about.

Such experiences can be observed primarily in religious ceremonies among

primitive tribes, but they also occur in the more highly differentiated
religions. In the latter the transformation seldom goes very deep; its effect
usually does not last long because it is not consciously worked through.
Nevertheless it can leave behind traces which serve to stimulate a further
striving for psychic development, as also happens in the natural
individuation process. Yet it must be admitted that in these situations there
can be experiences, such as sudden conversions or illuminations, which
affect the whole further course of life. The Christian Mass is in a sense an
exception, in that both kinds of transformation can occur in it. For one who
participates in it only as a collective being it remains a possibility of
transformation that belongs to the second category; but if the participant
consciously devotes himself as an individual being to becoming one with
Christ in the communion, he is

drawn into a progressive psychic development which leads to rebirth on a

higher level, thus approximating to the way of individuation as understood
by Jung.

Both kinds of individuation process, in their various forms, can be found in

numerous myths and legends which offer more or less apt analogies to the
way of individuation. In the "natural" individuation process, which runs on
without the intervention of consciousness, as well as in the "methodically
guided" one, which is consciously worked through, a wealth of more or less
striking parallels can be adduced with the symbolism of mythology. In the
myths which have the daily course of the sun for their theme, whether it be
Jonah in the whale, Herakles in the sun-vessel, 9 the Egyptian goddess Nut,
who devours the sun every evening and gives birth to it every morning, 10
the natural individuation process is depicted symbolically in its eternal
cyclic recurrence, as manifested in the alternation of day and night, in the
succession of the seasons, in the rising and passing of the generations, etc.
11 Here, as in all unconscious processes, there is succession and recurrence
without any lasting transformation; the process is bound to the laws of
nature. Unlike the consciously experienced individuation process it is not an
opus contra naturam, except in the special case of an active life
courageously lived and consciously shaped. 12 Whenever our consciousness
intervenes and takes an active part, renewal and differentiation will follow.
Probably every process of psychic development in individuals with a
relatively unconsolidated ego is subject only to a "natural" individuation.
Yet the possibility of conscious transformation, of being reborn again and
again until full psychic development is reached, seems to be laid by fate on
those who already bear in themselves a brighter light of consciousness, and
this light will gain in strength and splendour as a result of their psychic
transformation and renewal.

Not only the two forms of individuation, the "natural" and the
"methodically assisted", but also its two main phases, that

of the first and that of the second half of life, 13 have their mythological
analogies. Sometimes only the first phase, sometimes the second, and
sometimes both are symbolically represented. Although the whole process
plots the course of conscious realization, the first phase aims at the
crystallization of a stable ego, and the second at the achievement of a
permanent relationship between the ego and the Self. 14 Accordingly, each
phase is characterized by a more or less marked variation of the archetypal
ground-pattern.
Most of the creation-myths, too, when looked at psychologically, can be
understood as symbolical representations of the original coming of
consciousness, as its birth, so to speak, which happens for the first time in
the psyche of the newborn child. When, for instance, in the Babylonian
creation-myth, to name but one of many, the hero Marduk, who stands for
the sun, kills and dismembers with his sword, symbolizing the sun's rays,
the dragon Tiamat, the embodiment of chaos and the primal darkness, and
the world arises from the parts of its body, 15 this is an analogy of the
creation of the world and the coming of consciousness. The sword of light is
plunged into the darkness of unconsciousness, the darkness is dispelled,
and objects take shape. They are "born", to so speak, they can now be seen,
discriminated, and named, they are perceived and apprehended by
consciousness. This creation of the world as the coming of consciousness is
an event that is ceaselessly repeated in the life of man. Every time it
happens a little bit of new territory, of new knowledge, a newly won insight,
is added to the field of consciousness, which is "reborn" in more
comprehensive form both in the natural and in the analytically assisted
individuation process.

The central content of the numerous myths in which a dragon or some other
monster is dismembered is the acquisition of an independent ego-
personality, for which purpose the "devouring, terrible mother" must be
overcome. If the individual is to develop and consolidate his ego, the
"mother" as the symbol of the darkness of unconsciousness must first be de-

stroyed by the bright light of youthful consciousness, symbolized by the

sun's rays or by the arrow, sword, or club. In the second phase of the
individuation process it is no longer a question of destruction but of a
descent into the dark realm of the unconscious, symbolized by the
devouring maw of the death-dealing monster. There in the depths, in the
creative womb of the "mother", and with the help of the strong light of
consciousness, is found the "treasure hard to attain", "the precious hoard"—
designations for the Self—which the hero must bring back to the light of
day. This journey to the underworld, the so-called nekyia, 1 * is the model
on which most of these myths and fates are based. We find it as the descent
into hell in the life of Christ, preceding his resurrection. The creation of the
world through the dismemberment of the maternal dragon is therefore the
archetypal ground-pattern for the task of the first phase of individuation;
being devoured by it, to emerge matured, transformed, and reunited with
the Self, is the mark of the second.

The numerous puberty rites still extant among primitives today present
useful analogies of this first phase, though with certain limitations. In
contrast to an individuation process extending over the whole span of life,
these rites occur in a compressed form and only during a fixed period, and
are an event in which the neophytes participate collectively. The underlying
ideas and aims are nevertheless similar to those of the individuation
process, and are often actually identical. We find in these rites images and
motifs which offer astounding analogies with those of the first phase and
even with those of the second. All of them are concerned with a psychic
renewal of the individual, with a rebirth characteristic of the individuation
process.

Let us take as an example the initiation rites 17 which the young men (as
well as the girls) have to go through in order to be accepted as full members
of the tribe, and to marry and found a family. Here we shall speak only of
the rites for the

men and their "initiation into outer reality", into adulthood. 18

The life of primitives still bears a strong biological stamp. Once a man's
biological life has started to decline, his role is over and done with, so to
speak. For this reason the second phase of the individuation process,
spiritual transformation and differentiation, or "initiation into inner
reality", is reserved only for the few, namely the medicine-men. They are the
wise men of the tribe, their dignity and rich experience make them the
"seers" among their fellow tribesmen. They are the exceptions, who in their
youth underwent the trials of initiation with the others, yet in their striving
for further development were able to gain deeper insights, judgment, and
shrewdness in human affairs, by virtue of which they possess healing power
and occupy a leading position in the tribe. 19

In most tribes the initiation rites the young men have to go through are,
with small variations, based on the same or a similar archetypal ground-
pattern. They represent rebirth ceremonies, that is, the rebirth of the child
into manhood, which can take place only if the child is rigorously separated
from his previous life and begins a new one.

The most important stages of these rites therefore consist in the strict
segregation of the neophytes from their previous environment, from women
and most of all from their mothers. They are secluded for months,
sometimes for years, in some remote spot, where they are initiated by the
medicine-man into the secrets of the tribe, into the world of the ancestor
spirits, circumcised, instructed about sex and prepared for marriage. They
learn what an adult needs to do in life—hunting, fishing, building,
handiwork of all kinds. Finally they emerge from their seclusion, often
naked as babes, and are taught how to eat, walk, and talk as though they
had just been born. They are given new clothes and often new names. 20

Sometimes they are secluded in a hut shaped like the mouth of a huge
dragon or crocodile, 21 symbolizing the devouring aspect of the mother
from which they have to free themselves. In some tribes, as a test of their
intrepidity and strength of will,
the neophytes have to step over the body of the mother, lying in the
doorway, or even tread on her belly without batting an eyelid.

Living in such a "dragon house" can be equated with the "descent into hell",
with a symbolic death, which is an essential part of the initiation and a
prelude to rebirth. 22 It is a radical psychic upheaval for the sake of
producing a new attitude to life, of establishing relations with the
mysterious powers of the Beyond, the ancestors, who are charged with
"mana", i.e., possess the most efficacious powers. In Jungian terms, this
would mean establishing relations with the numinous powers of the
collective unconscious, the archetypes, which dwell in the psychic
background of all members of the tribe. In the case of the single individual,
it would mean the realization of a relation to the Self. In this way, perhaps
owing to the relative shortness of the primitive's life, the most important
step in the second phase of individuation is anticipated.

Akin to these more or less primitive initiation ceremonies, which still take
place on the bodily plane, are the rites for initiating adults into various
mysteries, secret societies, and cults. Though they too are often confined to
a certain period, they have more the character of an "initiation into inner
reality"; their content is related more to the second phase of the
individuation process. In this connection we might mention— to name but a
few—the Isis and Demeter mysteries of antiquity, 23 those of the Orphics,
the Adonis cults, 24 and the initiation ceremonies of the Freemasons 25 and
Rosicrucians. 26 Various forms of initiation have always existed, and still
exist, among practically all peoples, for the longing for psychic development
and wholeness, for contact with the divine in some form, is an archetypal
datum and has always found expression in rites and cults of all kinds. But in
spite of thorough ethnological researches, and investigations into the
history of religion, the description of such initiations is always conjectural,
because strict silence about what they experience is almost al-

ways imposed on the initiates. Moreover it is of the essence of the mystery

that it can never be fully explained or fathomed. There is ample evidence
that initiation rites of this kind also found their way into Christianity. 27 In
a certain sense baptism, and above all the Mass, can be understood as
rebirth mysteries, 28 since their purpose is a transformation and renewal of
the personality. They are integral components of the individuation process.

In his writings, Jung has devoted less attention to the first phase of
individuation than to the second, On this he lays special weight, as it is the
most neglected phase of psychic development. Calling it the simplest
ground-plan, the archetypal ground-pattern or symbolic model for the
individual's way of individuation, Jung has on various occasions referred to
the myth of the "night sea journey" 29 cited by Frobenius, which he named
the "whale dragon myth". 30 The schematic representation 31 of this
journey, which occurs in numerous variations, is valid for the individuation
process as a whole as well as for each of its stages:

WEST EAST DEVOURING ^_| |_^. SUPPING OUT

^<£^£L MOVEMENT-^

A. FIRE-LIGHTING C HEAT, LOSS OF HAIR

B. CUTTING OFF OF HEART D. LANDING, OPENING

The accompanying text runs:

"A hero is devoured by a water-monster in the West (devouring). The

animal travels with him to the East (sea journey). Meanwhile, the hero
lights a fire in the belly of the monster (fire-lighting), and feeling hungry,
cuts himself a piece of the heart (cutting off of heart). Soon afterwards, he
notices that the fish has glided on to dry land (landing); he immedi-

ately begins to cut open the animal from within (opening); then he slips out
(slipping out). It was so hot in the fish's belly that all his hair has fallen out
(heat, loss of hair). The hero may at the same time free all those who were
previously devoured by the monster, and who now slip out too."

The hero stands for the sun (i.e., for ego-consciousness), the fish's belly for
the underworld (realm of the unconscious), for the night through which the
sun makes its journey. It sinks in the West, rises again in the East. The
lighting of a fire in the darkness can be interpreted as a sudden flickering up
of the light of consciousness, which enables the hero to find the
"essence" (heart), the supreme value hidden in the darkness. By eating it he
discovers the "meaning" of the night sea journey and has thereby prepared
the way for his deliverance. For as soon as consciousness pierces the
darkness, it begins to approach full luminosity: the fish glides slowly on to
dry land, into a conscious world. As a result of the "heat", i.e., the emotions
that shook the hero in his prison, he is "initiated" into the mysteries of the
darkness, and becomes humble and wise. He loses his original power of
thought (loss of hair) and, on cutting his way out ("rebirth"), emerges bald
as a newborn babe. Through the "slipping out" of the sun many other
contents that were hidden in the darkness come to light and can be
perceived.

This schema is valid for every phase of conscious realization, e.g., for that
daily journey of our consciousness through the night, during sleep. As in the
story of Jonah, it remains an open question whether the water-monster dies
or goes on living after the hero slips out. Presumably both variants occur. In
the first case it would mean the permanent survival of the victorious hero,
after the model of a "methodical" individuation; in the second it would be a
cyclic occurrence, as the sun, i.e., the hero, could always be devoured again
so long as the monster lives.

Entry into the belly of the monster, i.e., the submersion of consciousness in
the darkness of the unconscious, can be re-

yo The Way of Individuation

garded as a return to the mother's womb, as a regression. This should not be

looked upon as an incestuous wish-fulfilment, as Freud thought, but as the
possibility of rebirth. It is not something negative only, but in Jung's
prospective interpretation also a necessary and positive event. The realm of
the unconscious is not merely a deadly maw and certainly not a refuse bin;
it is a treasure-house of the nourishing and creative forces which dwell in all
living things. When bro'ught into contact with consciousness, they become
activated and place themselves at its disposal: they are "reborn". 32

The fact that Jung often used the "night sea journey" as a model for the
individuation process even in the first half of life has repeatedly given rise to
misunderstandings. Because individuation extends through the whole of
life, many people overlooked the fact that its first half stands under a
different sign from the second and therefore expresses itself in different
symbols. They assumed that only a person in the second half of life can
individuate, and they regarded the process always as an analogy of the
"descent into the underworld". But on closer examination this model is to
some extent applicable to all stages of the process of individuation. It can be
said with some justification that every act of conscious realization is a
plunging into the darkness of the underworld and a re-emergence from it,
such as we experience every day in our sleep and dreams, and that the
"night sea journey" therefore retains its validity for every kind of "rebirth",
i.e., conscious realization, whether it belong to the first or to the second
phase of individuation. Even so we must, if we wish to reduce the archetypal
material to some kind of order, try to distinguish in principle between its
two specific forms.

If we examine the material in which the two main phases of the

individuation process are symbolized, we find them most clearly
represented in most of the classical mythologems. Let us take a look at the
Egyptian myth of Osiris, for instance. 33 There the dividing line between
the first and the second phase

occurs when the sun-god Osiris stands at the height of his earthly power
and has accomplished all the tasks demanded by the first half of life by
winning his place in the world and begetting his son Horus as his successor.
At that point he falls a victim to his evil counterpart, his brother Set, is
dismembered, and begins his journey to the underworld in a coffer. He
enters into the womb of the mother, symbolized by the coffer, the sea, and
the tree-coffin, and, after his sister-wife Isis has sought the fourteen parts of
his body and put them together again, he is reborn and appears anew in his
son Harpocrates, the "weak in the legs". This son was begotten in the
underworld, the realm of the dead, and has no fixed abode in the real world
but, instead, is initiated into the mysteries. This may be taken as an
indication that the biological power of procreation, which pertains to the
first half of life and whose fruit is the "fleshly" child Horus, is superseded in
the second by a symbolic, spiritual one which brings the "spiritual" child to
birth. This spiritual procreative power is symbolized by the substitute
phallus which was made by Isis and put in the place of the phallus that was
lost during the dismemberment and could not be found again. 34

Although in the individuation process, aiming as it does at psychic totality,

the "missing" element must always be sought and integrated, and spirit and
nature, the heavenly and the chthonic realm, be considered in equal
measure, it is nevertheless the normal pattern of life that the biological
should occupy the foreground in youth and the spiritual in maturer years.
Consequently most of the myths paralleling the individuation process
culminate in an anchoring in inner reality, in the spiritual realm. Even in
the "hero-myths", such as that of Theseus, which may likewise be cited as
analogies, the overcoming of mortal dangers leads in the end to a victory
over the agents of darkness and to a rebirth in regenerated form.

As a further example we may cite Tantra yoga, 35 where again the aim is
ultimate spiritualization. It too must be regarded as a way of initiation, with
a course of development that culmi-

*J2 The Way of Individuation

nates in the acquisition of an illuminated consciousness, of a higher level of

being. In this system the kundalini serpent, symbolizing the stream of libido
or psychic energy, rises up through six chakras, or psychic centres,
beginning with the one in the perineal region, to the highest chakra,
situated in the crown of the head, where consciousness unites with Atman,
the divine, thus bringing about illumination. The first three chakras, the
centres of the instinctual region in man, reach up as far as the diaphragm;
the other three, situated higher, spread their energy through the spiritual
regions of the body. The dividing line is thus between the navel and the
heart, where the world of instinct "ends", so to speak; this instinctual region
is correlated with the phase of life in which the main tasks demanded by
these centres are accomplished. From there the kundalini serpent strives
ever upward, to the head, to the centres of the higher forms of being; this
corresponds to the striving in the second half of life for spiritual values. This
onesided striving only in an upward direction reflects the religious world-
view of Tantra yoga, for which the supreme goal is the dissolution of the ego
and the vivification and sovereignty of Atman. 36 It contrasts strongly with
Jung's view, according to which the consolidation of the ego is the
indispensable condition for any "higher consciousness"; but by "higher
consciousness" he understands something different from the Hindu,
namely, a psychological process. For the Hindu, on the other hand, it has a
metaphysical rather than a psychological character. Nevertheless the
common factor in yoga exercises, which permits a certain analogy with the
individuation process, is the striving for a renewal of the personality
through a series of related ideas and experiences such as are found in many
rites of initiation, and above all the fact that it is always an individual
transformation occurring outside the collective.

Likewise related to the individuation process only in their ground-pattern,

but different in form and expression, are the spiritual exercises of Ignatius
of Loyola, which subject the individual to a psychic process that is supposed
to purify and

The Archetype of the Individuation Process j$

regenerate his personality. The immediate aim of these exercises is to

produce a profound psychic transformation which should have a lasting
effect on a man's whole being. In their original form they were undertaken
only once in a lifetime and were concentrated into four weeks. Today they
are carried out in one-week exercises repeated every year so as to maintain
the efficacy of the transformation. They begin with a self-observation and
self-reflection which help the practitioner to become fully conscious of his
sins, and then go on to demand a personal, conscious way of living and a
decision affecting his attitude to the world, which has to be directed towards
Christ as the central point and exemplar. As the final foundation and
confirmation of this decision, the stations of the way leading from the
passion of Christ to his resurrection have to be followed concretely, so to
speak, in an inner vision and actively experienced. Psychologically
interpreted, this last part of the exercises can in a sense be understood as
corresponding to the second phase of the individuation process, as a
journey through the underworld of suffering, through a mystic, symbolic
death into a kind of rebirth. The first part of the exercises would correspond
to the consolidation of the ego through the realization of one's shadow and
thus is characterized by the necessity for a free decision. 37

One other Catholic rite may perhaps be adduced as a further analogy; this is
the Blessing of the Paschal Candle, celebrated in the Easter liturgy on the
night of Holy Saturday as a preparation for Christ's resurrection on Easter
Sunday. It is performed during the last six hours of Holy Saturday and,
psychologically considered, represents in compressed, symbolic form the
birth, death, and rebirth of the human soul. Its main features are as follows:
In the porch of the unlit church, fire is struck from a flint and with it a giant
candle is lighted, representing Christ, the Light. Solemnly, this candle is
carried into the darkened church by the celebrating priest, surrounded by
four other candles, symbols of the four evangelists. On the way to the altar
all the little candles, which the members of the

•]4 The Way of Individuation

congregation hold in their hands, are lighted at the flame of the Christ
candle, as a symbol that every mortal has received an immortal spark from
the eternal light of the Lord. Then the story of the Creation is recited and a
solemn ceremony of baptism 38 performed before the altar, through which
the congregation, as though representing the whole collective, partakes of a
new baptism. At the end Christ's passion and resurrection are celebrated in
a Mass and the sacrament is administered to all present, making them one
with Christ. For through the communion the Christian has a share in the
body and blood of Christ, whose fate repeats itself in him.

From this mystery we may derive the following psychological interpretation.

The candles shining in the dark church, i.e., in the realm of the unconscious,
receive their luminosity from the one candle, the symbol of the Self, and,
through the baptism, each is endowed with its unique psychic reality. This
corresponds in some degree with the development of the ego in the first
phase of individuation, the journey through suffering and danger into the
grace of rebirth, which finds its symbolic expression in the Mass and in the
resultant transformation.

Finally we must say a few words about the endeavours of the alchemists, 39
who projected the psychic transformation process into the transmutation of
metals, and experienced it as the transformation of matter. The parallels
with the "methodical" process of individuation are so astonishing that they
compelled Jung to undertake a thorough investigation of these pre-scien-
tific practices. He established that in the alchemical treatises, with their
often bizarre symbolism, there is hidden a "Hermetic philosophy", a kind of
secret doctrine which formulated the methods for achieving psychic
wholeness, a psychic transformation akin to the individuation process. 40

The alchemical opus starts with the conception of a primary matter, the
prima materia, which was sought in lead, and, following the principle of
solve et coagula ("dissolve and coagulate")—in psychological terms:
separate and combine the material of the conscious and unconscious—
proceeds by stages

(usually four, eight, or twelve) to the production of the lapis philosophorum,

symbolizing the Self. The turning-point from the first to the second phase of
individuation can be localized between the third and fourth stages of the
alchemical transformation. This is where the confrontation with the
shadow, represented by the state of blackness or nigredo, takes place, after
the division of the prima materia into four parts, which permits a
discrimination and differentiation of its contents. Here, if everything goes
well, the typologically dominant function is differentiated 41 and the
shadow to a large extent integrated, which corresponds to the crystallization
of the ego. This is followed by a second nigredo stage, a descent of the ego
into the underworld, a "killing" (mortificatio) and a "decay" (putre-factio) of
the material, which can be taken as an analogy of the dismemberment of
Osiris and his enclosure in the coffin. If this stage persists, it can manifest
itself as a psychosis. The process is not yet completed, however. After the
"death" the reascent begins: anima and animus qualities are made
conscious, 42 a destillatio or purification follows, in which what was
originally one is again divided and reunited so that a coagulatio can take
place, analogous on the psychological level to the confrontation with the
archetypal figures, the mana-personalities. 43
The opus ends, ideally, with the transmutation of lead into gold, the noblest
metal, or, in the language of the alchemists, with the birth of filius
philosophorum, or stone of the wise, the lapis* 4 which was supposed to be
incorruptible and eternal. In psychological terms: the encounter with the
Self and the conscious possession of the Self can give man a feeling of
lasting security through the relation he has found to the God-image. This
state may well be compared with the "hardness" of the stone, 45 though it
would be a mistake to suppose that the possession of this "stone" spares a
man all further difficulties for ever. What it vouchsafes is above all the
experience that this relationship is indestructible for the ego, because it
accords with man's own nature and can always be re-established in time of
danger.

y6 The Way of Individuation

The fact that the individuation process with its two great phases can also
leave a symbolic deposit in the psyche of a contemporary is illustrated by
the dream of a thirty-eight-year-old married woman. She dreamt it shortly
after having met Jung for the first time—socially, not professionally. She
had no notion of psychology, let alone of Jung's depth psychology, and no
knowledge of even the most elementary psychological concepts, nor had she
ever been interested in them. Neither had she ever dealt with dreams, so
that the dream, which shook her to the depths, found her quite unprepared,
unarmed by any foreknowledge, and yet it seemed to point the way.

The action of the dream took place at first in the bay of a beautiful Baroque
castle, in a high room with twelve corners, the walls and ceiling of which
were covered with mirrors. The room was completely empty. The dreamer
was lying fully dressed on the smooth parquet floor, which, like a trottoir
rou-lant, revolved round a finely chased metal knob to which she held fast
with her hands. Seeing herself reflected on all sides as well as from above
threw her into the greatest confusion; distorted, chopped into pieces, she
could hardly recognize herself. To begin with the floor moved quite slowly,
then it got faster and faster until it spun round like mad and made her
completely dizzy. Her clothes fell away from her, and she was seized with a
terrible fear that she might not be able to hold on to the knob and would be
flung by the centrifugal force of the movement into the wall mirrors, where
she might be fatally wounded. In vain she tried to slow it down, in vain she
tried to hang on. Helpless, naked, and terrified she finally crashed against
the wall, which shattered into a thousand pieces and seemed to engulf her.
Then the room and castle vanished.

Still alive, but bleeding from a thousand wounds, the dreamer now lay out
of doors, naked on her back, in a freshly ploughed field. All round was
silence. A pallid February sun lit the scene, nearing the zenith. On her left
side sat a man, the man she loved, dressed in a long white shirt, weeping.
His tears

The Archetype of the Individuation Process yy

wetted the shirt. With the wet patches he gently wiped the dreamer's
wounds until they closed up, healed. Thankfully she looked up at him and
up at the sky. Suddenly she felt the earth beginning to move beneath her, as
though it were growing together with her back. At the same time she felt
that the man was no longer at her side, but was stretched out on top of her,
motionless and weighing a ton. The weight pressed her deeper and deeper
down, but the earth seemed to go on thrusting and pushed her upwards. As
it continued to push, the piled-up mounds of earth began to sprout. Grass
shot up in the air, the field became a verdant meadow, and the dreamer
became one with it. She herself was the earth, was blossoming nature. But
the man who lay on top of her grew lighter and lighter as she grew together
with the earth. Soon he seemed to have melted into air, he became the
firmament arching above the meadow. Thus they celebrated the marriage of
heaven and earth, the union of the masculine and feminine principles.

In the first part of this extraordinary dream one can see the first phase of
the individuation process represented. It shows how the ego of the dreamer
became endangered by her extremely extra verted life, symbolized by the
revolving parquet floor. Her life, played out before the mirrors of the
surrounding world, gets distorted and refracted. Driven to extremes, all
defences fall away from her, she has to experience her naked reality—and be
shattered. This is at the same time the acid test of the ego, which has to be
exposed to all dangers and yet survive them. Only then will it be strong
enough to confront the world of the archetypes in the second half of life,
that is, in the second phase of individuation. Freed from the fetters of her
previous life, healed of her wounds by the man who loves her, the dreamer
can now be wholly woman and seek to solve the problem of relating to the
other sex. She can now recognize him as the archetypal image of the spirit,
and herself as the archetypal image of the nourishing earth. From the
entanglements of a personal tie, in which she felt the man as a heavy weight,
there is formed, through her oneness with nature, an

y8 The Way of Individuation

archetypal relationship, an ecstatic union of opposites in a unitary mode of

being. The animus, the masculine element in her, is no longer the other
person, the man, but a spirit belonging to her and united with her, whose
symbol is heaven. In this dream the way of individuation the dreamer has to
follow is prefigured in a powerful symbolic event. Such a dream works on
one like a task; it points the way to one's destiny.

The profound longing for initiation, i.e., for a share in a regenerated, more
perfect mode of being, is embedded in the soul of man from the very
beginning. Initiation rites and their motifs thread the history of symbolism
and accompany life from its beginning to its end. The symbolic world of
fairytales, rich in wonders, is studded with initiations. In this wonder-world
the hero and heroine pass through trials and perils, risking their lives to be
delivered from a curse, to obtain the precious jewel of the Self, to begin a
new life, better and more complete. Children, grown-ups, and greybeards
are all equally fascinated by the magic which fairytales spread around them.

The symbolism of the individuation process has often been elaborated in

world literature. Classic examples are Dante's Divine Comedy and Goethe's
Faust. Psychological interpretations of the symbolism in the Jungian sense
may be found in the writings of Linda Fierz-David, 46 Esther Harding, 47
and Cornelia Brunner, 48 to name but a few.

Initiation motifs and ideas related to, and even identical with, those
occurring in the individuation process have from earliest times found their
way into all cultures, often in the form of beautifully elaborate rites and
ceremonies, often only as fragments. Even though they cannot be carried
over into concrete reality, and are thrust into the background by the hectic,
technicized life of our time, they still go on living, at least in the realm of the
unconscious psyche; from there they rise up again and take shape in
dreams, fantasies, and works of art. Just as a quite simple tune, consisting
of only a few notes, can be preserved as a ground-pattern in all kinds of
variations,

marches, fugues, symphonies, etc., and can always be found again, so

initiation, i.e., individuation—the great arc of birth, life, death, and rebirth—
is present in a thousand manifestations as a model and represents in its
most primitive as well as its most complex forms an eternal possibility of
new human experience and development.

If we attempt to enumerate the various aspects of the individuation process,

we find that they can be summed up under the following groups, though the
individual groups will tend to overlap:

1. a) the "natural" process which is the ordinary course of hu-

man life b) the "methodically" or "analytically assisted" process worked out

by Jung

2. a) a process experienced and worked out as an "individual

way" b) an initiation resulting from participation in a collective event

3. a) a gradual development consisting of many little trans-

formations b) a sudden transformation brought about by a shattering

experience
4. a) a continuous development extending over the whole life-

span b) a cyclic process constantly recurring in unchanged form

5. a) a process in which only the first phase is accomplished b) a process in

which both phases follow in sequence

6. a) a process prematurely interrupted by outer or inner cir-

cumstances

b) an undeveloped process remaining in atrophied form

c) a "sick" or "defective" process

This list with its groupings should not, of course, be understood in any
dogmatic sense. Its purpose is merely to facilitate a survey of the different
points of view from which the individuation process can be observed, and it
applies to both forms,

the "natural" as well as the "methodically" or "analytically assisted" course

of development.

Analogies with the individuation process could be multiplied without end,

but here we will mention only a few of them. In his indefatigable researches
into the whole history of symbolism Jung has put together and interpreted
a mass of more or less pertinent analogies to the process as a whole or to its
individual parts. He found them, however, above all in the dreams and
fantasies of contemporary men and women, 49 with whose psychic troubles
he was concerned as a psychotherapist. They indicated to him the need for
broad-based comparative researches and led him to the observation and
description of the individuation process in modern individuals, and of the
possible ways of furthering it analytically. "My life has been permeated and
held together by one idea and one goal: namely, to penetrate into the secret
of the personality. Everything can be explained from this central point, and
all my works relate to this one theme," says Jung. 50 In his immense life-
work, more particularly in his Two Essays on Analytical Psychology* 1 his
commentaries on The Secret of the Golden Flower 52 and The Tibetan Book
of the Dead, 53 in Psychology and Alchemy 54 "The Psychology of the
Transference", 55 Aion, 56 and finally in his Mysterium Coniunctionis 51 he
has set down the results of his experiences and investigations, and, despite
their difficulty, those dealing with alchemy deserve special attention. 58

Jung has constantly emphasized that he considers the individuation process

as worked out by him, i.e., as a confrontation between the conscious and
unconscious contents of the psyche, to be the^way of development specially
suited to present-day Western man. Mystery religions and initiation rites
with similar forms and similar goals have existed at all times and places,
but, Jung thinks, they should not be taken over uncritically by the West,
because they spring from an alien spiritual and religious culture. Equally,
people belonging to alien cultures can individuate only in the way that
accords with their own na-

tures. Jung's way of individuation will always remain foreign to them, just
as in Jung's view a Westerner will never be able to practise yoga in its true
spirit or become a yogi. Even though the archetypal "ground-plan" of the
individuation process remains more or less constant, its expression varies
according to environment, the spirit of the time, the religious attitude and
conscious situation of each individual.

What a profound insight the Oriental sage possesses into this simple and
self-evident truth was once brought home to me by a Sinologist, the late
Erwin Rousselle. When a European, who had spent six years in a Japanese
monastery in order to be initiated, left the place, he received as a farewell
present from his guru a carefully wrapped package. He undid the wrappings
and saw to his utmost astonishment that it was a magnificently bound
Bible. In this way he was tactfully given to understand from what source he
as a European could best obtain "initiation".

The Individual Way

Aersonality can never develop unless one chooses one's own way
consciously and makes this an ethical decision. Not only is a causal motive
needed, for instance an emergency of some kind, but a conscious decision
must lend its force to the process of personality development. If the first is
lacking, then the so-called development would be mere acrobatics of the
will. And without conscious decision the development would remain a dull,
unconscious automatism. One can, however, decide on one's own way only
when one is convinced it is the only right one. Should any other way be
considered better, then it would certainly be preferred to the development
of one's own personality. But the other ways are conventions of a moral,
social, political, philosophical, or religious nature.

It may seem astonishing that the decision to be oneself should have to be

equated with an "ethical act", for it should be the most obvious thing in the
world to develop one's personality and stand by one's peculiarities. But that
is by no means so. All too many people do not live their own lives, and
generally they know next to nothing about their real nature. They make
convulsive efforts to "adapt", not to stand out in any way, to do exactly what
the opinions, rules, regulations, and habits of the environment demand as
being "right". They are slaves of "what people think", "what people do", etc.
That

this leads to false attitudes and, if the discrepancy between their real nature
and their sham nature becomes too great, to neuroses hardly needs
stressing. Of such people Schopenhauer rightly says: '*. . . the sphere of
what we are for other people is their consciousness, not ours; it is the kind
of figure we make in their eyes, together with the thoughts which this
arouses . . . people in the highest position in life, with all their brilliance,
pomp, display, magnificence and general show, may well say: Our
happiness lies entirely outside us, it exists only in the heads of others." *

The individuation process in the Jungian sense means the conscious

realization and integration of all the possibilities congenitally present in the
individual. It is opposed to any kind of conformity and, as a therapeutic
factor in analytical work, also demands the rejection of those prefabricated
psychic matrices in which most people would like to live. It shows that
everyone can have his own direction, his mission, and it can make
meaningful the lives of those people who suffer from the feeling that they
are unable to come up to the collective norms and collective ideals. To those
who are not recognized by the collective, who are rejected and even
despised, it can restore their faith in themselves, give them back their
human dignity, and assure them of their place in the world. "We could
therefore translate individuation as 'coming to selfhood' or 'self-realization'
", for it means "becoming an 'in-dividual', and, in so far as 'individuality'
embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies
becoming one's own self." 2

Individuation cannot be anything other than a unique and individual

development, and it is questionable whether it allows of the acceptance of
any norm. It brings a knowledge of the infinite capacity for development of
the human psyche, and its mode of operation is enough in itself to put it
outside the range of anything measurable. For the setting up of absolute
standards by which an individuation process could be adjudged "right" or
"wrong" would merely mean the acceptance

of various patterns of ideals as a starting point and would come suspiciously

close to the above-mentioned "prefabricated psychic matrices".

The fact, nevertheless, that conventions always flourish in some form

proves that the overwhelming majority of men do not choose their own way
but the way of convention, and develop something that is collectively valid
at the cost of their own wholeness. This has its justification and also, no
doubt, its good reasons. It is reserved only for the few to tread the thorny
path of individuation, as envisaged by Jung, and to carry on the torch which
—so we will hope—an increasing number of such individuals will follow.

Not only is the individual placed between the power of consciousness and
that of his unconscious psyche, he is also a unique, unrepeatable being and
at the same time a member of the collective and has to do justice to both. So
far as an analytically assisted individuation process is concerned, no general
rules can be laid down for dealing with this relationship. For on the one
hand, it is said, man is a herd animal and reaches full health only as a social
being, and on the other hand the very next case may invert this proposition
and demonstrate that he is fully healthy only when he deviates from the
norm and aims only at himself, that is, when he pursues his own individual
way. For only as a "healthy" person can he live in accordance with his God-
given task.

Jung attributes a key importance to the individual. According to him, only a

change in the attitude of the individual can initiate a change in the
psychology of nations. "The great events of world history are, at bottom,
profoundly unimportant. In the last analysis, the essential thing is the life of
the individual. This alone makes history, here alone do the great
transformations first take place, and the whole future, the whole history of
the world, ultimately springs as a gigantic summation from these hidden
sources in individuals. In our most private and most subjective lives we are
not only the passive witnesses of our age, and its sufferers, but also its

makers." 3 And elsewhere: "Virtually everything depends on the human

psyche and its functions. It should be worthy of all the attention we can give
it, especially today, when everyone admits that the weal and woe of the
future will be decided neither by the threat of wild animals, nor by natural
catastrophes, nor by the danger of worldwide epidemics, but simply and
solely by the psychic changes in man." 4

Watching in alarm the steadily increasing, suction-like power of the State,

the impotence of the individual in face of the power concentrated in the
hands of so-called leaders, Jung observes: "We are all fascinated and
overawed by statistical truths and large numbers and are daily apprised of
the nullity and futility of the individual personality, since it is not
represented and personified by any mass organization." 5

It is a striking fact that the majority of men are merely "fragmentary

personalities" and that anything like complete individuals form a great
exception. Jung emphasizes, however, that "in order to undergo a far-
reaching psychological development, neither outstanding intelligence nor
any other talent is necessary, since in this development moral qualities can
make up for intellectual shortcomings". 6 So far as every individual has the
law of his life inborn in him, it is theoretically and in principle possible for
everyone to follow that law and become a personality, to achieve relative
wholeness, 7 which in the last resort is always the product of a life
individually lived.

The idea that, in order to attain this wholeness, one must have experienced
life in all its aspects proceeds from the generalization, applicable to the
average member of society, that he must marry, have children, practise a
profession, and so on, which amounts to leading a good bourgeois existence.
But this would exclude all those whose lives deviate from the average and
follow a law and pattern of their own, above all "exceptions" like many
artists and men of genius, priests, nuns, unmarried persons, and the
disabled, etc.

Although the ground-pattern, structure, phases, and stations of the

individuation process may remain constant, its expres-

sion, the way the individual experiences it and is matured by it, is unique
and cannot be repeated. Naturally it seems—provisionally at least—not
everyone's choice, but rather a quite special fate, and to require a special
summons or an inescapable inner impulse in order to undertake an
analytically assisted individuation and persevere with it. "The individuation
process is, psychically, a borderline phenomenon which needs special
conditions in order to become conscious. Perhaps it is a first step along a
path of development to be trodden by the men of the future—a path which,
for the time being, has taken a pathological turn and landed Europe in
catastrophe." 8 Nevertheless the growing longing of man for a better
understanding of himself and the world allows one to hope that he will one
day manage to cope more effectively with all the evil and destructiveness
that rise up out of the abysses of his soul.

Those who are not seized by this longing, but find safety and security in the
masses, will never be ready to follow consciously the way of individuation,
since to begin with it spells isolation for the individual. It is as though he
were a mountain whose peak is the more isolated the higher it reaches; yet
at its deeper levels it shares the same earth with all other mountains. How
unpopular the individual way must be today, in an age of conformism, of
fitting into the collective, and of psychotherapeutic endeavours for
"interpersonal relationship", 9 will be clear to everyone. Especially in our
automated Western world, where there is less and less room for genuine
feelings, man seeks all the more desperately for security and hopes to find it
in the lap of the collective. He fears solitude, as it might force him to think
about himself.

We should not forget that every man, as well as having collective traits and
being conditioned by the society to which he belongs, is a unique
combination of unique qualities. That is why only a very few people are
capable of putting themselves into the psyche of another. Even the person
we think we know best is fundamentally a stranger to us, however much he
may affirm that he feels completely understood. At most we may guess and
feel our way into his otherness, but we can never

interpret or judge it and have to accept it with respect. "At bottom/' says
Jung, "all psychic events are so deeply grounded in the archetype and are so
much interwoven with it that in every case considerable critical effort is
needed to separate the unique from the typical with any certainty.
Ultimately, every individual life is at the same time the eternal life of the
species." 10 A striking example of this is the human fingerprint. Each one
shows a pattern like a labyrinth, yet each is so different from all others and
so individual that in criminal proceedings it may be accounted the surest
distinguishing mark of the criminal.

"The development of personality from the germ-state to full consciousness

is at once a charisma and a curse, because its first fruit is the conscious and
unavoidable segregation of the single individual from the undifferentiated
and unconscious herd. This means isolation, and there is no more
comforting word for it. Neither family nor society nor position can save him
from this fate, nor yet the most successful adaptation to his environment,
however smoothly he fits in." n It is the isolation of the mature person, who
no longer hangs upon the value judgments of his fellows but is firmly
anchored in his relation to the Self. His knowledge that his dependence on
something suprapersonal can never be wholly dissolved gives him security
and support. It would nevertheless be a mistake to suppose that isolation in
the sense of detachment from the mass also separates a man from his
environment or from his neighbour. On the contrary, his relation to his
fellow men becomes deeper, more tolerant, more responsible, and more
understanding. He can open himself to them with greater freedom, since he
need not fear that they will take possession of him, or that he will lose
himself in them. In this sense Jung says: "Individuation does not shut one
out from the world, but gathers the world to oneself." 12 "A real conflict
with the collective norm arises only when an individual way is elevated to a
norm, which is the actual aim of extreme individualism," 13 an attitude
which Jung sharply repudiates.

So becoming what one essentially is does not mean turning

one's back on the collective, let alone adopting a hostile attitude towards it.
It is only exaggerated adaptation and ingrati-ation—as well as extreme
rejection—that are to be avoided, as they prevent any true contact. On the
contrary, the man who is capable of living his own way of life will fit in best
and will also be able to pay his tribute to society. He will not dissolve as a
particle in the mass but, as an individual, will become a responsible
member of the community. And if fate makes him an outsider, he will suffer
it with humility and resignation, and not injure others by rebelling against
it.

For the realization of psychic wholeness it is indispensable that the

individual should free himself from the suggestive power of the collective
psyche as well as from that of the surrounding world and yet remain in
conscious contact with them. This means, on the one hand, that he must be
able to withstand the energy-laden contents of his collective unconscious,
i.e., the archetypes, and, so far as they are constellated, come to terms with
them, while on the other hand recognizing all the dubious, repressed,
unlived, evil elements in his personal unconscious and accepting them as
part of himself. He must also learn to distinguish his ego from the collective
consciousness, that is, from the spirit of the age and environmental
influences, and hold his own as an individual against the compulsion of
convention and tradition, true to the law of his being. One may even
conclude with Jung: "Companionship thrives only when each individual
remembers his individuality and does not identify with others." 14

This holding one's own involves a series of unending but quite conscious
compromises and decisions, because the inner and outer demands are often
sharply opposed and throw the ego into conflicts which can be overcome
only by "growing beyond" them. For this purpose, helpful powers are
forthcoming from the unconscious. Just when one thinks that the logic of a
tertium non datur has barred the way to all further progress, there emerge
from the psychic background, in dreams, fantasies, or intuitions, healing
and whole-making

symbols of a successful union of oppositcs which overcome the supposed

impasse. For it is a fact that unconscious tendencies, stirring unseen in the
depths, betray their presence by all sorts of symbols long before they
become conscious. 15 They appear, for instance, in waking fantasies and
prove to be intuitions that point to a solution never before suspected. How
often has one not found in a dream what the waking intellect could never
discover, something apparently quite senseless which later turned out to be
the saving factor! Thus the archetypal image of the "child", as a symbol of
the pregnant beginning which, like a seed, already harbours within it the
full flowering of the end, points to wholeness as the ultimate goal of man's
development. In the same way the child, as a combination of the paternal
and maternal substances and the unifier of their opposite natures, can often
save a marriage from its apparently insurmountable antagonisms. In the life
of the psyche, too, it is a reconciler of opposites and a symbol of unity and
wholeness.

The often heard objection that individuation leads to individualism,

egocentredness, eccentricity, etc., confuses individuation with a one-sided
introversion. In individuation, inside and outside must both be given their
due; it expresses, in Jung's words, a "successful adaptation to the universal
conditions of existence coupled with the greatest possible freedom for self-
determination". 16 It involves an attitude that can best be adopted by one
who knows from personal experience to what degree the part is always
obligated to the whole and yet remains a whole itself.

Again and again we can observe that as soon as an individual is threatened

with the danger of isolation, there is a compensatory increase in the
production of collective, archetypal symbols. They connect the isolated ego-
consciousness, cut off from life, with the eternal images in the psychic
background, with the layers that lie close to the instincts, where the whole
experience of mankind is stored up and can give him succour. The two
poles, ego and Self, which have grown too far apart,

po The Way of Individuation

are thereby brought into living relationship again. Height and depth work
on each other mutually, producing balance and security. Just as a high-
standing tree, through its deep-reaching, wide-spreading roots, finds firm
support in the earth that all trees share, so wherever healthy life prevails a
regulating, balance-producing movement sets in. This is true also of the life
of the psyche. And indeed the tree, with its upward and downward growth
and its seasonal transformations, is often used as a symbol for the
transformative processes of the psyche. 17

Conscious Realization

JL rom the point of view of psychological development, the field of

consciousness is extended through the analytical work by investigating and
elucidating the material that comes up from the unconscious realm and
associating it with consciousness. Extension of consciousness by
supplementary material plus maturation by experience result in the
development of the individual. In this process "conscious realization", also
stipulated by other psychotherapeutic schools, is the ruling principle. The
conscious realization of unconscious contents, their retention in
consciousness, is the sine qua non of psychic development. "Conscious
realization is culture in the broadest sense, and self-knowledge is therefore
the heart and essence of this process," says Jung. 1 Nevertheless Jung's view
differs from that of other schools in that it is grounded on the experience
that the psyche, unless it is blocked by special circumstances, will
spontaneously produce everything that is needed for the fulfilment of
individual development.

We know that in dreams, for instance, powerful archetypal images will

appear when consciousness has become too onesided and run into a blind
alley or "got stuck". 2 The ego then needs help in order to get out of its
difficulties; it needs to be confronted with images and events which show it,
in symbols, the typical human modes of behaviour appropriate to such

ever-recurring situations. These images speak with the voice of nature that
has always guided man. They have not been falsified by intellectual
speculations or opinions, but are a source of age-old knowledge that is
lacking in our impoverished present-day consciousness. This is true even of
dreams that remain uninterpreted, for their dynamism and their symbols
nevertheless have an effect on the psyche. Frequently they present their
interpretation as it were of their own accord, bringing unexpected insights
or intuitions that point the way ahead. But their numinosity can sometimes
have a shattering effect, too. If, however, they are interpreted in the course
of the analytical process they disclose their specific relationship to the
actual psychic situation of the dreamer in all its aspects, which may have left
deep furrows behind them. Their meaning can then be carefully worked out
and substantiated.
If archetypal dreams and fantasies occur with great frequency, their
powerful energy charge and wealth of symbols can threaten the psychic
equilibrium and even overthrow it. They are a source of possible psychic
transformation but also a threat to it. For this reason, particularly with
young people, they are always danger signals and should be reduced to
bearable proportions by concretizing their contents, that is, by writing them
out or painting them, and whenever possible by understanding them. It is
one of the main tasks of an analytically assisted individuation process to
stimulate the symbol-producing capacity of the psyche and its natural
tendency to self-regulation and assignment of meaning—in other words, to
promote its "transcendent function". 3

It is not an advantage, however, to have "big dreams" every night, for this is
a sign that the psychic balance between the conscious and the unconscious
realm is disturbed and that there is a danger of loss of relation to reality. If
the ego is unable to assimilate the archetypal contents, which often irrupt
into consciousness like foreign bodies, they can lead to delusions or even
produce psychotic symptoms. 4 The ego is as it were "devoured" by the
archetypal images, it identifies with

them, can no longer distinguish itself from them. Then the individual
fancies himself a religious or godlike figure, or a famous historical
personality, or else something quite tiny—at all events a phenomenon
deviating from normal human proportions. Much the same thing is true if
we look at a group, a nation, or a race as one big individual. Technology and
automation, the rejection of everything irrational, the over-abstract,
theoretical trend of education in the West, and the resultant one-sided
accentuation of consciousness, lead by way of compensation to an invasion
of the ego by archetypal forces which can no longer be controlled by a
consciousness cut off from its roots.

In the dialectical process between consciousness and the contents of the

unconscious psyche, particular importance is attached to the dreams and
associations of the analysand. They are considered under their personal and
their suprapersonal aspects, i.e., given a meaningful interpretation and
fitted into the context of his life. The more he perceives his unconscious
qualities, qualities which either appear personified in the material of his
dreams and fantasies or manifest themselves in projection on definite
persons, the greater is his chance of gaining self-knowledge and accepting
these projections as part of himself, withdrawing them and thus extending
the scope of his field of consciousness. Above all the withdrawal of
impersonal, archetypal projections and their conscious assimilation bring
about an increase in knowledge and have a considerable effect on the ego
personality, especially if the latter was hitherto unable to distinguish itself
critically from the emergent contents that needed integrating, and allowed
them no autonomy and no reality of their own.
There is an uninterrupted reciprocal action between the products of the
unconscious psyche, manifesting themselves for instance in dreams and
fantasies, symptomatic actions, "slips", and other such uncontrolled psychic
phenomena, on the one hand, and consciousness, struggling to understand
and integrate them, on the other. The analysis furthers and intensifies

this reciprocal action by keeping the ego's contact with the deeper layers of
the unconscious alive and fluid. But another dialectical process is going on
at the same time between the psychic structure of the analysand and that of
the analyst. In this process the human personality of both emerges more
and more clearly, as a product of the creative background and at the same
time as a conscious producer of this background. 5

Transference and counter-transference, 6 i.e., the emotional tie of

analysand to analyst and of analyst to analysand, and the proper way of
dealing with them, are decisive factors in an analytically assisted
individuation process. Jung says: "The main problem of medical
psychotherapy is the transference. In this matter Freud and I were in
complete agreement." 7 They were also in agreement as to the emotional
relation of the analyst to the analysand being one of the most important
ingredients of the analytical process. For not only must the patient, seeking
help for his psychic troubles, make his full contribution to the common
effort, but the analyst too must give his heart's blood if there is to be any
development #nd transformation. Unless he does so, no real relationship of
trust is established, and the result will remain correspondingly
unsatisfactory.

It is very important—and this is no easy matter for the analyst—that he

should be able to distinguish between the "objective truth" and the patient's
"subjective truth", and accept the latter completely, as it alone has validity
for the patient. This is the more difficult in that the two truths often
contradict one another sharply. But the analyst, even though he knows this,
should not show any mistrust nor should he contradict the patient, for in
most cases it is a matter of projections which, with the help of the analyst's
careful guidance, have to be realized and withdrawn. On his side, an active
readiness to go along with the patient, a genuine psychic participation in
what is happening, and objective goodwill towards him, are prerequisites
for surmounting the obstacles that always arise in any individuation
process, and for discussing and breaking down the

extraordinarily strong resistances of the patient. This means that in every

individuation assisted by analysis the analyst too will be drawn into the
process of transformation, and this necessitates a continual regard not only
for the personal but also, and more particularly, for the transpersonal,
archetypal contents of the transference. It is indeed a heavy and responsible
task, demanding constant alertness on the part of the analyst.
Consequently, his degree of consciousness and psychic order are crucial
factors in the individuation of the analysand.

Jung goes so far as to say that, if the process comes to a standstill and gets
stuck, the analyst must seek the cause of the disturbance first of all in his
own state of mind, in his own attitude. He used to quote a story about a
Chinese rainmaker, who at a time of great drought was called to a village to
make rain. For this purpose he withdrew to a lonely little hut for three days,
asking only for some bread and water. On the fourth day a heavy rain fell.
When they asked in astonishment how he did it, he replied: "I withdrew into
myself and put myself in order; and when I am in order the world around
me must naturally come into order too, and then the drought must be
followed by rain." 8 This recipe does not always help, of course. Even when
it is followed, it does not absolve the patient from devoting himself to the
desired goal and making further efforts. Nevertheless one frequently finds
that the dreams stop, for instance, because the last dream had been too little
worked on, not interpreted properly. In such cases a renewed delving into
the possible meaning of the dream may get the process moving again.
Sometimes this even happens when the analyst does this work on his own.
The attention he gives the patient's material, and his own efforts, may in
themselves have a stimulating effect on the psychic processes going on in
the patient.

No phase of the individuation process can be exchanged for another or

skipped. If the demands of the first phase have been insufficiently
considered in youth, they have to be caught up with later before the process
can go ahead, and this means ad-

ditional pains of growing. Every conscious or unconscious attempt not to

keep pace with the prescribed phases is doomed to failure and means
deviation, error, illness. Hence, too, the ripe fruits of the way do not fall to
youth but to age. The only exceptions are those fates, those "short lives",
where the individual stages often occur in compressed, abbreviated form. It
seems as though in these cases early death yet meant a relative "rounding
out" of psychic life. 9 The word "relative" needs special emphasizing here.
At bottom the individuation process, as an event proceeding throughout
life, is never completed. It is a continual unending approach to a distant
goal, death being the ultimate boundary. Although, therefore, temporal
limits are set to wholeness by man's very existence, in its scope it is
unbounded, because the growth of components of the personality springs
from an unconscious realm to which no boundaries can be assigned.

This unconscious realm of the psyche can in practice never be "emptied".

Only a comparatively small part of it can be made conscious, and this part
too varies in size according to the individual's capacity and readiness for
experience. The notion that everything in the unconscious can in principle
be made conscious is a logical consequence of the assumption that
everything unconscious was once conscious and has been repressed. 10
With Jung's conception of the collective unconscious and its archetypes,
which do not contain repressed material but are genuine propensities to
certain modes of action and reaction ingrained in the species, the idea of
complete conscious realization could refer at most—and then only to a
limited degree— to the contents of the personal unconscious. Into this
realm of the psyche falls everything we have forgotten, or have sublim-inally
perceived, everything we have suppressed or repressed, so that the
unconscious background of the psyche is constantly being filled up again.
Nevertheless by far the greatest part of the psyche, above all the collective
unconscious, will continue to remain unconscious. Everything that is
unlived, unsolved, unexperienced, obscure, and mysterious will remain
behind and form the matrix for germs of new possibilities.

Moreover a very far-reaching consciousness can become a burden, and for

this reason too it is feared and avoided. As the capacity for judgment grows
in proportion to the scope of consciousness, it burdens a man with a
growing sense of responsibility. It is therefore understandable that the
growth of consciousness is resisted almost automatically, by the very inertia
of nature. An illustration of this is the Oriental fairytale of the blind king
who promised his kingdom and his treasure to the man who could make
him see. And in fact a wonder-working doctor came along and gave him his
sight back. But a year later the king was already in deep despair. As he now
possessed nothing but his beautiful daughter, his only child, he promised
her to the man who could help to make him blind again. But no such person
could be found. The king had to remain sighted, as once Adam and Eve,
having eaten of the tree of knowledge, could not recapture their
unconsciousness, and humanity ever afterwards had to go forward willy-
nilly on the road of conscious realization, which is often a very painful one.

Observation and assimilation, conscious realization and acceptance—that is

what is demanded. "Every step forward in culture is, psychologically
"speaking, an extension of consciousness, a conscious realization which
cannot come about except by discrimination. Any progress therefore always
begins with individuation, that is, with a single individual, conscious of his
isolation, breaking a new way through regions hitherto untrodden. For this
he must first reflect on the basic facts of his life—regardless of all authority
and tradition—and become conscious of his distinctiveness/' n This is an
extremely hard demand, especially for Western man, who early has
inculcated into him the hybris of the will and is accustomed to judge
everything by prefabricated standards consisting mostly of prejudices,
preconceived opinions, and collective regulations. Everything is labelled
"good", "bad", "right", "wrong", etc., before one has a chance to reflect on its
true nature, its purpose and value, and form a judgment of one's own.

It is characteristic of the maladjusted person, the neurotic in particular, that

he cannot accept himself as he is by nature,
$8 The Way of Individuation

and chastises himself with whips and scorpions in order to make himself
what he is not and cannot be, the result of this fruitless attempt at
adaptation being that he is finally neither the one thing nor the other.
Hence it is one of the most important requirements in analytical work that
the analyst should, to begin with, accept the person who entrusts himself to
him just as he is, should accept his nature as the one that belongs to him,
should not play the teacher or judge but should be an understanding
companion. His job is to hold up a mirror to the patient in which he can see
his rejected qualities, but can also learn that he must accept them as
belonging to himself for his individuation. This naturally does not mean
that he can live them and act them out freely, as the opponents of depth
psychology think; but it does mean remaining conscious of these qualities
instead of repressing them again with a view to convincing himself that he
does not possess them. It is not by repression or by forcible suppression
that they can be brought under control, but by insight and self-reflection.

Nothing can be gained in individuation by force of will or by preconceived

opinions; our task consists simply and solely in keeping the conscious mind
constantly on the alert, so that as many of the unconscious portions of the
personality as possible can be made conscious, experienced, and integrated.
"The needful thing is not to 'know' the truth but to experience it. Not to have
an intellectual conception of things, but to find our way to the inner,
perhaps wordless, irrational experiences —that is the heart of the problem,"
says Jung. 12

For individuation is a spontaneous process of development independent of

conscious volition, a process in which the ego has not only to experience
and understand the contents of the non-ego 13 but also to suffer them with
open eyes. Pain and suffering are an organic part of it. They are inexorable
necessities, symbolically represented by the mortificatio in alchemy, the
"night sea journey" in the belly of the whale-monster, 14 the self-
incineration of the phoenix, or the journey through the underworld in
Dante's Divine Comedy.

Conscious Realization qq

In the individuation process it is always a matter of something obsolete that

must be left behind to die in order that the new may be born. Not only in
alchemy, but in myths and fairytales as well, we see how the "old king", the
representative of the traditional, conventional attitude of consciousness,
must either die or abdicate because a renewal has become necessary. Then
the son or the young hero takes his place; he ascends the throne, because he
stands for a level of conscious development more appropriate to the times.
This "take-over" is usually not without its difficulties. Usually it begins with
a "descent into the underworld", involving numerous trials and feats such as
are described so impressively in the hero-myths. The throne must be won,
victory hard fought for; every step forward demands its sacrifice.

As between consciousness and the unconscious, so a dialectical relationship

also exists between turning inwards and conscious participation in the inner
happenings, and turning outwards and consolidation of what has been won
in the outside world. The attitude-type of the individual is irrelevant in this
connection. "Western man seems predominantly extra-verted, Eastern man
predominantly introverted. The former projects the meaning and considers
that it exists in objects; the latter feels the meaning in himself. But the
meaning is both without and within." lö To surrender oneself to both realms
is essential to the full experience of the individuation process. Jung
expressly emphasizes: "The new thing never came exclusively either from
within or from without. If it came from outside, it became a profound inner
experience; if it came from inside, it became an outer happening. In no case
was it conjured into existence intentionally or by conscious willing, but
seemed rather to be borne along on the stream of time." 16

All this demands patience and preparedness. Not, to be sure, "passive"

patience, but a forbearance from the presumption of the will that dominates
so many people—a modesty and willingness, rather, to let things happen
and ripen instead of arguing and passing value judgments. Another
important quality is

joo The Way of Individuation

courage—courage to live, to experience, to dare. It is one thing to read a

passionate romance, quite another to fall head over heels in love; one thing
to study a scientific paper on pneumonia, quite another to have it and
endure it. Unfortunately it is characteristic of the neurotic to "think" life in
all its details, but not to experience it in his own body. He shuns all the
imponderables of existence whenever he can and seeks security against
dangers, even surprises being felt as "dangerous". Thus, for want of the
psychic strength won in the battle of life, he is usually oppressed and beset
by fear, and not infrequently hopes to raise himself to a higher level of
existence by "meditation". He does not notice, or refuses to notice, that in so
doing he has only withdrawn into a fear-ridden passivity. Nor does he
notice how much he avoids anything unaccustomed, for which reason he is
even afraid of the as yet untried state of being cured of his neurosis.
"Whoever protects himself against what is new and strange and regresses to
the past falls into the same neurotic condition as the man who identifies
himself with the new and runs away from the past. The only difference is
that the one has estranged himself from the past and the other from the
future. In principle both are doing the same thing: they are reinforcing their
narrow range of consciousness instead of shattering it in the tension of
opposites and building up a state of wider and higher consciousness." 17
The analytically assisted individuation process demands from every
individual full participation in outer life as well as in inner life. No risk and
no suffering should be shunned; one must face everything that comes and
hold out against fate. Hence analytical work is not, as many people expect,
an undivided joy, a walk in sunny fields; it is more often a painful process,
wearisome and finicking, in which the life and insights we have missed must
be made up for item by item, and this ability to live open-eyed with one's
own darkness is an achievement that demands courage above everything.

Here we come upon an apparent contradiction, but one that disappears on

closer inspection. On the one hand, it is said, if

one undergoes an individuation process one must "let things happen",

submit, humbly give in; on the other hand one must not sidestep any risk,
must spare oneself no effort. As a matter of fact both attitudes are required,
both belong to the individuation process, depending on the situation of the
psyche and on external circumstances. If the ego is caught in a seemingly
hopelessly conflict, or has landed itself in a cul-de-sac, guidance must be
handed over to the inner authority, the Self; if the ego is still capable, after
careful reflection, of finding a way out of the impasse, however thorny, then
the second form of behaviour is indicated.

We are confronted with two possible situations. In the second situation the
ego has to take the lead and decide, having regard, however, to the advice,
statements, and needs of the unconscious psychic background. Acting in
this way, a man escapes from the compulsion of his autonomous impulses,
from the danger of being driven and overpowered by them. But if he is in
the first situation, the ego, being unable to decide, to judge, to act, must
entrust itself or submit to the guidance of the unknown, or the unconscious
—in religious terms, to the guidance of God, even if things happen that
bring more suffering. This means a relative depotentiation of the
sovereignty of the ego, which is permissible only as a final decision in
insoluble conflicts between two possible courses of action. The
individuation process thus has a double sign: active endeavour and a
consciously endured "come what may" are connected in a dialectical
relationship.

"Letting things happen", listening to the inner voice, is something that the
neurotic above all has to learn, as an un-adapted person who wants to
compel fate with his will. He seems to be still under the spell of magical
ideas, ascribing to his thoughts almighty powers as a consequence of which
he is plagued by corresponding feelings of anxiety. On the other hand, one
must be careful and not, as a reaction against overvaluing the will, go to the
other extreme of letting oneself be influenced and guided solely by the
promptings of the un-
conscious. How urgent and essential the extension of the field of
consciousness is, is proved by the fact that the freedom of the will is
proportionate to the degree of a man's consciousness. This is a fact of
ethical importance. The freedom of the will extends only as far as the limits
of consciousness; as soon as these limits are overstepped, we cease to
discriminate, to be capable of conscious choice and judgment, and are
delivered over to the uncontrolled impulses and tendencies of the
unconscious.

It is therefore the foremost task of consciousness—and this is a possibility

specific only to man—to assimilate what comes out of the unconscious
depths. "If this does not happen," says Jung, "the process of individuation
will nevertheless continue. The only difference is that we become its victims
and are dragged along by fate towards that inescapable goal which we might
have reached by walking upright, if only we had taken the trouble and been
patient enough to understand in time the meaning of the numina that cross
our path." 18 Instead of meeting the demands of individuation consciously
and of our own free will, instead of going the "royal way" of life, we go the
way of the herd, blind and will-less, and remain retarded in our psychic
development.

The number of individuals who are capable at all of attaining psychic

wholeness is, of course, veiled from our knowledge. Equally, "we do not
know what the suggestive power of an extended consciousness may be, or
what influence it may have upon the world at large". 19 In Jung's view the
"change of consciousness begins at home; it is an age-long process that
depends entirely on how far the psyche's capacity for development extends".
20 Perhaps there is—one might add—an increase of consciousness in
humanity as a whole, but at the cost of the "natural psyche" of the
individual. Those who experience the individuation process with open eyes
will surely be able to strike the golden mean. For "the true art of living is the
middle way between yieldingness and rigidity". 21

It should not be forgotten that, despite the causal nexus in

which he lives, man also possesses a feeling of freedom that is identical with
the autonomy of consciousness. This is the Danaän gift of his disobedience
in Paradise, of his eating of the tree of knowledge. Jung says: "However
much the ego can be proved to be dependent and preconditioned, it cannot
be convinced that it has no freedom . . . The existence of ego-consciousness
has meaning only if it is free and autonomous. By stating these facts we
have, it is true, established an antinomy, but we have at the same time given
a picture of things as they are. There are temporal, local and individual
differences in the degree of dependence and freedom. In reality both are
always present: the supremacy of the self and the hybris of consciousness.
This conflict between conscious and unconscious is at least brought nearer
to a solution through our becoming aware of it." 22 Without consciousness
we would not even know whether this world existed or not; and without the
unconscious portion of the psyche the source of all good and evil, of all that
is old and all that is new, of all beauty and ugliness, would be lost.

Conscious realization really begins with the dawn of man's history. At first
there was an undivided harmony of plant, animal, man, and God, which
pervaded everything and has been handed down to us in the symbol of
Paradise. Man lived then in the blissful state of unconsciousness, of
spacelessness and timelessness, as though in the lap of God, at one with
him, in him. With the eating of the forbidden fruit, by which he "knew" good
and evil, i.e., became conscious, man's earthly life as we understand it
began. From then on, expelled from Paradise, torn between his conscious,
individual ego and the unconscious depths of his soul still reposing in God,
he had to make his way back with toil and suffering to the original unity, in
order to reach it, perhaps, at the end of time—but this time in the full light
of his consciousness. Not for nothing does the Bible story of the creation
represent that first coming of human consciousness as the infringement of a
taboo, as though

lojf. The Way of Individuation

with the winning of knowledge a sacrosanct, inviolable bound had been

overstepped.

For that step towards concious realization was a sort of Promethean guilt:
"Through knowledge, the gods are as it were robbed of their fire, that is,
something that was the property of the unconscious powers is torn out of its
natural context and subordinated to the whims of the conscious mind. The
man who has usurped the new knowledge suffers, however, a
transformation or enlargement of consciousness, which no longer resembles
that of his fellow men. He has raised himself above the human level of his
age ('ye shall become like unto God, knowing good and evil'), but in doing so
has alienated himself from humanity." 23 He has become an individual with
his own fate, lonely and threatened with punishment. It was sin, arrogance,
to know himself apart from God, to confront him face to face, and thus
break the law of the unity of all things in primal night. "And yet the
attainment of consciousness was the most precious fruit of the tree of
knowledge, the magical weapon which gave man victory over the earth, and
which we hope will give him a still greater victory over himself." 24

For "life that just happens in and for itself is not real life: it is real only when
it is known. Only a unified personality can experience life, not that
personality which is split up into partial aspects, that bundle of odds and
ends which also calls itself 'man'." 25 That is why the "natural" as well as the
"analytically assisted" individuation process seeks to reunite what was
divided, fche light and the dark side of the psyche, to restore to man his
wholeness by a continual widening of consciousness, and not to deepen the
split between them by accentuating their one-sidedness but to bring about
their union by bridging the opposites.

There are still many people today who are only partially conscious. A
relatively large number are almost completely unconscious and spend their
lives mostly in an unconscious condition. They suffer what happens to
them, but are not conscious of what they do and say, they do not know the
significance

of their deeds and words and can give no account of it. The extension of
consciousness is still hedged about by fear, still surrounded by the breath of
original sin, and is therefore dreaded and avoided. And yet: "The world
comes into being when man discovers it. He discovers it when he sacrifices
the 'mother', that is, when he comes out of the mists of his unconscious
containment in the mother." 2e "The coming of consciousness was probably
the most tremendous experience of primeval times, for with it a world came
into being whose existence no one had suspected before. 'And God said: Let
there be light!' is the projection of that immemorial experience of the
separation of the conscious from the unconscious." 27

Jung himself calls it a "confession of faith" when he says: "I believe that,
after thousands and millions of years, someone had to realize that this
wonderful world of mountains and oceans, suns and moons, galaxies and
nebulae, plants and animals, exists. From a low hill in the Athi plains of
East Africa I once watched the vast herds of wild animals grazing in the
soundless stillness, as they had done from time immemorial . . . The entire
world around me was still in its primeval state; it did not know that it was.
And then, in that one moment in which I came to know, the world sprang
into being . . . All Nature seeks this goal and finds it fulfilled in man, but
only in the most highly developed and most fully conscious man." 28 Thus
the wantonness which Adam and Eve committed became the source of all
spiritual growth and drives us forward on the way to an ever higher
development of the psyche and our world, to a consciousness of our relation
to God and his workings in the soul through the symbols of the Self.

The Religious Function and Conscience

he outcome of an individuation process to which a man has devoted himself

with all his powers is an attitude that one can rightly call "religious" in the
proper sense of the word. For this process leads him to the knowledge that
he is at the mercy of an irrational power which transcends his consciousness
and which he has to accept humbly. To this power he has given a great
variety of names. By Christians it is called "God", in whose image man was
created. 1 He imagines this God as a person of transcendent and
metaphysical nature. Conscious of his dependence upon him, he knows also
his own earthly measure and can understand himself in right proportion to
God and his creation.
The ability to believe is a function given to man at birth. 2 His special
directedness to God is, in Jung's view, an autochthonous religious urge, an
inborn need of the soul, which cannot be neglected or violated without
grave injury to psychic health. For him every neurosis is basically an
expression of a disturbance of the "religious function" of the psyche, which
he regards as its fundamental function. If it is inhibited or blocked, man
fashions substitute gods for himself, and, succumbing to them,
impoverishes his inner life, with congruent psychic disturbances. 3 This
works out disastrously, particularly in the second half of life. For whereas a
young person has to devote his whole attention to adapting to the de-

mands of outer reality, after middle life a man is turned more and more
strongly to his inner depths, to his relation to God, whom he must face at
death. That is why in this phase of life the question of a religious anchorage
becomes an urgent problem which can no longer be avoided.

The individuation process is directed first and foremost to the completeness

of the personality. Its constant aim is to raise out of unconsciousness the
"missing" element that would make for wholeness, and to join it to
consciousness. In our materialistically oriented world, therefore, the prime
task will be spir-itualization, the opus contra naturam. If, however, a man
lives too one-sidedly, in the intellect alone, which is nothing but pseudo-
spirit, then the work of individuation will address itself partly to the "right"
spirit and partly to the inclusion of "Nature" and a recognition of the values
of the world of instinct. Since both kinds of work demand the sacrifice of
one-sidedness, whether of spirit or of Nature, both need that attitude of
humility which we may call "religious". This consists on the one hand in the
knowledge of our dependence on fate, and on the other hand in the
knowledge that every step that takes us nearer to wholeness can be made
only Deo concedente.

Ultimately, all religious belief is a charisma. It falls to us as a gift of grace

and can never be forced by the will. It comes upon one unawares, and often
possesses one completely. "Religious experience is absolute," says Jung, "it
cannot be disputed. You can only say that you have never had such an
experience, whereupon your opponent will reply: 'Sorry, I have/ And there
your discussion will come to an end." 4 And elsewhere: "Theology does not
help those who are looking for the key, because theology demands faith, and
faith cannot be made: it is in the truest sense a gift of grace. We moderns
are faced with the necessity of rediscovering the life of the spirit; we must
experience it anew for ourselves." 5 For Jung, then, the experience of God in
the form of an encounter or unio mystica is the only possible and authentic
way to a genuine belief in God for modern man.

The individuation process can "prepare" a man for such an

experience. It can open him to the influence of a world beyond his rational
consciousness, and give him insight into it. Any thorough analytical work on
the psychic material will have to push forward to the individual's religious
attitude, and will awaken, clarify, or deepen this attitude, as the case may
be. A false or inadequate religious attitude will be unmasked, and even a
relatively genuine faith can be thrown into a crisis of decision. 6 This is
particularly important in the case of a faith that is too rigid, narrow, and
dogmatic, if the individual is to gain an inwardly freer attitude and have a
personal experience of his relationship to God. 7

In place of speculative knowledge, which is alien to faith, the individuation

process can convey an empirical knowledge which is not mere religiosity,
thoughtlessly imitated and as it were grafted on to a person, but a living
relation to God, validated by the experience itself. "So long as religion is
only faith and outward form, and the religious function is not experienced
in our own souls, nothing of any importance has happened. It has yet to be
understood that the mysterium magnum is not only an actuality but is first
and foremost rooted in the human psyche," says Jung. 8 He thinks that
access to faith is blocked for the man of today because the eternal images in
which the mystery of faith is expressed are largely lost. Modern man's
understanding for the "precious vessels of the mystery of faith", 9 the
symbols, is obscured. Thus in analytical work "the field of the soul must be
ploughed up, that the word of God may take root". 10 "It is man's
opportunity that God does not leave him in peace and has implanted in his
psyche the prime function of faith, which ever seeks a place where it may
feel at home." n

In the religious function of the psyche, the activity of the Self is revealed in
its most significant aspect, often assuming a fateful character. The religious
function is, therefore, closely bound up with the role which the
manifestation of the Self plays in every individual life. Like the Self, it may
remain unrecognized for long periods, or assume strange "disguised"

forms. It is not simply a product of the analytically assisted individuation

process; rather, it is the motor that drives a man to the completion of his
human task, and the individuation process to its fulfilment.

It is a matter of indifference for psychic health what religion or creed a

person professes, whether he wishes to remain outside them all and to
create his own particular relation to God. From the psychological point of
view, a man can become psychically balanced and advance towards psychic
wholeness whether as a Mohammedan or a Buddhist, a Jew or a Christian.
The one decisive thing is that each should win to a form of faith
corresponding to his own nature, based on an entirely personal judgment
and sense of responsibility, which sustains him from then on and gives him
inner security. One might say that in the course of the individuation process
a man arrives at the entrance to the house of God. Whether he opens the
door and penetrates to the inner sanctuary where the divine images are, this
last step is left to him alone. He may, after having encountered on his
journey the reality of the religious numina and experienced their shattering
effect in his personal life or in dreams, turn aside from them in resistance
and deny them, or else make them his innermost possession.

The individuation process can prepare the way for such insights and
decisions. It is, however, not its task to bring about a conversion or to
advocate a particular creed. In Jung's view that does not lie within the
competence of the analyst, and must be left to the priest or theologian. For
individuation is a psychological goal and not a religious one, although it can
be reached only by including a religious attitude.

Jung has never been concerned with faith in a confessional sense, much less
with "having to believe", but rather with an openness to the irrational
beyond our human grasp. On the other hand, he has sought to make man
habitually conscious of the limits of the ego in order to secure him a place in
this world suited to his finiteness. Consciousness is not denied its leading
role: on the contrary, it remains the decisive authority,

no The Way of Individuation

even when its decision must be to leave leadership to the impersonal powers
that determine man's fate. Here Jung is not dabbling in metaphysics, nor
does he discuss the contents of faith as such. Conscious of his limitations, he
says: "Psychology is concerned with the act of seeing and not with the
construction of new religious truths, when even the existing teachings have
not yet been perceived and understood. In religious matters it is a well-
known fact that we cannot understand a thing until we have experienced it
inwardly." 12

Jung is interested simply and solely in understanding religious statements

as empirical psychological phenomena. What religious experience or
metaphysical truth may be in itself he does not pretend to know in his
capacity as psychologist and psychotherapist. "Looked at empirically, they
are essentially psychic phenomena, that is, they manifest themselves as
such and must therefore be submitted to psychological criticism, evaluation,
and investigation." 13 Only then can they be grasped by the conscious mind
and given a worthy place in the structure of the psyche. For "the more
unconscious we are of the religious problem in the future, the greater the
danger of our putting the divine germ within us to some ridiculous or
demoniacal use, puffing ourselves up with it instead of remaining conscious
that we are no more than the manger in which the Lord is born". 14

The religious function of the psyche is closely connected with the problem of
conscience. If it is disturbed, if it is not perceived or is suppressed, the
psychic economy is thrown into disorder and man makes himself the
measure of all things. He becomes presumptuous, and is seized by a hybris
of the will. He falls a victim to inflation, or to a depression just as deep.
Vainly he tries to live up to the precepts and laws that hold sway in the outer
world. Nowhere does he feel safe and secure, his conscience gives him no
rest. Again and again it calls him to self-reflection.

Jung has, in general, regarded neurotic and psychotic dis-

turbances as symptoms of deviation from the natural maturation demanded

by the psyche, which is, as it were, its religious destiny. It seemed to him
that the meaning of these psychic sufferings might consist in their
compelling a man to come to terms with the foundations of his being and
with the world, and thereby to gain a better knowledge of his limits and
possibilities as well as broadening his consciousness. Jung thus put the
emphasis on the prospective aspect, giving neurosis a positive meaning and
not regarding it only as a burdensome illness. According to him, it can even
act as a stimulus in the struggle for the development of the personality and
be, paradoxically, a curative factor. Not only the sufferer, but every questing
and striving person, will involuntarily feel the neglect or violation of the
task imposed on him by nature—the maturation of the personality—as
"guilt". Although the fear of not living up to the demands and expectations
of the collective may cause him pangs of conscience, he is beset by the
deepest feelings of guilt if he fails to mature according to his age.

Conscience for Jung, in contrast to Freud, 15 is thus only to a limited extent

an authority conditioned by social commands and prohibitions; it is rather
a structural quality inborn in the psyche, directed to the maintenance of the
psychic balance and aiming at its wholeness. It rises up warningly against
any obstacle put in the way of this goal, both in the "natural" individuation
process and in the "analytically assisted" one. Its voice can be heard
imperatively when it brings a man into conflict with the conventional moral
law and confronts him with the choice between his own individual way and
the collective way of tradition.

In these cases Jung speaks of a genuine "conflict of duty", when one's duty
to the social or even professional norm is incompatible with one's duty to
one's own personality. We know from experience that man's innate
impulses are not always in accord with the so-called moral code. Often they
are completely at variance with it, if one regards the moral code as the
traditional religious and moral views of a given environment

at a given time. In the terminology of Freud it would, to a certain extent,

correspond to the "superego", and in Jung's to the "collective
consciousness". But over and above that, Jung also takes account of the
influence of the inherited, instinctive modes of behaviour, the archetypes,
which, uninfluenced by the will or by consciousness, represent the
necessities of human nature and in many people's conscience manifest
themselves as the vox Dei, the voice of God. In this case, man conducts
himself not according to the accepted moral code, but according to guiding
lines laid down in the unconscious foundations of his personality: "The
decision is drawn from dark and deep waters." 16 Thus often, though not
always, the insight of the conscious ego, which wants to obey the accepted
moral principles, and the inner voice, which wants to maintain or restore
the psychic equilibrium, are directly opposed and each wants to conquer the
other. The ego, meanwhile, finds itself in the situation of Buridan's ass, who
had to choose between two bundles of hay. It is only this conflict situation,
i.e., the above-mentioned "conflict of duty", that calls up genuine problems
of conscience, according to Jung.

In order to distinguish between these two forms of conscience, the collective

and the individual, Jung proposes that the first be called the "moral" aspect
of conscience and the second the "ethical" aspect. "Conscience is a psychic
reaction which one can call moral because it always appears when the
conscious mind leaves the path of custom, or the mores, or suddenly
recollects it." 17 "Distinct from this is the ethical form of conscience, which
appears when two decisions or ways of acting, both affirmed to be moral
and therefore regarded as 'duties', collide with one another. In these cases,
not foreseen by the moral code because they are mostly very individual, a
judgment is required which cannot properly be called 'moral' or in accord
with custom." 18 Most people know conscience only in its first form; only a
few experience genuine conflicts of duty which set them against collective
morality. To avoid the responsibilities of a personal decision, which would
mean giving

the "ethical" conscience priority over the "moral" conscience, most people
repress the conflict and all too often end up with a neurosis.

A special problem is presented by the fact that one cannot make out in
advance whether the voice of conscience is "right" or "wrong". For evil,
disguised in the admonitions of conscience, can prompt us from within to
deeds and reactions unworthy of man. One has only to think, for instance,
of Hitler's conviction that the command for the liquidation of the Jews
sprang from his conscience.

It is a common experience that deviation from the moral code is attended by

great dangers. For this reason all religions have established rules of conduct
whose non-observance may drive man into the severest conflicts. The
conflict situations into which we are thrown by our inner impulses and the
reactions of conscience put us in a paradoxical, divisive psychic state, but
for which the question of conscience would present no problem at all, since
in moral matters one could then rely entirely on the decision of the inner
voice. 19 "The primitive form of conscience is paradoxical," says Jung. "Both
forms of conscience, the right and the false, stem from the same source, and
both therefore have approximately the same power of conviction." 20 This
"source" is the archetype of the God-image, the Self, which dwells in the
depths of the soul and is by nature polaristic, containing light and shadow
in equal degree. 21

The point here is Jung's view that conscience, like the religious function,
possesses a quality that aids conscious realization and aims at individual
self-development, i.e., at individuation. Any deviation from the way of
individuation, from the demands laid upon man by his "destiny", can
provoke a reaction of conscience. Conscience, therefore, has an important
task in the development of the individual, keeping watch over it and urging
it towards its goal. But, if he is to be a complete human being, he must do
justice equally to the collective "moral" demands and the individual
"ethical" demands, and thus be essentially a paradox. However, it is just this
paradoxi-

cality that accords most fully with his nature. For "there is scarcely any
other psychic phenomenon that shows the polarity of the psyche in a clearer
light than conscience," says Jung. 22 According to him, the polaristic
structure of the psyche is the foundation of psychic life and keeps it in a
state of constant dynamic tension.

Whereas obedience to the "moral" conscience can at least be sure of the

approval of society, following the dictates of the "ethical" conscience
remains the responsibility of the individual and exposes him to the danger
of going astray. Unfortunately, "In practice it is very difficult to indicate the
exact point at which the 'right' conscience stops and the 'false' one begins,
and what the criterion is that divides the one from the other." 23

Conscience may indeed demand that the individual follow his inner voice
even at the risk of going astray. If he refuses to obey it, and, for fear of
taking the wrong road, adapts to the generally accepted, traditional
morality, he will nevertheless feel uneasy because he has been untrue to his
real nature. His adaptation will be forced and his "ethical" conscience will
continue to plague him until "a creative solution emerges which ... is in
accord with the deepest foundations of the personality as well as with its
wholeness; it embraces conscious and unconscious and therefore
transcends the ego" by producing a "third standpoint" that bridges the
opposites 24 It goes without saying that confusion and error cannot be
avoided. Yet this must be accepted by anyone who has submitted himself to
the pains of the individuation process. For it is not only a "road of endless
compromises", the "middle road", but also a quest, a thorny path strewn
with mistakes and wrong deeds that also have to be experienced. They too
have their function; they help us to insights that broaden and deepen the
field of consciousness, and we know that they are the precondition of any
further development.

Thus conscience becomes a monitor urging us to a confrontation with the

world within and without, the examiner of the
genuineness of our deeds and behaviour, the messenger between the "voice
of God" and our consciousness. People who declare they have no conscience
because they never hear its call are as good as dead, for their psychic life is
extinct.

Experience shows that the achievement demanded by the analytically

assisted individuation process—the resolute courage to face and endure
one's own darkness—is forthcoming only in exceptional cases. The price
that has to be paid seems too high for most people. For this reason they
remain stuck in a more or less unconscious state and live without reflecting
in the mist of participation mystique with the surrounding world. "What is
it, in the end, that induces a man to go his own way and to rise out of
unconscious identity with the mass as out of a swathing mist? ... It is what is
commonly called vocation: an irrational factor that destines a man to
emancipate himself from the herd and from its well-worn paths . . .
Vocation acts like a law of God from which there is no escape . . . Anyone
with a vocation hears the voice of the inner man: he is called." 25 "What
would have happened if Paul had allowed himself to be talked out of his
journey to Damascus?" Jung asks. 26 "Unless one accepts one's fate . . .
there is no individuation; one remains a mere accident, a mortal nothing."
27 That is why those people who have been most deeply affected by the
problems and images of the psychic background cannot but feel, looking
back on their lives, that their path of development could not have been
otherwise.

Not following one's destiny, or trying to avoid one's fate, is a frequent cause
of numerous psychic difficulties. It may even be that the steady increase in
the number of neurotics today is due to the fact that more and more
individuals are called upon by fate to work for their psychic wholeness, but
that fewer and fewer of them are ready to do so. Any obstruction of the
natural process of development, any avoidance of the law of life, or getting
stuck on a level unsuited to one's age, takes its revenge, if not immediately,
then later at the onset of the second half of

life, in the form of serious crises, nervous breakdowns, and all manner of
physical and psychic sufferings. Mostly they are accompanied by vague
feelings of guilt, by tormenting pangs of conscience, often not understood,
in face of which the individual is helpless. He knows he is not guilty of any
bad deed, he has not given way to any illicit impulse, and yet he is plagued
by uncertainty, discontent, despair, and above all by anxiety— a constant,
indefinable anxiety. And in truth he must usually be pronounced "guilty".
His guilt does not lie in the fact that he has a neurosis, but in the fact that,
knowing he has one, he does nothing to set about curing it.

This also explains why many practising Catholics do not feel freed by
confession and absolution, but go on being oppressed and persecuted by
fears. And indeed they cannot confess anything except what lies consciously
on their conscience, while they are not conscious of their real guilt at all; it
is not anything they have done or thought, essentially it is ungraspable and
can hardly be put into words. For it relates to their whole previous life, to
which they did not pay its due tribute; it relates to the "destiny" that was
laid upon them but was not lived, to the psychic development they missed,
which their nature would yet have made possible. The fact that they
remained infantile, their one-sidedness and the neglect of their other
qualities, their fear of taking the plunge into life, their constant
prevarication and criticism—all this and a lot more besides are the cause of
guilt feelings and pangs of conscience which never let them go.

To submit to an individuation process as a conscious decision is therefore,

in Jung's view, not only a way of developing one's own nature, but a
psychotherapeutic necessity for all those who suffer from afflictions of the
soul.

The Dual Nature of Man

lthough the word "individuation" is much in the air nowadays, it is

surprising how few people have a correct picture of it. Most of them still
think that "individuating" means becoming a sort of superman, who has
absolute power over his instincts, who is entirely spiritualized, who loves
everybody and whom everybody loves, selfless, always ready to help, always
just and good, etc., etc.—in a word, a man who has attained perfection. It is
not difficult to recognize in this picture the traditional Christian ideal
imprinted on the West and held up to us all in childhood as the goal of our
character. Those who are moulded by this ideal have no doubt whatever
about the Tightness of their views and convictions and are full of resistances
when one tries to make clear to them that the consequences of an
individuation process, as understood by Jung, may quite as well consist in
one's becoming, in comparison with the aforementioned ideal picture, less
"good" and "perfect" than one was before, but, instead, more "complete"
and "whole".

The individuation process has in no sense a "moral" goal in the accepted

meaning of the word. It does not aim at perfectionism, but only at helping a
man to become in the truest sense what he in fact is, and not to hide behind
the ideal mask which is so easily mistaken for his true essence, although by
so

doing he makes it all the more likely that the evil repressed behind it will
break out. We should perhaps rather remember that the individuation
process has in Jung's view an "ethical" goal, reminding ourselves that, in
this context, Jung uses the word "morality" to denote what accords with the
mores, with the social order, whereas by "ethics" he means that essential
and fundamental nature to which man is oriented by the universal order. 1
Man in this world is committed to, and has to submit to, both orders, but
since they often get into insoluble conflicts with one another he must learn
to endure these conflicts as well.

The endeavour to follow the rules and regulations in every way, whether
pedagogical, social, or ecclesiastical, and nowhere to stumble, much less
commit a "sin", is a perfectionism that all too often leads not to perfection
but to a neurosis instead. For it does violence to the natural make-up of
man, which, though it strives for the good and the right, also has in it
potentialities for the evil and the wrong. Human imperfection, which clings
to every one of us since the expulsion from Paradise, from that unconscious
containment in and oneness with God, can presumably be sloughed off only
through an act of divine grace. Grace, however, can fall to the lot also of the
man who in our estimation is unworthy, for the ways of God and his reasons
are not to be discovered by our earthly probings, nor can they be grasped or
interpreted psychologically.

Even in the Lord's Prayer we petition God not to lead us into temptation,
thus confessing that our sinfulness may perhaps be permitted or actually
willed by God in order to test us, to confront us with our "fallen" nature so
that we may become fully conscious of it. In the first chapter of the Book of
Job, Satan is counted among the "sons of God". 2 He has the task of making
a trial of man, of humbling him in order to show him his sinfulness. He thus
has a dark but necessary role to play in God's plan of salvation. 3 And
because Satan goes to and fro upon the earth and is always in our midst,
every man has in the background of his soul—for only a few can tolerate a
clear

The Dual Nature of Man up

consciousness of their sinful nature—an obscure feeling of guilt and sin.

That is why the Catholic Church wisely instituted the practice of confession
and absolution, for in this way even the most unconscious man can be made
to realize his fallibility, thus giving him an impetus towards transformation
and rebirth.

At any rate, says Jung, "to strive after Ttkeiooons —completion—in this
sense is not only legitimate but is inborn in man as a peculiarity which
provides civilization with one of its strongest roots." 4 Only if a man thinks
he can actually be perfect, that is, become like God, will life again and again
bring about his downfall. He must constantly run up against his limits lest
he become too arrogant. Jung mournfully admits: "The individual may
strive after perfection . . . but must suffer from the opposite of his intentions
for the sake of his completeness." 6 This suffering can be a powerful spur to
his further striving and hold him to the road of his inner development. One
must agree with Jung when he says: "There is no light without shadow and
no psychic wholeness without imperfection. To round itself out, life calls not
for perfection but for completeness; and for this the 'thorn in the flesh' is
needed, the suffering of defects without which there is no progress and no
ascent." 6 "When one follows the path of individuation, when one lives one's
own life, one must take mistakes into the bargain; life would not be
complete without them. There is no guarantee—not for a single moment—
that we will not fall into error or stumble into deadly peril. We may think
there is a safe road. But that would be the road of death. Then nothing
happens any longer—at any rate, not the right things. Anyone who takes the
safe road is as good as dead." 7

This conviction of Jung's has provoked much resistance and given rise to
countless misunderstandings, since in the West the striving for perfection
belongs to the inventory of a religious upbringing and education. Many
people easily fall into the error of believing that perfection is attainable in
principle here on earth, and forget that it is at most something to be

aimed at. Though it can be approached, it can never be reached. The dark
counterpole, however strongly it be suppressed or repressed, is only
shamming dead; it lives on in the depths of the psyche and invisibly
influences everything we humans are and do, feel and believe. Without this
dark hinterland man remains two-dimensional, and the more he tries to rid
himself of it the less complete he becomes. Filled out by his "other side",
admitting its existence and recognizing its influence, he becomes complete.
He is what he knows of himself, his conscious ego-side, but besides that he
is what he also is, the potential he has not realized, and what lies hidden
within him. This does not mean, of course, that he should act out his dark
side and give free rein to all his repressions, a charge which the
unenlightened public so often lay at the door of the psychotherapist. The
acceptance of the shadow is not a carte blanche for licentiousness, 8 not a
declaration of irresponsibility and a denial of self-determination. For why
should consciousness, and the "free will" which is available only to
consciousness, have been given to us, if it did not want us to make further
use of its power?

Since the psyche is built on polar opposites which complement each other,
but also stand in glaring contradiction to each other, it must of its very
nature exist in a state of tension and suffer this. One can even say that the
confrontation with these opposites lies at the heart of the individuation
process. For this reason the suspension on the cross is such an excellent
symbol for the authentic being of man. Hence the Christian summons to an
imitatio of the crucified Christ touches on the deepest chord in our human
nature. Usually, however, the imitatio Christi is understood and aspired to
exclusively as an imitation of his divine perfection, but not of his tragic
human fate, of his suffering and sacrifice. The four beams of the cross
stretching in different directions point to a fundamental conflict and a
corresponding state of torment, but their point of intersection, the centre of
the cross, symbolizes the possibility of a union of opposites, to strive for
which is likewise man's
task. This characterizes the ambivalence which is the lot of man and which
is so difficult to master.

For each of us would like to live only in a straight line, to have only one
meaning, and not to be torn between our own inner contradictions. The fact
that these cannot always be overcome, that not all of them can be cancelled
out or neutralized, is a lesson which we learn in the course of life only
through a long chain of experiences. But this exempts us neither from
having to endure them nor from seeking to reconcile them. To be "whole"
means, at the same time: to be full of contradictions. We falsify man when
we try to sketch a homogeneous picture of him. The picture is true to life
only when it is ambiguous and paradoxical. That is why it is so difficult to
give an adequate description of him and of his psyche, and to relate oneself
to his wholeness. One of the most valuable insights and conclusions
conveyed by the individuation process is that paradox is an essential feature
of human existence and of the psyche, and that one must learn to accept it
and live with it.

The Christian knows that man is good and evil and that this antinomy is a
fundamental characteristic of his psychic makeup. What else is meant by
saying that we are all tainted with original sin? As soon as the light of
consciousness dawned in man, as soon as he came to know his difference
from God, he was exposed to the torment of opposites in his soul. For "only
unconsciousness makes no difference between good and evil".* By eating of
the tree of knowledge despite God's prohibition, his eyes were opened, 10
and they have remained open ever since, and presumably always will be.
Painful and difficult as human existence became for ever afterward, being
placed between good and evil is precisely the hallmark of man as man. Were
it not so, he would not be able to discriminate, the opposites would not be
separated, and everything would melt into everything else. "We must not
overlook the fact that opposites acquire their moral accentuation only
within the sphere of hu-

man endeavour and action, and that we are unable to give a definition of
good and evil that could be considered universally valid. In other words, we
do not know what good and evil are in themselves. It must therefore be
supposed that they spring from a need of human consciousness and that for
this reason they lose their validity outside the human sphere." u

If evil did not exist, man would perhaps not be able to discern the good. It is
only through the intensity of the darkness that the light becomes visible in
its full radiance. Only light and darkness make one day; 12 only good and
evil make one man. Therefore Jung rightly says: "To confront a person with
his shadow is to show him his own light ... Anyone who perceives his
shadow and his light simultaneously sees himself from two sides and thus
gets in the middle." "He knows that the world consists of darkness and light.
I can master their polarity only by freeing myself from them by
contemplating both, and so reaching a middle position. Only there am I no
longer at the mercy of the opposites." 13 And elsewhere he says: "In this
world good and evil more or less balance each other, like day and night, and
this is the reason why the victory of the good is always a special act of
grace." 14

Jung could never admit that evil, even in its most harmless aspect, is merely
a "diminution" of good. He vehemently rejected the Catholic doctrine of evil
as a privatio boni. The daily experienced reality of evil, its apparently
ineradicable presence in our midst, its undeniable power were proof for
Jung that it is*a reality in itself, formidable and often ungovernable, which
could not be denied an absolute value. No argument to the contrary could
induce him to change his view, whose Tightness he^passionately defended
in many of his writings. 15 At the same time he emphasized that he
contested the validity of the privatio boni only in the empirical realm,
expressly stating: "My attitude to this problem is empirical, not theoretical
or aprioristjc." 16 For "in the metaphysical realm . . . good may be a
substance and evil non-existent (/U17 6*0", 17 Dut m ac " tual experience it
is otherwise. In other words, these two very different realms should not be
confused with one another, as

unfortunately often happens, particularly in theological circles. Rather, care

should be taken to keep them rigorously apart.

In the human realm of experience, therefore, evil as much as good has a

reality with which we are daily confronted. Anyone who evades this
confrontation remains one-sided. As Pascal trenchantly remarks: "Man is
neither angel nor brute, and the unfortunate thing is that he who would act
the angel acts the brute." 18 And again: "It is dangerous to show man too
clearly how much he resembles the beasts without at the same time showing
him his greatness. It is also dangerous to allow him too clear a vision of his
greatness without his baseness. It is even more dangerous to leave him in
ignorance of both. But it is very profitable to show him both." 19 Words that
exactly agree with the facts Jung has encountered in his practical work.

Absolute good and absolute evil no doubt exist as abstract concepts. But as
soon as we consider them as psychological phenomena, we have to begin by
asking: Which man, under what physical, social, and psychological
conditions, has done, said, or thought such-and-such? Moreover, whether a
thing is described as evil is largely dependent on a subjective judgment, as is
the case also with the degree and gravity of a man's guilt. Let us consider,
for example, the fifth commandment: "Thou shalt not kill." 20 Killing is
undoubtedly a sin, but even it can be judged from different standpoints. It
makes a difference whether a man kills out of cupidity, jealousy, or for
revenge, or whether a mother, to save her child, kills its attacker, or whether
a soldier kills an enemy as a patriotic duty. 21 Armies going into battle are
even blessed by their churches; often it is the same church that blesses the
soldiers of the opposing army. If a man is decorated for killing a particularly
large number of the enemy in time of war, but is locked up in time of peace
for killing a single individual—perhaps in self-defence—then it is not
surprising that people are disoriented and that good and evil seem
inextricably intermixed.

It is the same with the fourth commandment: "Honour thy

j24 The Way of Individuation

father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the
Lord thy God giveth thee." 22 The principle here expressed in abstract form
can be followed in a great variety of ways in everyday reality. Some think
they are "honouring" their parents best by remaining with them unmarried
till their death; others, by marrying, founding a family, fostering their
inheritance, and passing it on to their children; others, by emigrating to a
distant country and building up a fortune that redounds to the good of their
parents too. One man thinks he must be kind and polite to his parents at the
cost of sincerity, another that a rough word and brusque behaviour are
permissible if they come from a good heart. The way in which the
commandment is obeyed will depend on the attitude, feeling, and judgment
of the person in question, and each will be convinced that he has interpreted
and applied the Biblical injunction correctly.

Most commandments and prohibitions lose their unequivocal meaning as

soon as they are seen in a psychological light. What is forbidden and evil in
one context may be permitted and good in another. Often it cannot be
decided until afterwards whether what one has done was good or bad, right
or wrong. So it is unavoidable that one occasionally takes a false step or
lands oneself in conflicts. Moreover there are kinds of "guilt" and kinds of
conflict of the subtlest nature, which begin where the law books leave off
and remain inaccessible to even the deepest delving psychology. With such
cases in mind, Jung says: "To see into the ultimate depths of the conviction
behind the action is possible only to God." M Here we come to that border
territory which sets a bound to our knowledge.

The dialectical discussion between the conscious contents and those coming
from the unconscious realm of the psyche in the analytically assisted
individuation process is at the same time a discussion between spirit and
nature, the great pair of opposites in the psyche. It frequently acquires a
moral accent, since good is identified with spirit and evil with nature. Jung
was from the beginning passionately concerned with this prob-

lem, returning to it again and again till the end of his life. I shall therefore
quote some of his statements on this theme from his autobiography:

"Evil has become a determinant reality. It can no longer be dismissed from

the world by circumlocution. We must learn how to handle it, since it is here
to stay. How we can live with it without terrible consequences cannot for the
present be conceived. 24

"... Touching evil brings with it the grave peril of succumbing to it. We must,
therefore, no longer succumb to anything at all, not even to good. A so-
called good to which we succumb loses its ethical character. Not that there
is anything bad in it on that score, but to have succumbed to it may breed
trouble. Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be
alcohol or morphine or idealism. We must beware of thinking of good and
evil as absolute opposites . . . Recognition of the reality of evil necessarily
relativizes the good, and the evil likewise, converting both into halves of a
paradoxical whole.

"In practical terms, this means that good and evil are no longer so self-
evident. We have to realize that each represents a judgment. In view of the
fallibility of all human judgment, we cannot believe that we will always
judge rightly. We might so easily be the victims of mis judgment. The ethical
problem is affected by this principle only to the extent that we become
somewhat uncertain about the moral evaluations. Nevertheless we have to
make ethical decisions. 25 The relativity of 'good' and 'evil' by no means
signifies that these categories are invalid, or do not exist ... I have pointed
out many times that as in the past, so in the future the wrong we have done,
thought, or intended will wreak its vengeance on our souls . . . Moral
evaluation is always founded upon the apparent certitudes of a moral code
which pretends to know precisely what is good and what evil. But once we
know how uncertain the foundation is, ethical decision becomes a
subjective, creative act. We

can convince ourselves of its validity only Deo concedente — that is, there
must be a spontaneous and decisive impulse on the part of the unconscious.
26 Ethics itself, the decision between good and evil, is not affected by this
impulse, only made more difficult for us. Nothing can spare us the torment
of ethical decision . . .

"Therefore the individual who wishes to have an answer to the problem of

evil, as it is posed today, has need, first and foremost, of self-knowledge,
that is, the utmost possible knowledge of his own wholeness. He must know
relentlessly how much good he can do, and what crimes he is capable of,
and must beware of regarding the one as real and the other as illusion. Both
are elements within his nature, and both are bound to come to light in him,
should he wish—as he ought—to live without self-deception or self-
delusion." 27

These statements and others like them, based on empirical psychology, have
earned Jung many critics and enemies, particularly among theologians.
They protest that his relativiza-tion of good and evil would destroy the
moral values for man, who, in his existential uncertainty, needs the
guidance of unequivocal principles. With that Jung would largely agree, so
far as concerns all those who go the "natural" way of individuation,
although even in these cases any one-sidedness, any abso-lutization of
behaviour or judgment leads to psychic difficulties. Jung would emphasize,
however, that the analytically guided individuation process with its
problems, dangers, and trials can and should be undertaken only by those
who are ready to accept all the risks and consequences of an ethical conflict.
Actually they have no choice, because it is simply their destiny to face it
consciously. The urge for self-realization, i.e., for the development of the
personality, is inherent in every man from the beginning. 28 Unless it is
prematurely inhibited, frustrated, or deflected, 29 it will drive him towards
wholeness and subject him to an individuation process whose most highly
developed "natural" form can equal or come very close to the analytically
guided one.

What is meant, then, is neither a wilful acting out nor a conscious denial of
evil, but an admission that no human life can entirely escape it. We make
convulsive efforts to keep only the good, the permitted thoughts and
feelings in our consciousness, and to exclude the numerous drives and
qualities which belong to our "non-angelic" side, which we do not want to
admit even to ourselves, much less to others. Hence the rigid facade, the
panic fear and aggressive self-defence whenever the slightest criticism puts
our allegedly angelic side in question. To know that evil ever dwells within
us, to learn to bear this knowledge instead of foisting it off on other people
and always blaming them for everything, is one of the most important
postulates of individuation.

The more the originally unconscious components of the personality, even

the "evillest" of them, can be articulated with consciousness and kept in
mind, the more it is possible to avoid evil. This, however, only in modest
recognition that evil as much as good belongs to our human nature, and
that it can also become that felix culpa 30 from whose darkness the light is
born. For everything repressed, inferior, immoral, even pathological can,
God willing, become the matrix for a renewal, for a rebirth on a higher level.
In the negative and evil may be hidden the germs of a transformation into
the positive and good; they can be the starting point for a reversal and
purification. Not for nothing did William Blake picture the devilish Lucifer
as a radiantly beautiful angel, for his name means "light-bringer".

Continually to avoid the encounter with evil, to live in perpetual fear of it,
leads eventually to neurosis. Because of this fear, countless neurotics try
desperately to "think out" life, to live it in imagination instead of
experiencing it, closing their eyes to the existence of evil, above all in
themselves. For only what is experienced affords certainty and security and
becomes binding for the one who has had the experience. Hence it is
necessary for the neurotic in particular to broaden his personality by
venturing into life, to throw off his chains by expanding the field of
consciousness, and therefore he is driven into
j28 The Way of Individuation

analysis just as strongly as he fears it. For his neurosis is perhaps a final call
to individuation, to explore the blocked and repressed possibilities lying
fallow in him.

The "completeness" or "wholeness" of the personality should never be

confused with "perfection" in the moral or religious sense. The former is a
psychological goal, the aim being psychic balance and health, wisdom and
tolerance, and thus inner peace. It is directed to earthly life, is
experienceable here and now, and is more or less attainable. Perfection, on
the other hand, is the ideal goal of the Christian creeds, according to which
all earthly life, being but a passage to the Beyond, must aim at this highest
virtue, so that its ultimate realization lies beyond all psychological
endeavour, in the realm of faith and religious truth. Any psychological
endeavour, therefore, even of the Jungian kind, is considered unsatisfactory
from the theological point of view, for according to Christ "there be eunuchs
which have made themselves eunuchs 31 for the kingdom of heaven's sake".
32 In psychological terms, that means: those who have sacrificed their
wholeness and completeness for the sake of longed-for perfection. The goal
of life would, in theological language, be heaven, God, and not wholeness
and completeness of the personality. And yet, from the psychological
standpoint one could reply: properly interpreted and experienced, the two
points of view and their respective aims should in no way exclude one
another, but complement one another.

By way of substantiating this statement let us again draw on the Bible,

where we read: "... for he [your Father] maketh his sun to rise on the evil
and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust ... Be ye
therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." 33
Christ, therefore, postulates a "perfection" which, like God, embraces all
polarities of being. From whichever side one approaches them, the religious
or the psychological, the result would be the same: inner peace.

This brings us to the problem of a Weltanschauung, a philosophy of life,

which in Jung's view can be freely constructed

only by the man who has learnt to distinguish between what has been
drummed into him and what he has acquired by his own experience and
knowledge. "To have a Weltanschauung means to create a picture of the
world and of oneself, to know what the world is and who I am . . . cum grano
salis, it means the best possible knowledge—a knowledge that esteems
wisdom and abhors unfounded assumptions, arbitrary assertions, and
didactic opinions. Such knowledge seeks the well-founded hypothesis,
without forgetting that all knowledge is limited and subject to error." 34 For
"the world exists not merely in itself, but also as it appears to me". 35 Only
the very few have a knowing faith, only the very few a philosophy of life won
by insight and free choice, and based on a radical coming to grips with the
problem of opposites in the psyche. Mostly our ego is a mere plaything,
tossed between the unknown forces of the outer and inner worlds. A great
deal is won, and much evil avoided, when we know something about the
contents in our unconscious depths which are liable to assail us and lead us
into temptation. Only thus are we armed against the autonomy and
demonism that cling to everything unconscious and unknown.

Most people think that everything they do or omit to do is prompted by

their conscious ego. They forget, or do not know, all the things that are alive
and active in the psyche besides the ego, and that go on autonomously,
without the participation of consciousness. They believe they know
themselves perfectly and that their ego can rule in them as it pleases. To the
question "Who am I?" or rather, "Who am I besides what I know of myself?"
the individuation process seeks to give an answer. This answer will then
largely decide the nature of one's Weltanschauung.

To many people it seems inconceivable that there could be in their psyche

autonomous contents and an activity which is not "done" or "willed" by
them. It is one of the most important achievements of the individuation
process to experience this non-ego, to make it conscious to a large extent
and to accept it as a helpful, constant companion. To live only within the
lim-

ited confines of the ego is senseless and painful. But to participate

knowingly in the boundless creative life of the psyche and in the archetypal
images of the non-ego is full of meaning, because whatever we do or omit to
do is then resolved in something greater than the ego. Here a bridge may be
thrown across to the metaphysical realm, and here Jung's belief in God
reveals itself. He asks: "The decisive question for man is: Are you related to
something infinite or not? That is the criterion of his life . . . Only
consciousness of our narrow confinement in the self forms the link to the
limitlessness of the unconscious. In this consciousness we experience
ourselves concurrently as limited and eternal, as both the one and the other.
In knowing ourselves to be unique in our personal combination—that is,
ultimately limited—we possess also the capacity for becoming conscious of
the infinite." 36 Knowing participation in the "infinite" follows, in the
psychological realm, from the awareness of the inner God-image, of the Self.
37

Intimations of heaven and hell have been man's since the earliest times, for
these are the two poles—the light and the dark—between which his soul
swings. A swing towards one side is always followed by an equal swing
towards the other. 88 Peace is found only at the centre, where man can be
wholly man, neither angel nor devil, but simply man, partaker of both
worlds. The search for this centre, for this balance of the soul, is a lifelong
undertaking. It is the basic task and the ultimate goal of psychotherapy. For
this centre is also the place where the-Divine filters through into the soul
and reveals itself jn the God-images, in the Self. It represents the moment of
quiescence when the image of God can be perceived in the polished mirror
ofthe soul.

The "balance" meant here has nothing to do with what we call "happiness"
in the ordinary sense of the word, nor with that state of freedom from care,
suffering, and effort which hovers before most people's eyes as the goal of
their heart's desire. 39 Rather, it means a state in which both worlds, the
light and the dark, the good and the bad, the joyful and the sorrow-

ful, are united in self-evident acceptance and reflect the true nature of man,
his inborn duality. In this sense the individuation process leads to the
highest possible development and completeness of the psychic personality
and is a preparation for the end of life.

Whether one goes the "natural", more or less unconscious way of

individuation or takes the consciously worked through way depends,
presumably, on fate. But one thing is certain: unconsciousness or wanting
to remain unconscious, to escape the call to development and avoid the
venture of life, is sin. For though growing old is the inescapable lot of all
creatures, growing old meaningfully is a task ordained for man alone. What
meaning has our life? None but what we give it.

Conclusion

he consciously undertaken way of individuation can, as we have seen, be

considered from several points of view. In conclusion, we will list some of
the most important.

As a process of psychological development, it represents the step-by-step

maturation of the human psyche to the point where all its potentialities are
unfolded, and the conscious and unconscious realms are united by
integrating its historical roots with present-day consciousness.

From the point of view of characterology, it throws the typological profile of

the individual into ever clearer relief. It facilitates increasing control of the
auxiliary functions and of the undeveloped, inferior function and attitude,
resulting in a growing capacity for judgment and decision and an extension
of the freedom of the will.

From the sociological point of view, it integrates the individual with the
collective and adapts the ego to the demands of life.

In psychotherapy it brings about a redistribution of psychic energy, assists

the dissolution of complexes, identifications, and fixations, as well as the
withdrawal of projections. It furnishes a means of recognizing and enduring
one's own shadow-qualities, of finding one's own values, and thus of
overcoming neurosis.
Finally, from the religious point of view, it creates a living

relation between man and the suprapersonal and gives him his proper place
in the order of the universe. Through the encounter with the contents of the
unconscious realm of the psyche and their integration with consciousness it
lays the foundations of an independent, personal philosophy of life which,
depending on the individual, may also ally itself with a particular creed.

The individuation process, however, cannot be grasped in its deepest

essence, for it is a part of the mystery of transformation that pervades all
creation. It includes within it the secret of life, which is ceaselessly reborn in
passing through an ever renewed "death".

"If man is to live," says Jung, "he must fight and sacrifice his longing for the
past in order to rise to his own heights. And having reached the noonday
heights, he must sacrifice his love for his own achievement, for he may not
loiter. The sun, too, sacrifices its greatest strength in order to hasten
onward to the fruits of autumn, which are the seeds of rebirth." 2 If this
sacrifice is made willingly—a deed possible for man alone and demanded
again and again on the way of individuation— transformation and rebirth
ensue.

Metaphorically, therefore, we could speak of the most important stations on

the way of individuation as of four births.

The first, when the bodily man steps into life from the womb of his mother.

The second, at puberty, when the ego emancipates itself from its psychic
fusion with the parental authority and acquires clearly defined form,
independence, and sense of responsibility.

The third, when the "spiritual body" emerges from the conflicts of middle
life and, anchored again in the depths of the psyche, man knowingly allies
himself with the Self. Expressed in religious language, this experience is a
"rebirth".

The fourth, when man departs through the door of life and re-enters the
vast, unexplored land beyond death, from whence he came.

Most people, however, prefer to be born onlv once. They are

afraid of the pains without which there can be no birth. They have no trust
in the natural striving of the psyche towards its goal. And so there are all too
many who halt on life's way. They venture nothing, they would rather forgo
the prize. Often even those who go the conscious way of individuation have
not understood that the greatest problems in life can never be finally solved.
"The meaning and purpose of a problem seem to lie not in its solution but in
our working at it incessantly." 2

These words of Jung's should console us for never having met a "fully
individuated" person. For it is not the goal but the striving towards this goal
that gives our life content and meaning.

Jolande Jacobi

his is a book about Jung's concept of individuation. It is also an account of

how a remarkable psychotherapist sees her work. Like all good
psychotherapy, this vision is personal. It has grown, active and passive,
from the kaleidoscopic experience of European history in the last seventy
years. To appreciate the quality of Dr. Jacobi's new book, it will help to
know something about her life story and of the relationship in which «he
stands to Jung's work.

Lewis Mumford, in his fine review of Jung's autobiography, has emphasized

how important it was for both Jung and Freud, in their personal struggle
with the irrational, that they had an anchor not only in their families but
also in "stability of residence in an identifiable historic city maintaining an
orderly pattern of social relations that included many affectionate personal
ties. No matter how far they might wander in their travels or in their minds,
the continuity of their personalities was supported by the continuity of their
homely urban environments."

Precisely this continuity was lacking for Jacobi. Twice in her life, political
catastrophe destroyed her economic, social and familial environment. When
aged thirty, and again at fifty, she had to create for herself a new life. She
has never been able to forget that the quest for personal identity is not only
a

*35

matter of inner definition. Man is wise, plays, uses tools. But also, and
always, he is a political animal.

Jolande Szekäcs was born in Budapest on 25 March 1890. Her father,

senator and privy councillor to the Austro-Hun-garian court, was a wealthy
businessman engaged in the manufacture of glass. On her mother's side,
one great uncle had been Deputy in the parliament at Warsaw, while
another was professor of Mathematics at the University of Cracow. Both
parents were of Jewish ancestry, but had been baptized as adults.

In Budapest, as elsewhere in Europe, the emancipation of 'women was one

of the topical issues in the early years of the new century. Jolande's parents
believed that the proper place of a woman was in the home, and it was only
after a struggle that she obtained permission to study at a gymnasium at the
age of fourteen. At nineteen plans for her further education 'were shelved
when she met and married Dr. Andrew Jacobi, a distinguished Budapest
lawyer, fourteen years her senior. Two sons were born in the years following
the marriage.

Jacobi's description of her life in Budapest during the 1914-18 war shows a
society with little idea that a world was coming to an end. But with more
intuition than others in her circle, she sensed how things were changing,
and insisted on training as a secretary in order to help her husband. It was a
friendship made while working for her secretarial diploma that enabled her
to escape with her family to Vienna, after the communist seizure of power in
Budapest under Bela Kun in March 1919.

This was the first great upheaval in her life. From now on, the family lived
in Vienna, though after the collapse of the communist government in
Hungary they were able to renew their contacts in Budapest. In 1924,
Jolande's husband was ill for eight months with a severe depression. It was
her first contact with such illness. She read widely in an attempt to
understand what was happening to her husband. After his recovery, Dr.
Andrew Jacobi moved back to Budapest to renew his legal practice. He lived
from then on half in Budapest and half with his family in Vienna, where he
wanted his sons to be educated.

In 1926 Jacobi came into contact with the Kulturbund, the Austrian cultural
organization which was to play a central role in her life for the next twelve
years. Her energy and initiative soon led to her election as executive vice-
president, and in this capacity she was soon at the centre of the cultural life
of the Austrian capital, and in touch with many of the great names of
Europe, men who in some cases became personal friends. In 1935 she was
decorated with the Ritterkreuz des Oester-reichischen Verdienstordens, a
rare distinction for a woman. And many years later, in 1957, the Austrian
Government conferred Austrian citizenship on her, in recognition of her
contribution to the cultural life of the republic during this period.

It was through the Kulturbund that she first met Jung and his wife in 1927,
when he lectured in Vienna. She gave a luncheon party for the Swiss visitors
at her apartment.

"At 4:30 the guests went, but Jung stayed to tell me about the / Ching. We
sat on the floor and he showed me how to throw the coins. I still have the
piece of paper, on which he wrote out from memory the 64 hexagrams.
Until that day, I'd never heard of him. I didn't even know he existed. The
whole afternoon he talked to me about 'the unconscious,' and how what we
threw in the / Ching was so to say parallel with what was constellated within
us."

In the following year, Jolande had the dream which is retold on page 76 of
this book, a dream which in a sense gives the pattern of her life and of her
own conception of psychotherapy. She sent it to Jung in Zurich, and he
answered: "Now you are caught. Now you cannot get away."

The year before she met Jung, Jolande had become the friend of the
Austrian writer Albert von Trentini. "I can truly say that it was Trentini who
awakened my spirit and most deeply formed it, even before Jung," she says.
From 1930 to 2 933 Trentini was dying of cancer. His physical and religious
suffering during those years had a decisive effect on Jacobi. She

shared them with him and began herself to struggle more and more with
problems of a religious character. She was present when Trentini received
extreme unction and was so shaken and impressed that she decided to
search deeper into the meaning of the Catholic faith, to understand better
the significance of Trentini's struggles. Thus she became a Catholic herself,
and was received into the Church a year after his death.

After Hitler came to power in Germany, she decided to write to Jung asking
if he would train her as an analyst. He replied: only if she took a doctorate
first. So, at the age of forty-four, she enrolled in 1934 at the University of
Vienna, to study psychology under Karl and Charlotte Bühler. Since the
experience of her husband's depression eleven years before, Jacobi had
gained some personal knowledge of the various psychological schools active
in Vienna. She had done a year's Adlerian analysis with Rudolf Dreikurs,
and also worked for eighteen months with a Freudian—"not long enough for
a proper analysis, but it gave me some insight into Freudian methods." (Her
only meeting with Freud was at a birthday party in his honour, when she
shook hands with him.) Through her friendship with Ernst Kris, then the
editor of Imago, she had access to psychoanalytical circles, though never
belonging to them.

She was still four months from completion of her doctorate when the Nazis
occupied Austria in March 1938. She was in danger on account of her role in
the Kulturbund, and after her flat had been ransacked by the Gestapo, she
returned with her husband to Budapest. From there she wrote to Jung that
under the circumstances she could not complete her studies, and proposing
to come at once to Zurich. He replied: "I'm sorry. Don't come without a
doctorate, I won't accept you for training." So she returned to Vienna.
Avoiding her own flat, she stayed with a friend of her son, wore mourning to
justify a veil, and, literally under the eyes of the Gestapo, took her Ph.D.
with a dissertation on the Psychology of the Change of Life. Immediately
afterwards, she returned to Budapest and finally, on 17 October 1938, came
to Zurich. She was nearly forty-nine.

From 1938 to the present day, Jacobi's life has been inextricably involved
with the work of Jung. But to understand the quality of this involvement,
and therefore to appreciate the blend of what is Jung and what is Jacobi in
this book, it is necessary to remember the range and intensity of her life
before she moved to Zurich. She came to work under Jung not as a patient,
but as a woman who had already asserted her independence in the areas of
religion and feeling.

A recurring theme in this book is the distinction between the second and the
first halves of life. Jacobi sees her own life as divided into three stages,
Budapest, Vienna and Zurich. When she moved to Zurich, the development
begun nineteen years earlier was taken a stage further. Much of her past
identity was to be stripped from her. Only gradually did the new woman
emerge.

When Jacobi first came to live in Switzerland, one son was already studying
there. The elder son had completed his education and taken a job in
Budapest. When the Nazis finally moved into Hungary in 1944, her father
and mother committed suicide after their arrest by the Gestapo, and her
husband died on the way to a concentration camp. It is with reference to
this tragedy that she says: "I owe Jung my life." Only in 1956 could her elder
son leave Hungary with his family, and join her in Switzerland.

Meanwhile, alone in Zurich in the early years of the war she found herself
rejected by many Jews who regarded her as a double traitor to her people:
through her parents' baptism, and through her own conversion to
Catholicism; while as someone with Jewish ancestors, as a woman who had
left her husband, as a foreigner with no money, there were people who felt it
wiser to keep their distance. During this period, her membership of the
Catholic Church, of a spiritual community extending beyond the borders of
neutral but beleaguered Switzerland, gave her a sense of "belonging", of
security.

But this erosion of her former identity served to stimulate enduring creative
activity in the new field of psychology. The great dream of twelve years
before was becoming reality. Al-

ready at Christmas 1938 on a visit to Budapest she had been invited to

lecture on Jung's work to a small group. These lectures she later worked up
into a slim volume which was published in German in 1940. (The English
translation, The Psychology of C. G. Jung, appeared in 1942, in London and
New York, and has since gone through six editions.) Jung consented to
write a forword. This contribution to Jacobi's book resulted in the banning
of his own books throughout Nazi occupied Europe.

This first book was followed in 1941 by her study of Paracelsus, and for
Jung's seventieth birthday in 1945 she published a large anthology from his
works, Psychological Reflections. A further major work of exposition,
Complex I Archetype j Symbol, appeared in 1956. She has also published
over eighty articles, and is now working on two further full-length studies,
on the psychology of women and on the interpretation of paintings in
psychotherapy.
After the war, other fields were opened to her initiative. She played a
leading part in the founding of the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich in 1948.
She began to lecture frequently at various universities in Switzerland, and
later in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Leyden, The Hague, Munich, Stuttgart,
Berlin, Vienna. In the winter of 1953 to 1954 she visited the United States,
and gave over fifty lectures, including three courses at the New School for
Social Research in New York, and at Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Baltimore,
San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

But behind her writing and her teaching has been the growth of her
international practice as psychotherapist. This has been the seedbed from
which her books and lectures have grown, and the laboratory in which she
has used the formulas of Jung's psychology to achieve in her own life the
marriage of ex-traversion and introversion that provides the leitmotif of this
book.

Few of Jung's concepts have acquired such a wide circulation, and been so
debased in the process, as "extravert" and "introvert." Within the existing
corpus of writing on Jung's

psychology, Jacobi's natural acceptance of the value of the extraverted way

has assured her books a wide public. But for those who have worked with
her, the precious balance she has achieved between outer and inner worlds
has come to mean something very personal. She has brought to the inward
probing analysis of much contemporary psychotherapy a strong breath of
the Homeric view of human nature as something "outward and discrete and
centrifugal, a continuous dying into the full life of the self through the self's
dissipation in action." It is the tension between this centrifugal vision and
the introversion associated with Jung's later work that gives to her life today
its extraordinarily vivid quality, wounded yet inviolate.

DAVID HOLT

NOTES

The Forerunners

i) C. G. Carus, Psyche, p. x. In his Psychologie (1808) Cams had already

treated the problem of the human life-span and its different phases and
anticipated many present-day theories.

2) For example, the painting of the three kings attributed to the

Oberrheinischer Meister, ca. 1400, Kunsthalle, Hamburg. Similar paintings
by numerous medieval masters may be found in practically all the great
museums.

3) Francis Howard Collection, London.

4) Hesiod, according to Agricola, maxim 661. (Transl.: Evelyn-White, Loeb
Classics, London, New York, 1920.)

5) Psalm 90:10 (RSV).

6) This theme is frequently depicted in the engravings of earlier centuries.

One example is the fine engraving by Jörg Breu d. J., ca. 1530 (see
frontispiece).

7) W. Grimm, Tierfabeln bei den Meistersingern, p. 248.

8) La Rochefoucauld, Reflections ou sentences et maximes morales. Paris,

1838. The Moral Maxims and Reflections of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld,
by G. H. Powell, London.

9) Charlotte Bühler, Der menschliche Lebenslauf als psychologisches

Problem.

10) Ibid., p. 68.

11) It is at the end of this phase that the "change of life" usually occurs.

12) Cf. also A. L. Vischer, Das Alter als Schicksal und Erfüllung, esp. p. 52.

13) By "depth psychology" is meant all trends in psychology and

psychotherapy which, in their theoretical conceptions and their prac-

*43

tical, medical work, take account of the "unconscious", i.e., a psychic realm
neither known nor controlled by the conscious mind. Cf. infra, n. 5 of
"Individuation".

Individuation

1) Psychiatric Studies (Collected Works, vol. 1), p. 79.

2) H. Schmidt, Philosophisches Wörterbuch, p. 294.

3) R. Eisler (Handwörterbuch der Philosophie, p. 308) defines

individuation as the "differentiation of the general, of species into singulars,
of existence into a multiplicity of individuals". The principium is the factor
that determines individuality. According to Aristotle (384-322 b.c.),
Avicenna (980-1037), Albertus Magnus (1207-1280), and others, this factor
lies in matter.

The cause of individuation is sometimes located in form, sometimes in

matter, sometimes in the union of the two, sometimes in the intellect, the
will, or the instincts of organisms that assert and maintain themselves as
individual beings. Individuation is itself original, or arose from something
originally homogeneous (by emanation, evolution, differentiation,
deterioration, etc.). (Eisler, Wörterbuch der philosophischen Begriffe und
Ausdrücke, I, pp. 566 ff.)

According to Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), matter is f( signata vel

individualis"; according to the nominalists, e.g., William of Occam (1290-
1349), Leibniz (1646-1716), "the real is of itself individual: quaelibet res
singularis se ipsa est singularis". According to Spinoza (1632-1677),
individuation is the determination of the general, a limitation of the One
Being. According to Meister Eckhart (1260-1377), the "principle of
individuation lies in the temporal-spatial determination of the hie et nunc.
John Locke (1632-1704) says it is "existence itself, which determines a being
of any sort to a particular time and place, incommunicable to two beings of
the same kind".

An intermediate position stresses the need for the collaboration of

individuals, of great personalities and the mass. Thus W. Wundt (1832-
1920) says: "Everywhere the individual is sustained by the collective mind,
in which he participates with all his thoughts, feelings, desires. But in the
leading minds . . . the whole process of past development condenses to
produce effects which now point out new

paths for the collective mind" (Ethik, pp. 491, 458 ff.). According to
Schopenhauer (1788-1860), time and space, which are only subjective forms
of perception, are the reason why the one "will", the "thing-in-itself",
appears as a multiplicity of individuals.

4) By "psychic wholeness" Jung understands a unity based on the

complementary interplay of the various aspects of the psyche (above all, of
its conscious and unconscious realms), which is more than the sum of its
parts. It represents the best possible and most complete development and
integration of the individual's psychic qualities.

5) " 'Capacity for consciousness' naturally presupposes consciousness and

self-awareness. By self-awareness we mean the quality which the psyche
possesses of being aware of its contents—a quality independent of its
structure and not more closely definable. It can pass through all stages to
the counterpole of relative or absolute unconciousness. The experience of
sinking into sleep and waking out of it makes this familiar to everyone. The
objective determination of the degree of consciousness at a given time, such
as full luminosity, somnolence, stupor, coma, etc., particularly in the lighter
stages of unconsciousness, is one of the most difficult tasks facing the
investigator.

"Everything that in a given psyche up to a given time is characterized by

self-awareness we call conscious. Everything, on the contrary, that is not
characterized by self-awareness is unconscious . . . Much that is commonly
called 'unconscious' in the literature of depth psychology is relatively, not
absolutely, unconscious." (K. W. Bash, "Zur Psychologie akuter
symptomatischer Psychosen", in Der Nervenarzt, May 1957, pp. 193 f.)

The Two Kinds of Individuation

1) "The Psychology of the Child Archetype", in The Archetypes and the

Collective Unconscious (CW, Vol. 9, Part I), pp. 170 f.

a) "The Ages of Life", in Essays from the Parerga and Paralipo-mena, p. 113.

3) I am indebted to Prof. Franz Borbely for these observations.

4) Cf. Bühler, Der menschliche Lebenslauf, p. 271. Examples of both forms

are given with biographical data. Another good example of a "completed
short life" may be found in Otto Braun, Aus nachgelassenen Schriften eines
Frühvollendeten.

5) Gerhard Adler, Studies in Analytical Psychology, p. 109.

6) There are people who think they can achieve by a kind of "self-analysis"
the same result as those who submit themselves to an analytically
conducted individuation process. This is an error, and a dangerous one.
Nobody can see beyond himself; even Baron Münchhausen could not pull
himself out of the bog by his own pigtail. Only an objective partner can help
one to gain the right insights and hence genuine self-knowledge.

7) "On the Nature of the Psyche", in The Structure and Dynamics of the
Psyche (CW, Vol. 8), p. 187.

The Two Main Phases of the Individuation Process

1) "The Stages of Life", ibid., p. 397.

2) O. Schwarz.

3) "The Stages of Life" (CW, Vol. 8), p. 402.

4), 5) These terms were coined by Charlotte Bühler.

6) Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (CW, Vol. 7), par. 114.

7) "Woman in Europe", in Civilization in Transition (CW, Vol. 10), p. 132.

8) Schopenhauer, Essays from the Parerga and Paralipomena, p. 102.

9) It is instructive that in a questionnaire I prepared for my doctoral thesis

on the psychology of the change of life, and sent round to female subjects of
about fifty, it turned out that the first problems relating to a diminution of
sexual interest generally began at the age of forty-two. As there is statistical
evidence that the menopause does not begin, on average, until the age of
forty-seven or forty-eight, one must assume that the female psyche is
prepared several years in advance for this fundamental change.

10) The Inner World of Childhood. In a still unpublished lecture Fordham

has pointed out that a kind of individuation process can be found even in
the small child if we follow its development from birth to about its second
year. By developing out of a total identification with the surrounding world,
the small child gains more and more consciousness. Since Jung states in
Psychological Types (Definition 29) that "individuation is practically the
same as the development of consciousness out of the original state of
identity", and, as Fordham

says, "the range and nature of identifications differ in each stage of life", it
can rightly be maintained that "the essentials of the individuation process
start in infancy and continue throughout life". It can, however, only be the
beginning of the "natural" individuation process which is inherent in all
living organisms.

11) The Life of Childhood.

12) Children and Their Religion.

13) Das Kind.

14) Jacobi, "Jungs Beitrag zur Psychologie des Kindes", in Der Psychologe,
Heft 10; "Das Kind wird ein Ich", Heilpädogogische Werkblätter, No. 3; "Ich
und Selbst in der Kinderzeichnung", Schweiz. Zeitschrift für Psychologie,
Heft 1; Complex / Archetype / Symbol, Part II: "Archetype and Dream", pp.
125 ff.

15) The fact that Jung sometimes applies the term "individuation process"
to the whole course of life, and sometimes only to a task beginning with the
second half, has, unfortunately, given rise to many misunderstandings and
misinterpretations.

16) "Commentary on the Secret of the Golden Flower", in Alchemical

Studies (CW, Vol. 13), par. 68.

17) "The Soul and Death", in The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche
(CW, Vol. 8), p. 407.

18) The essays are included in The Development of Personality (CW, Vol.
17).
19) Cf. "The Psychology of the Child Archetype", in The Archetypes of the
Collective Unconscious (CW, Vol. 9, Part I), pp. 151 ff.

20) By puer aeternus Jung means primarily those "eternal youths", most of
them badly mother-fixated individuals stuck on the level of puberty, who,
filled with youthful ideals, are unable to adapt to reality. What is
appropriate for them in youth, and endows them with vitality and spiritual
verve, proves in later years to be an oppressive neurosis, often lasting till
death. We find these figures in mythology as the "divine boys" who blossom
early and die young, like the old Germanic god Baldur, or the gods of the
Near East, Tammuz, Attis, Adonis. They also appear in literature, e.g.,
Euphorion in Goethe's Faust, the little prince in Saint-Exupery's novel of
that name, the boy Fo in Bruno Goetz's Reich ohne Raum, to give but a few
examples. There are naturally also puellae aeternae, who are likewise
unadapted. Academic women with the souls of romantic flappers are
examples of such. When these figures appear in dreams they

always have a dual aspect, like genuine symbols: on the one hand they
represent undeveloped, still adolescent psychic traits of which the dreamer
should become conscious in order to develop, on the other they are
anticipations of dormant possibilities in the psyche. In this sense they are
heralds of possible growth and of a potential rebirth on a maturer level.

21) Jung distinguishes two "attitude types": the extravert, oriented to the
outer world, and the introvert, oriented to his own inner world.

22) Besides the "attitude types" Jung distinguishes four "function types",
according to whether thinking, feeling, sensation, or intuition is
differentiated into the dominant function as a mode of apprehension. Cf.
Psychological Types (trans. Baynes), also pp. 34 ff.

23) Cf. M.-L. von Franz's Kommentar zu "Reich ohne Raum", in which she
gives an excellent diagnosis of this type of man and of his effect on historical
events.

24) "Psychology and Literature", in The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature
(CW, Vol. 15), par. 161.

25) Ibid., par. 158.

26) "The Gifted Child", in The Development of Personality (CW, Vol. 17), p.
141.

27) Ibid.

28) "Analytical Psychology and Education", ibid., p. 115.

29) Cf. "Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle", in The Structure
and Dynamics of the Psyche (CW, Vol. 8), p. 447.

30) Liliane Frey-Rohn, "Die Anfänge der Tiefenpsychologie", in Festschrift

zu Jungs 80. Geburtstag, I, p. 73.

31) Erich Neumann, "Die Psyche und die Wandlung der

Wirklichkeitsebenen", Eranos-Jahrbuch 1951.

32) Just as Freud saw the psychic beginnings of the ego in the Id, which
consists of a bundle of undifferentiated drives, so analytical psychology
supposes that it is first of all contained in the Self, the central, ordering
authority in the psyche, and grows out of it. Jung speaks of initial "islands of
consciousness" (CW, Vol. 8, pp. 189 f.) which, later become a unity,
constitute the ego. According to Ford-ham's theory, there are to begin with
ego germs, ego particles, which get welded together into larger and larger
units through experiential encounters with the surrounding world, but
which "de-integrate" again, and then continually re-integrate until the ego
has achieved a
relative stability and density with a corresponding extension. In cases of a
"weak ego" this process has not come to a satisfactory conclusion; it has
remained "unfinished". Fordham also explains the easy dissociability of an
ego as a malfunctioning of this process. (Cf. Ford-ham, "On the Origins of
the Ego in Childhood", Studien zur Analytischen Psychologie, I, p. 80.)

33) Hermann Hesse, Demian, p. 176.

34) Memories, Dreams, Reflections, ed. Aniela Jaffe", p. 127 (E. 127).

35) Ibid., p. 110 (E. 112).

36) Ouroboros is a Greek word meaning "tail-eater", referring to the dragon

that bites its own tail. Here it represents the circular snake, symbolizing
eternal movement in a circle. Its origin is ascribed by Macrobius to the
Phoenicians (Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness, p. 10).
It can also be found in the oldest Greek texts on alchemy published by
Berthelot (Collection des anciens al-chimistes grecs). A symbol with many
meanings, it stands on the one hand for the prima materia, and on the other
for the "All", the "one world", the totality of beginning and end, and has
many other meanings. Cf. Figs. 6, 46, and 147 in Jung, Psychology and
Alchemy (CW, Vol. 12).

37) From a letter of Jung's to the author, 1945.

The Stages

1) See infra, p. 37.

2) "On the Nature of the Psyche" (CW, Vol. 8), pp. 207 f.

3) "Concerning Rebirth", in The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious

(CW, Vol. 9, Part I), p. 123.

4) Ulrich Zwingli, De vera et falsa religione, 1525.

5) Schiller, "The Veiled Image at Sais", The Poems of Schiller, London, 1901,
p. 120.

6) Aion (CW, Vol. 9, Part II), p. 30.

7) "The Aims of Psychotherapy", in The Practice of Psychotherapy (CW, Vol.

16), p. 39.

8) Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 196 f. (E. 188).

9) "Amplification" is the name given by Jung to a process in which one
enriches a dream motif with as many parallels as possible from

other spheres of knowledge or culture, in order to work out its meaning.

Jung distinguishes a subjective and an objective amplification: the first
consists of the personal associations of the dreamer, the second of
associations which may also be supplied by the analyst, comprising material
of similar meaning drawn from, say, mythology and the history of
symbolism. Unlike Freud's method of "free association", the associations
are "directed" and always relate to the dream element.

10) Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 187 (E. 179).

11) Aniela Jaffe\ "Der Tod des Vergil", Studien zur Analytischen
Psychologie, II, p. 298.

12) The fact that everyone is physically and psychically bisexual was known
in the earliest times, though mostly the bisexuality referred to the bodily
constitution. There are numerous myths and legends representing
androgyny as the original "unitary" mode of human existence. The
hermaphrodite as a symbol of wholeness plays a great role in alchemy. Cf.
Jung, "The Psychology of the Transference", ch. 10, in The Practice of
Psychotherapy (CW, Vol. 16), also Plato's Symposium and Ovid's
Metamorphoses. Further information in E. Hollander, Wunder,
Wundergeburt und Wundergestalt, pp.

39 ff-

13) The concept of the "unconscious" is actually an impermissible

hypostatization. Nevertheless, it has proved its value as a heuristic
conception, for which reason Jung makes use of it whenever he wishes to
designate the vast area of the psyche lying outside the field of
consciousness. He distinguishes the "personal unconscious", whose
contents are ontogenetically acquired, and the "collective unconscious",
whose contents are derived from phylogenesis. These latter are specifically
human, typical modes of action and reaction, irrepre-sentable propensities
which he terms "archetypes". They become perceptible to consciousness
under definite constellations in the form of archetypal images, symbols, or
processes. On the one hand they are "reflections" of the instincts, on the
other they express ideations. Hence Jung distinguishes between the non-
perceptible archetype per se and the perceptible archetypal image. The ego
is conditioned not only by the unconscious psyche but also very largely by
the "collective consciousness". By this term Jung means the sum total of
traditions, conventions, customs, prejudices, rules, and norms of the
environment in which the individual lives, and the spirit of the age by which

he is influenced. Cf. Jacobi, Complex I Archetype) Symbol, pp. 110 ff.

14) "Commentary on the Secret of the Golden Flower", in Alchemical
Studies (CW, Vol. 13), par. 17.

15) "Numinosity" is a kind of divine efficacy emanating from the mysterium

tremendum, fascinosum, sacrum. The term was introduced into literature
by Rudolf Otto in his book The Idea of the Holy.

16) Psychology and Religion (CW, Vol. 11), pp. 520 f.

17) Needless to say, the numinosity and profusion of this material vary with
the individual. We know moreover that archetypal images are a regular
phenomenon with people, artists for instance, whose psychic background is
particularly rich in imagery and fantasy, and that their appearance is by no
means confined to a particular phase of the individuation process. They
often appear at times of sudden crisis, serious illness, erotic fascination,
etc., i.e., usually when the alertness of consciousness is relaxed.

Ego and Self

1) "Transformation Symbolism in the Mass", Psychology and Religion (CW,

Vol. 11), p. 259.

2) From a letter to the theologian Walter Bernet, autumn 1955.

3) Psychology and Religion (CW, Vol. 11), p. 261.

4) Psychology and Alchemy (CW, Vol. 12), par. 11.

5) Ibid., par. 15.

6) "General Aspects of Dream Psychology", The Structure and Dynamics of

the Psyche (CW, Vol. 8), p. 278.

7) Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (CW, Vol. 7), p. 70.

8) "Brother Klaus", Psychology and Religion, p. 320.

9) Psychology and Alchemy, par. 12.

10) Ibid., par. 19.

11) Luke 17:21.

12) On the psychosomatic level the relation between ego and Self might be
compared with that between the human brain and the solar plexus.
13) "Die Psyche und die Wandlung der Wirklichkeitsebenen", Eranos-
Jahrbuch 1951, p. 211.

14) Aniela Jaff£, "Der Tod des Vergil", Studien zur Analytischen
Psychologie, II, p. 333.

15) W. von Siebenthal, Die Wissenschaft vom Traum, p. 241.

16) Aion (CW, Vol. 9, Part II), p. 42.

17) A. Jung, in his review of R. Hostie, C. G. Jung und die Religion, in

Anima, Heft 4, 1957, p. 374.

18) "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity", Psychology and
Religion (CW, Vol. 11), p. 178.

19) Concerning the significance of the quaternity as a symbol of psychic

wholeness, see, in particular, Psychology and Religion, Psychology and
Alchemy, Aion, Mysterium Coniunctionis, index, "quaternity".

20) Psychology and Religion, p. 57.

21) Psychology and Alchemy, par. 22.

22) Ibid., par. 18.

23) Psychology and Religion, pp. 81 f.

24) "Concerning Rebirth", The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

(CW, Vol. 9, Part I), pp. 145 f.

25) Jung contrasts "active imagination" with "passive imagination". In

passive imagination the ego simply lets the inner images unfold and pass
by, as in day-dreaming. In active imagination it participates in the interior
drama, but without interfering and judging. Cf. Two Essays on Analytical
Psychology (CW, Vol. 7), pars. 343 ff.; "The Transcendent Function",
Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche (CW, Vol. 8), pp. 82 ff.; Mysterium
Coniunctionis (CW, Vol. 14), pp. 495 f., 528 f.

26) A Sanskrit term Jung took over from the realm of Eastern meditation. It
can be translated as "magic circle". Cf. "A Study in the Process of
Individuation" and "Concerning Mandala Symbolism" in Archetypes and
the Collective Unconscious.

27) Psychology and Alchemy, par. 249.

28) It might be conjectured that the art of schizophrenics differs from that
of so-called normal persons in that the Gestalt-making quality of the
psyche, its capacity to create an orderly pattern, has been put out of action.
Cf. F. Reitmann, Psychotic Art.

29) Cf. The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, pp. 67 ff.

30) "Commentary on the Secret of the Golden Flower", Alchemical Studies

(CW, Vol. 13), par. 24.

The Archetype of the Individuation Process

1) Ibid., par. 4.

2) Cf. Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness, where this

problem is discussed at great length.

3) "Concerning Rebirth," The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, p.

116.

4) Ibid.

5) In his essay Jung distinguishes five forms of rebirth: 1. Transmigration of

souls, or metempsychosis, 2. Reincarnation, 3. Resurrection, or
transformation of one's being, 4. Renewal of personality, 5. "Indirect
rebirth" through participation in a process of transformation, e.g., a rite, in
which the participant experiences his own psychological transformation and
the transcendence of life.

6) There is a Gnostic myth according to which the spirit or mind, Nous, fell
in love with matter, Physis, sank into her embrace, and had to be freed from
his "imprisonment". Cf. A. J. Festugiere, La Revelation d'Hermes
Trismegiste, esp. Vol. III. Paris 1947.

7) In this sense Meister Eckhart says: "All cereal means wheat, all treasure
means gold, all generation means man". "Sermons and Collations", XXIX,
in Works (trans. Evans), Vol. I, p. 80.

8) "Concerning Rebirth", p. 115.

9) Psychology and Alchemy, Fig. 171. Cf. K. Ker^nyi, "Vater Helios", Er

anos-Jahrbuch 1943, p. 81.

10) Symbols of Transformation, Fig. 24, p. 241.

11) Copious material on this theme in M. Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal
Return. Cf. also C. Hentze, Tod, Auferstehung und Weltordnung.

12) Cf. supra, p. 18.

13) Cf. supra, pp. 21 ff.

14) Cf. supra, pp. 53 ff.

15) A further example is the bull slain by Mithras in the Mithraic mysteries,
from whose body the "world" is produced. (Jung, Symbols of
Transformation, CW, Vol. 5, p. 238.) Mithras is a sun-hero, and through the
sacrifice of his instinctual side (the bull, which stands for the archaic
monster) the world comes into being, i.e., conscious-

ness dawns. Cf. F. Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra, and A. Dieterich, A

Mithraic Ritual.

16) The journey to Hades, or descent into the land of the dead. "Nekyia" is
the title of the 11th book of Homer's Odyssey. Cf. Dieterich, Nekya, pp. 26 f.,
H. Gunkel, Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit, and E. Smith, The
Evolution of the Dragon.

17) The literature on this subject is so voluminous that the citation of

particular works and authors must be abandoned. The theme is touched on
here only so far as it permits an analogy with the individuation process.

18) The cause or purpose of initiations is open to various interpretations.

Freud took them as a defence against the incest-wish which exists in all
young people. The Basel ethnologist F. Speiser thought they guaranteed the
transfer of "vital force" from one generation to another. (Speiser, Ueber
Initiationem in Australien und Neuguinea.) For Jung the principle motif
was the idea of a symbolic death followed by rebirth, a view widely held
today.

19) Reference should be made here to the shamans, their mystico-magical

powers, the symbolism of their ecstatic practices, and their significance in
the history of religion, all documented fully by M. Eliade in his book
Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy.

20) For the sake of comparison we might mention the custom, prevalent
among some Christian orders, of giving a candidate for the priesthood a
new name when he enters his novitiate. It sometimes happens, too, that a
writer will give himself a new name in middle life. An example is Hermann
Hesse, who published his novel De-mian, written when he was forty-two,
under the pseudonym Emil Sinclair.

21) In New Guinea, for example.

22) Cf."Eliade, Birth and Rebirth, and Speiser, op. cit. Als© P. Radin, Gott
und Mensch in der primitiven Welt, pp. 167 ff., and J. G. Frazer, The Golden
Bough (abridged edn., 1924), pp. 693 ff.
23) Cf. Apuleius, The Golden Ass.

24) Cf. Eranos-Jahrbuch 1939: Vorträge über die Symbolik der

Wiedergeburt, and The Mysteries: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, Vol.
2. An excellent summary of various rebirth mysteries may be found in
Dieterich, A Mithraic Ritual.

25) E. Lerinhoff, Die Freimaurer.

26) W. E. Peukert, Die Rosenkreuzer.

27) O. Casel, Das christliche Kultusmysterium and Das christliche

Festmysterium, also H. Rahner, "The Christian Mystery and the Pagan
Mysteries" in The Mysteries, pp. 337 ff.

28) Jung, "Transformation Symbolism in the Mass", Psychology and

Religion (CW, Vol. 11), p. 220.

29) Symbols of Transformation (CW, Vol. 5), pp. 209 ff.

30) Frobenius, Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes.

31) Symbols of Transformation, p. 210, reproduced from Frobenius, op. cit.,

p. 59.

32) Cf. Jacobi, Complex I Ar che type J Symbol, pp. 179 ff.

33) For details of the myth see Frazer, The Golden Bough (abridged edn.,
1924), pp. 362 ff.

34) For a psychological interpretation of the Osiris myth see Neumann, The
Origins and History of Consciousness, pp. 220 ff.

35) Cf. A. Avalon, The Serpent Power, and J. W. Hauer, Seminar Notes on
Tantra Yoga (privately multigraphed by the Psychology Club, Zurich). All
yoga techniques are actually an initiation into a higher, spiritual reality.

36) When Atman is realized, the individual ceases to exist as such. In

psychological terms, the ego is replaced by the Self.

37) The existing literature on the exercitia is naturally written entirely from
a theological or philosophical point of view. At present there is no
psychological interpretation other than Jung's seminar Exercitia Spiritualia
of St. Ignatius of Loyola, ETH-Notes, June 1939 to March 1940 (privately
multigraphed by the C. G. Jung Institute, Zurich).
38) The Easter candle is plunged into the water of the font. Thus the "fire
initiation" is followed by a "water initiation", which is at the same time a
coniunctio, a union of opposites (fire and water).

39) The alchemists were the medieval forerunners of modern chemists, but
partly also of psychologists. Originating in Egypt, alchemy reached the West
ca. 1100 via the Arabs. Its heyday was the end of the Middle Ages, when
many alchemists were already aware of the psychological and symbolic
meaning of their experiments and made conscious use of it. Hence the
bizarre, encoded language of many alchemical treatises.

40) For a detailed account see Psychology and Alchemy (CW, Vol.

12).

41) Cf. supra, pp. 35 f.

42) Cf. supra, pp. 43 f.

43) Cf. supra, p. 46.

44) Of the lapis Jung says in his Mysterium Coniunctionis that it stands for
"total union".

45) The hardness of the alchemical "stone" has a parallel in the Indian vajra.
Originally this was the weapon of the god Indra and was called the
thunderbolt. Later it was equated with the diamond, the hardest and most
durable of all stones. The. diamond is also a symbol of the absolute. (I am
indebted for this information to Dr. Paul Horsch.)

46) The Dream of Poliphilo.

47) Journey into Self, an interpretation of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.

48) Die Anima als Schicksalsproblem des Mannes.

49) R. Woods, The World of Dreams, pp. 668 ff., and Jacobi, Complex
IArchetype /Symbol, "The Dream of the Bad Animal", pp. 127 ff.

50) Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 206 (E. 197).

51) CW, Vol. 7.

52) With Richard Wilhelm, trans. Cary F. Baynes (revised edn., 1962). The
"European Commentary" is contained in Alchemical Studies (CW, Vol. 13).

53) Contained in Psychology and Religion: West and East (CW, Vol. 11).
54) CW,Vol. 12.

55) Contained in The Practice of Psychotherapy (CW, Vol. 16).

56) CW, Vol. 9, Part II.

57) CW, Vol. 14.

58) Basic material relating to this sphere of problems may also be found in
the writings of Leo Frobenius, Heinrich Zimmer, Karl Ker£nyi, Mircea
Eliade, Henri Corbin, etc.

The Individual Way

1) Schopenhauer, Essays from the Parerga and Paralipomena, p. 55 and n.

2.

2) Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (CW, Vol. 7), par. 266.

3) "The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man", in Civilization in

Transition (CW, Vol. 10), p. 149.

4) "The Undiscovered Self", ibid., p. 291.

5) Ibid., p. 254.

6) Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, par. 198.

7) The Development of Personality (CW, Vol. 17), p. 171.

8) "On the Nature of the Psyche", Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche
(CW, Vol. 8), pp. 225 f.

9) This concept is central to the school of psychotherapy founded by Harry

Stack Sullivan (U.S.A.).

10) Psychology and Religion (CW, Vol. 11), p. 89.

11) The Development of Personality, p. 173.

12) "On the Nature of the Psyche", p. 226.

13) Psychological Types (CW, Vol. 6), Definition 29.

14) Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 356 (E. 328).

15) Mysterium Coniunctionis (CW, Vol. 14), pp. 468 f.

16) The Development of Personality, p. 171.

17) The various aspects of the tree symbol are discussed by Jung in "The
Philosophical Tree", Alchemical Studies (CW, Vol. 13).

Conscious Realization

1) Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 212 (E. 300).

2) Archetypal dreams can often be observed in children. As their ego is not

yet fully formed and is easily swamped by the contents of the unconscious,
children live in a state of fusion with the world of archetypal and
mythological images. This would explain their love and intuitive
understanding of fairytales and legends, which always represent archetypal
modes of behaviour.

3) Cf. supra, p. 59.

4) Cf. supra, p. 31.

5) Cf. Liliane Frey-Rohn, "Die Anfänge der Tiefenpsychologie", Studien zur

Analytischen Psychologie, I, p. 73.

6) Cf. Jung, "The Psychology of the Transference", in The Practice of

Psychotherapy (CW, Vol. 16).

7) Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 212 (E. 203).

8) Compare in Mysterium Coniunctionis (CW, Vol. 14), p. 419, n. tu.

9) Cf. supra, p. 18.

10) It applies only to Freud's view of the unconscious.

11) "On Psychic Energy", in The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche (CW,
Vol. 8), p. 59.

12) Preface to Seelenprobleme der Gegenwart, p. v.

13) Jung often called the realm of the collective unconscious the "non-ego".

14) Cf. supra, p. 68.

15) Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 317 (E. 293).

16) "Commentary on the Secret of the Golden Flower", Alchemical Studies

(CW, Vol. 13), par. 18.
17) "The Stages of Life", Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche (CW, Vol. 8),
p. 393.

18) "Answer to Job", Psychology and Religion (CW, Vol. 11), p. 460.

19) "On the Nature of the Psyche", Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche,
pp. 222 f.

20) Ibid., p. 222.

21) J. Goldbrunner, Holiness is Wholeness, and Other Essays,

22) "Transformation Symbolism in the Mass", Psychology and Religion, pp.

259 f.

23) Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (CW, Vol. 7), par. 243, n. 1.

24) "The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man", Civilization in

Transition (CW, Vol. 10), p. 140.

25) Psychology and Alchemy (CW, Vol. 12), par. 105.

26) Psychology of the Unconscious, London, 1917; New York, 1916. (This
passage was modified in the revised [1952] edition. Cf. Symbols of
Tranformation [CW, Vol. 5], p. 417.—Trans.)

27) "The Psychology of the Child Archetype", in Archetypes and the

Collective Unconscious (CW, Vol. 9, Part I), p. 167.

28) "Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype", ibid., pp.

95 1.

The Religious Function and Conscience

1) Gen. 1:27.

2) J. Rudin, "Psychotherapie und religiöser Glaube", in Neurose und

Religion, pp. 63 ff.

3) As an example of an "empty" religious attitude Rudin cites the following

dream. A patient, who otherwise followed the religious precepts
conscientiously, dreamt that she was in a church but was unable to see the
sacred action because the whole church was clouded with incense, so that
she felt completely disoriented. This was not surprising in view of the
"nebulous" situation in which she found herself. (Op. cit., p. 85.)
4) Psychology and Religion (CW, Vol. 11), pp. 104 f.

5) "Freud and Jung: Contrasts", in Freud and Psychoanalysis (CW, Vol. 4),
p. 339.

6) Rudin, op. cit., p. 80.

7) Ibid., p. 88.

8) Psychology and Alchemy (CW, Vol. 12), par. 13.

9) Rudin, op. cit., p. 92.

10) Ibid., p. 70.

11) Ibid., p. 93.

12) Psychology and Alchemy, par. 15.

13) "The Psychology of the Transference", in The Practice of Psychotherapy

(CW, Vol. 16), p. 192, n. 44.

14) "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity", Psychology and
Religion (CW, Vol. 11), pp. 179 f.

15) For a critical confrontation between the views of Freud and Jung, see E.
Spengler, Das Gewissen bei Freud und Jung. Mit einer philosophisch-
anthropologischen Grundlegung.

16) "A Psychological View of Conscience", in Civilization in Transition (CW,

Vol. 10), p. 454-

17) Ibid., p. 453.

18) Ibid., p. 454.

19) Ibid., pp. 445 f.

20) Ibid., pp. 448 f.

21) Cf. supra, p. 51.

22) Loc. cit., p. 447.

23) Ibid., p. 445.

24) Ibid., p. 455.

25) The Development of Personality (CW, Vol. 17), pp. 175 f.

26) "Psychotherapists or the Clergy", Psychology and Religion (CW, Vol. II),
p. 343.

27) This quotation can no longer be located.

The Dual Nature of Man

1) We could conceive of this ethical goal, with Wilhelm Keller, as an inborn

"striving for self-value", which constitutes man's human dignity and is a
possibility given to him alone. Cf. Keller, Das Selbst-wertstreben, p. 94.

2) Job 1:6.

3) Victor White, God and the Unconscious, pp. 178 ff.

4) Aion (CW, Vol. 9, Part III), p. 69 (modified).

5) Ibid.

6) Psychology and Alchemy (CW, Vol. 12), par. 208. Cf. 2 Cor. 12:7: "And
lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the
revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of
Satan to buffet me".

7) Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 297 (E. 277).

8) Cf. J. Rudin, "Gott und das Böse bei C. G. Jung", in Neue Zürcher
Zeitung, 30 July 1961, p. 4.

9) Aion, p. 53.

10) Gen. 3:5.

11) Aion, p. 267.

12) "And there was evening and morning one day". Gen. 1:5 (Vulgate).

13) "Good and Evil in Analytical Psychology", in Civilization in Transition

(CW, Vol. 10), pp. 463, 464.

14) "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity", in Psychology

and Religion (CW, Vol. 11), p. 173 (modified).
15) Cf. in particular Aion, ch. V, "Foreword to White's God and the
Unconscious" (CW, Vol. 11), "Answer to Job" (ibid.), and Mysterium
Coniunctionis (CW, Vol. 14), pp. 544 ff.

16) "Good and Evil in Analytical Psychology", p. 458.

17) "Foreword to White's God and the Unconscious", p. 306.

18) Pascal, Pensies, pp. 68 and 61.

19) Ibid., p. 60.

20) Exod. 20:13.

21) Hence there are many who keep strictly to the commandment and
refuse military service so as not to come into conflict with their own
conscience.

22) Exod. 20:12.

23) "Good and Evil in Analytical Psychology", p. 462.

24) While the memoirs were being written (1957 onwards) Jung was still
deeply shaken by the evil which assumed unparalleled forms in the Second
World War and which we were forced to experience as a reality in our midst.

25) My italics.

26) Jung is really referring here to the admonition of conscience. Cf. supra,
pp. 114 flF.

27) Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 329 f (E. 303-5).

28) W. Keller, Das Selbstwertstreben, p. 103: "Self-realization is the deepest

desire of being." And p. 76: "For in having to give a shape to himself, the
human being has also to be inwardly responsible for himself."

29) Ibid., p. 78: "Neuroses are manifestations of failures in self-realization."

30) The liturgy for Easter Eve speaks, in the Exultet, of the felix culpa of our
first parents; without it, humanity would not have travelled the road of
conscious realization.

31) Vulgate: "Seipsos castraverunt".

32) Matt. 19:12.

33) Matt. 5:45, 48.

34) "Analytical Psychology and Weltanschauung", in The Structure and

Dynamics of the Psyche (Baynes translation), p. 472.

35) Psychological Types (CW, Vol. 6), par. 620.

36) Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 325 (modified) (E. 300).

37) Cf. supra, pp. 49 ff.

38) This necessary change into the opposite is inherent in the polaristic
nature of the psyche, on which depends its capacity for self-regulation. This
regulating function was known already to Hera-clitus; he called it
"enantiodromia", the counterplay of movements. Cf. Psychological Types,
Definition 18.

39) It is significant that the word "happiness" does not occur once in the
Bible.

Conclusion

1) Symbols of Transformation (CW, Vol. 5), p. 356.

2) "The Stages of Life", in The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, p.

394.

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Locke, J. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. John W. Yolton.

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Neumann, E. Das Kind. Zurich, 1963.

The Origins and History of Consciousness. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. New

York and London, 1954.

"Die Psyche und die Wandlung der Wirklichkeitsebenen**, in

Eranos-]ahrbuch 1951. Zurich, 1952.
Otto, R. The Idea of the Holy. Translated by J. W. Harvey. Oxford, 1926;
New York, 1950. Pelican Books, 1959.

Ovid. The Metamorphoses of Ovid. Translated and with an introduction by

Mary M. Innes. Harmondsworth and Baltimore, 1955.

Pascal, B. Pensees. Translated by John Warrington. London, i960.

Peukert, W. E. Die Rosenkreuzer. Jena, 1928.

Plato. The Symposion. Translated by W. Hamilton. Harmondsworth and

Baltimore, 1951.

Radin, P. World of Primitive Man. (Evergreen), New York, i960.

Rahner, H. "The Christian Mystery and the Pagan Mysteries", in The

Mysteries, Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, Vol. 2. Translated by Ralph
Manheim. New York and London, 1955.

Reitman, F. Psychotic Art. London, 1950; New York, 1951.

Rudin, J. "Gott und das Böse bei C. G. Jung", in Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 30
July 1961, p. 4.

"Psychotherapie und religiöser Glaube", in Neurose und Religion. Ölten,

1964.

Saint-Exupery, A. The Little Prince. Translated by Katherine Woods.

London and New York, 1944.

Schick, H. Das ältere Rosenkreuzertum. Berlin, 1942.

Schiller, F. von. The Poems of Schiller. Translated by E. P. Arnold Forster.

London, 1901.

Schmidt, H. Philosophisches Wörterbuch. Stuttgart, 1934.

Speiser, F. lieber Initiationen in Australien und Neuguinea. Basel, 1942.

Schopenhauer, A. Essays from the Parerga and Paralipomena. Translated by

T. Bailey Saunders. London, 1951.

Schwarz, O. Sexualität und Persönlichkeit. Vienna, Leipzig, Bern,

1934.

Siebenthal, W. von. Die Wissenschaft vom Traum. Berlin, 1953.

Smith, E. The Evolution of the Dragon. Manchester, 1919.

Spengler, E. Das Gewissen bei Freud und Jung. Zurich, dissertation, 1964.

Vischer, A. L. Old Age, its Compensations and Rewards. Translated by B.

Miall. London, 1947; New York, 1948.

White, V. God and the Unconscious. London, 1952; New York, 1961.

Wickes, F. The Inner World of Childhood. New York, 1927.

Woods, R. The World of Dreams. New York, 1947.

Wundt, W. Ethik. Stuttgart, 1886; 5th edn., 1923-24.

Zwingli, U. De vera et falsa religione. Tiguri (Froschauer), 1525. The Latin

Works of H. Zwingli. Edited by Samuel Macauley Jackson. Philadelphia,
1922-29.

Adam and Eve, 97, 105

Adler, Alfred, 9, 41

Adler, Gerhard, 18

Adonis, 147

Adonis cults, 67

afternoon of life, 23, 41, 49. See

also individuation, phases of ageing, 7, 21-23, 131 Albertus Magnus, St., 13

alchemy, 59, 74-75, 80, 98, 99,

149, 150, 155 alcoholism, 17,40 amplification, 43, 149 analysis, 23, 27, 29-
30, 32, 39,

41-42, 44, 46, 47, 80, 83, 91,

92» 93-95» 98, 100, 108, 128.

See also psychotherapy anima, animus, 44-46, 48, 75, 78 Anthropos, 58

Apollo, 40 apprehension, modes of, 35. See

also function archetypes, archetypal motifs, 32,

40, 43, 44-48, 50, 51-52, 57,

60-81 passim, 87, 88, 89, 91-

93» 95» 9 6 » »*» "3» 150-5 1 '

»57

Aristotle, 13

artists, 28-30, 46, 151

associations, 41

Atman, 72, 155

Attis, 147

attitudes, 34-37, 124, 132, 148. See also extraversion; introversion

Babylonian creation-myth, 64

Bachofen, J. J., 3

"balance account crisis", 21-22

Baldur, 147

baptism, 68, 74

Bash, K. W., 145

Beethoven, Ludwig van, 30

biological life, 7-9, 16, 21, 66, 71

birth, 14, 60,64, 79

Blake, William, 127

Brunner, Cornelia, 78

Buddha, 59

Buddhism, 57, 58

Bühler, Charlotte, 4, 7-9, 11, 16,

21,24 Bühler, K., 4 bull, 153

iyi

Cain and Abel, 40 Carus, C. G., 3, 143 Castor and Pollux, 40 Catholicism,
73-74, 116, 119, 122 Cautes and Cautopates, 40 "centroversion" (Neumann),
34 chakras, 72 chalice, 58

"change of dominance" (C. Bühler), 21-22 change of life, see transitional

phases child (symbol), 58, 89. See also

divine child Christ, 59, 62, 65, 73-74» *20, 128 Christianity, 61, 62, 68, 106,
117,

120, 121, 128 circle (symbol), 56 collective consciousness, 61, 88,

112, 144,150 collective psyche, 31, 88 collective shadow, 38 collective

unconscious, 46, 48, 67,

88,96, 129, 150, 158 communion (sacrament), 62, 74 confession, 116, 119
conscience, 110-116, 161 conversion, 62, 109 Cosmas and Damian, Sts., 40
creation-myths, 64, 74, 103 creativity, 10, 16-17, 29-30, 43,

45,46, 114 Creator, the, 17 crystal (symbol), 58 cults, 67-68

Dante, 40, 78, 98

death, 14, 21, 26-27, 53, 60-62, 67» 73» 75» 79. 9^ 107, 133. 154

Index

Demeter mysteries, 67 depth psychology, 10, 98, 143 descent, see

underworld journey destiny, 113, 126. See also fate development, phases of,
4-10. See also individuation process, phases of; transitional phases
development, psychic, see individuation diamond (symbol), 58
differentiation, 15, 34-35, 36-37»

43» 5°> 66 > 75 Dionysus, 40

Divine, the, 50, 67, 130

divine child, 27, 59

Don Quixote, 40

dragon, 64, 66-67, 149

dreams, 19, 38, 41, 43, 44, 58-59, 76-78, 80, 88-89, 91-9*» 95» 109, 147-48,
149-50, 157

Easter, 73-74, 155, 161

Eastern man, 99

Eckhart, Meister, 144, 153

Eisler, R., 144

empirical investigation, 10, 51

entelechy, 30-31

Eros, 46

ethical decision, ethics, 20, 82-

83, 102, 112-14, 118, 125-26,

160 Euphorion (Goethe), 148 evening of life, 17, 25. See also

individuation, phases of evil, 38, 86, 113, 118, 122-23,

125-27, 129, 161. See also good

and evil expansion, 7, 25, 36, 44, 57, 127

*73

extraversion, 27, 35, 36, 41-42,

77» 99» 148

fairytales, see mythology

faith, 54, 107, 108, 109, 110, 129

fate, 6, 14, 51, 56, 63, 96, 100,

101, 104, 107, 115, 131. See also

destiny father (archetype), 44-46 Faust, 40, 57

feeling function, 35, 41, 124 Fierz-David, Linda, 78 fingerprints, 87 flower

(symbol), 58 folk-literature, 5-6, 10 Fordham, Michael, 26, 146, 148
Freemasons, 67 Freud, Sigmund, 9, 10, 30, 41, 46,
70, 94, 111, 112, 148, 150, 154 Frobenius, Leo, 68 function, 34-37, 43, 75, 148
function, auxiliary, 35 function, inferior, 35

Gilgamesh and Enkidu, 40

Gnosticism, 153

God, 51-56, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106-108, 109, 112, 118, 121, 124, 128, 130. See
also Creator, the; Divine, the

God-image, 51-56, 75, 113, 130

Goethe, J. W. von, 28, 78, 147

Goetz, Bruno, 147

good and evil, 118, 121-26

Goya, Francisco, 30

grace, 17, 74, 107, 118, 122

Great Mother, 46

"guiding fiction" (Adler), 9

guilt, 111, 116,119

guru, 81

happiness, 17, 130, 161 Harding, Esther, 78 Harpocrates, 71 Heraclitus, 161

Herakles, 63

hermaphrodite, 45, 58, 150 hero, 51, 65, 68-69, 78, 99 hero-myths, 60, 71
hero's quest, 19, 47 Hesse, Hermann, 31, 154 Hinduism, 71-72 Hitler, Adolf,
113 Homer, 154 homosexual, 28, 39 Horsch, Paul, 156 Horus, 71 humility,
56, 107 hybris, 57, 97, 103, 110

Id, 148

Ignatius of Loyola, St., 72, 155

imagination, 58, 152

individuation process, 3-4, 11, *2-i 3, 33» 37» 49» 53» 57» 82-84» 85, 87,
89, 97, 98, 99, 102, 104, 106-108, 113, 114, 117-18, 119, 120, 121, 127, 128,
129, 144, 151, 154, 161; analytically assisted, or artificial, 15-20 passim, 23,
30, 32, 36, 41, 57-58, 61, 63, 64, 74, 79-80, 84, 86, 92, 94-96, 100-101, 109,
111, 115-16, 124, 126; conscious, 15, 26-28, 131, 132-34; natural, 15-20
passim, 23, 36, 61, 62, 63, 64, 79-80, 111, 126,

'74

individuation process (continued) 131, 14&-47; unconscious, 15, 131; phases

of, 21-33 passim,

41, 48, 44-47, 63-64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 73, 76, 77-78; stages of, 34-48
passim, 59; archetype of, 60-81 passim

Indra, 156

inflation, 28, 50, 57, 110

initiation, 30, 65-68, 69, 71, 72,

7&-80, 81, 154, 155 instincts, instinctual life, 9, 10,

53» 72» 89, 107, 112, 117, 144,

15°» J 53 integration, 40-41, 47, 71, 75, 83,

98, 133. 145 "interpersonal relationship", 86 introversion, 25-26, 27, 35, 36,

42, 89, 99, 148 intuition, 35, 88-89, 9* Isis, 71

Isis mysteries, 67

Jacob and Esau, 40

Jacobi, Jolande, 26, 135-41

Jaff£, Aniela, 44

Jews, 113

Job, Book of, 118

Jonah, 63, 69

journey to the underworld, see underworld journey

Jung, A., 55

Jung, C. G., 3, 4, 9, 10-11, 12-13, 16, 18, 19, 26-27, 30, 32, 34-37» 4i» 43»
44» 46, 47» 49-5°> 5i» 54» 55» 56, 57» 58, 59» 62, 67, 68, 70, 72, 74, 80-
81, 83, 84-85, 87, 88, 89, 91, 94, 95» 96, 98, 99» 1Q 2» k>3> 10 5»
Index

106, 107, 108, 109-12, 113-14, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 122, 123, 124-26, 128,
130, 133, 134, 145, 146, 148, 149, 150, 152, x 53» *54> !5 6 » *5 8 » l61

Keller, Wilhelm, 160, 161 lung, 97, 99. Klee, Paul, 30 Koffka, K., 4 Krüger,
F., 4

labyrinth, 34

lapis philosophorum, 59, 75, 156

La Rochefoucauld, Francois de,

6 Leibniz, Gottfried W., 13, 144 Lewis, Eve, 26 libido, 10, 72 life-courses, 7-
9, 11 Locke, John, 13, 144 Logos, 46

Loyola, see Ignatius of Loyola Lucifer, 127

Magi, 4

mana, 67, 75

mandalas, 58-59

Mann, Thomas, «8

Marduk, 64

marriage, 89

Marx, R., 3-4

Mass, 62, 68, 74

maturation, psychic, 14, 15, 24,

29, 37-38, 91, 111. See also

individuation medicine-man, 17,66 meditation, 57, 58 mediumism, 12

*75

megalomania, 50

memory, 3-4

Mephistopheles, 38, 57
Mithraism, 40, 153

monads, 29

morals, moral codes, 85, 111-12,

112-14, 113, 118, 124, 125, 126 morning of life, 41 mother (archetype), 44-46
mother (symbol), 64-67, 71, 105 mother-child relationship, 27 Mozart, W.
A., 30 mystical experience, see unio

mystica mythology, 6, 40, 44, 47, 60, 63-

64, 68-71, 78, 97, 99, 150, 153,

157

name, change of, 66, 154

narcissism, 45

nekyia, 65, 154. See also underworld journey

Neumann, Erich, 26, 34, 53-54

neurosis, 22, 23, 31, 33, 36, 41, 55, 83, 100, 101, 106, 110-11, 113, 115-16, 118,
127-28, 132, 147-48, 161

Nietzsche, Friedrich, 57

night sea journey, 68-70, 98

nigredo, 75

nirvana, 57

non-ego, see collective unconscious

numinosity, 47, 54, 57, 59, 67, 92, 102, 109, 151

Nut, 63

Occam, William of, 144 opposites, 40, 51, 56, 59, 78, 89,

100, 104, 114, 120-21, 12«, 129,

155. See also poles opus contra naturam, 18, 63, 107 original sin, 105, 121
Orphic mysteries, 67 Osiris, 70-71, 75 Otto, Rudolf, 151 our ob or os, 33, 149
Paradise, 103, 118

paradox, 56, 121

parent-child relationship, 44, 46, 124, 133. See also mother-child

relationship

participation mystique, 115

Pascal, Blaise, 123

Paul, St., 115

pearl (symbol), 58

perfectionism, 117-20

persona, 35, 37, 38

personal development, see individuation

personal unconscious, 150

phallus, 71

philosophy of life, 128-30, 133

phoenix, 98

planets, 5

poles, polarity, 58, 113-14, 128, 130, 161. See also opposites

power (Adlerian concept), 9

prima materia, 74-75, 149

privatio boni, 122

projection, 38-39, 44, 45, 50, 93,

94>99» 10 5> *32

Psalms, 5

psyche, psychic life, 3, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13-14, 19-20» 21, 22, 23-25, 26-27, 28,
30-31, 32, 35, 36, 37-38. 39, 41, 42, 43, 44-
psyche, psychic life (continued) 48, 49, 50-56, 57, 58-59, 61, 64, 74-75» 7 6
» 78» 80, 83-85, 86-90, 9!-92» 93» 94» 95» 9 6 » 100, 101, 102, 103, 104,
105, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115-16, 120, 121, 124, 128, 129-30,
133, 134, 145, 148, 150-51, 161 psychoanalysis, see analysis psychology,
nineteenth-century,

3-4 psychosis, 17, 31, 33, 47, 55, 57,

75, 110-11 psychotherapist, 47, 80, 110, 120 psychotherapy, 12, 27, 32, 42,
86,

94, 130, 132. See also analysis puer aeternus, 27-28, 147-48

quaternity, 55-56

rainmaker, 95

rebirth, 60-62, 64, 65, 66-67, 68,

6 9-7*»73» 74» 79» 1! 9» «7» *33» 148, 153, 154

regression, 70, 100

religion, religious life, 18, 43, 51,

55» 5&-57» 58, 62, 72, 80, 81,

vioi, U9, 128, 132-33, 154, 159

religious function, 106-16 passim

Rembrandt^ van Rijn, 28

repression, 30, 36, 38, 43, 88, 96,

98 resistance, 32, 35, 39, 45, 95, 109,

117 restriction, 7, 25 rite, ritual, 18, 60, 62, 65-68, 72,

73-74» 78

Index

Romanticism, 3 Rosicrucians, 67 rotundum, 24-25 Rousselle, Erwin, 81

Rudin, J., 159

Saint-Exup£ry, Antoine de, 147

Sancho Panza, 40

Satan,118

Schiller, Friedrich von, 39-40

schizophrenia, 32-33, 152

Schopenhauer, Arthur, 13, 16, 25,

83» 145 seasons, 5, 90 secret societies, 67-68 Self, the, 30-31, 42, 47, 49-59

passim, 64, 65, 67, 74, 75, 78,

87, 89, 101, 103, 105, 108, 113,

130, 133, 148, 151 self-consciousness, 19 self-knowledge, 39, 91, 93, 126,

146 self-realization, see individuation sensation, senses, 19, 35 serpent, 72

Set, 71

sex, 10, 45, 66, 77-78, 146 shadow, 38-41, 44, 47-48, 55, 73,

75, 120, 122, 132 shamans, 154 Speiser, F., 154 sphere (symbol), 58 Spinoza,
Baruch, 13, 144 spiritual life, 7-9, 16, 25-26, 39,

61, 71-72, 105, 107, 117, 133 splinter personalities, 12 Spranger, E., 4 square
(symbol), 56

*77

Stern, W., 4

Sullivan, Harry Stack, 157

sun, 60, 63, 65, 69, 71, 133

sun-hero, 60,153

superego, 112

symbols, 6, 30, 51, 54, 56, 57-59, 60, 63-65, 77-78, 80, 89, 108, 148, 149,
150. See also names of specific symbols

taboo, 103

Tammuz, 147
Tantra yoga, 71-72

Theseus, 71

thinking function, 35

Thomas Aquinas, St., 13, 144

Tiamat, 64

Titian, 5, 28

transcendent function, 59, 92

transference, 94, 95

transformation, 24, 26, 44, 47, 53,

61-63, 66, 68, 72, 73, 74, 90,

92. 94-95» 10 4> 119» ^7, !33»

153 transitional phases, 4, 7-9, 21-

25, 27, 42-43, 75, 146 tree (symbol), 90 tree of knowledge, 97, 103-104,

121 tribal life, primitive, 17, 22-23,

62, 65-67 Trinity, 55-56 twins, 40

typology, Jungian, 34-35, 36, 75, 132*148

underworld journey, 65, 67, 69/-

7 1 » 73» 75» 99» 154 unio mystica, 56-57, 107

vajra, 156

van Gogh, Vincent, 30 Varro, Marcus Terentius, 5 Virgil (Dante), 40

vocation, 115

Wagner (Goethe), 40 Weltanschauung, see philosophy

of life Western literature, 4 Western man, 18, 57, 61, 80-81,

97*99 Western world, 86, 117, 119 whale dragon myth (Frobenius),

68 wheel of fortune, 6 Wickes, Frances, 26 will, 82, 97, 98, 99, 101-102, 107,
110, 112, 120, 132, 144 "Wise Old Man", 46 World War, Second, 161 Wundt,
W., 4,144

yoga, 18,71-72,81, 155

Zarathustra (Nietzsche), 57 Zwingli, Ulrich, 39

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