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JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Note: rather than explain Jungian terminology in the body of the text I have
given key definitions at the end. If you are unsure of a term, refer to the
definitions section.
The HEP psychodynamic, phenomenological and spiritual understanding
of the psyche is fundamentally Jungian more than it is psychoanalytic. Jungian
psychology (also known as analytic psychology and depth psychology) however
does retain much of it’s origins in psychoanalysis. The main differentiating points
have to do with Jung’s de-emphasizing the sexual focus of libido and the
increasing Jungian emphasis on the collective as well as personal unconscious.
Jung speaks of archetypes while Freud does not. Jung specifically includes a
valuing of spiritual experience while Freud specifically excludes this,
reinterpreting it in psychodynamic terms. The Jungian approach, while it retains
a valuing of empirical clinical observation as a basis for therapy work and
theorizing, draws heavily on spiritual traditions such as Alchemy and Gnosticism
as a complement to this. Jungian psychology has also developed a significant
bodily orientation. There is a teleological bent to Jungian psychology (eschewed
by any empirical tradition), specifically in the Jungian idea of individuation. In
this, however, Jungian psychology connects to humanistic psychology through
the idea of human potential, especially as proposed by Maslow. Jungian (and
Archetypal)psychology have been a significant influences on the development of
HEP transpersonal psychology. Archetypal psychology is a 70’s elaboration of
Jungian psychology that has also drawn on Corbin’s Sufi reading, Plotinus’
Neoplatonism and the phenomenology theme in Continental Philosophy and
postmodernism.
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Aims and Goals of Jungian Analysis
The aims and goals of Jungian analysis as outlined here are also those of
HEP. Jungian analysis places primary emphasis on revealing and activating the
fundamental and often unconscious building blocks of the personality. Through
the therapeutic process, fixed attitudes, identifications, and psychodynamics
underlying ego-consciousness and supporting it’s sense of definitive identity are
raised into conscious awareness. This loosens the grip of the egoconsciousness, which enables unconscious contents that were repressed or left
out of a self-image to enter the field of consciousness and be reworked so that
they function in a more mature integrated manner. It also activates unconscious
strivings for new development. Individuation through this process of
psychological dissolution is relatively disorienting, and requires the safety of a
secure relationship between the analyst and client. While there is a danger that
this process could release a latent psychosis, dissociative, or suicidal tendency,
with proper working through and support this dissolution leads to a new synthesis
of ego-consciousness, one that will be more effectively related to the Self and
more structurally reflective of the personality’s whole reality than was the earlier
formation, and in which traumatic and developmental dysfunctions are healed.
This will involve significant attention to evoked and hidden shadow elements, as
well as an expansion and loosening of the persona’s grip on self awareness, self
image and self presentation. Typological polarizations will be challenged, so that
the inferior function will be called forth. In addition, the complex set of
mythological relations between various psychological characteristics will be
activated so that mythic evolutionary stories are played out as these aspects of
the patients psyche embody and enact as subpersonalities. The ability to
recognize which type of mythic story is being played out is a task for the analyst,
who can use this knowledge to guide the patient’s process.
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In addition to the increased knowledge of the Self, psychological
dissolution and re-integration in Jungian analysis leads to a new experience of
the Self. As more and more of the Self is experienced, and as the unconscious
responds and is acknowledged, including the collective unconscious with it’s
archetypal aspect, the individual experiences an influx of energy and vitality, and
an increased level of creativity in his or her responses to life’s challenges. As
synchronistic events, which surround the emerging experiences of the Self, are
noticed and valued, the client experiences an increased sense of meaning, future
direction and destiny. This new relation to the Self is a challenging process with
sometimes almost overwhelming experiences, including a sense of loss of
identity, anxiety, depression, inflation. Sometimes this involves alienation from
prior life commitments and structures – such as career or relationships.
Synchronistic phenomena, while they signal and enact deep fundamental
evolutionary changes, can be disorienting or frightening or take on a negative,
threatening tone. A secure, mature therapeutic bond is vital here. The patient’s
stance against flight and cooperation with the therapeutic structure is also vital
because it is not uncommon for people to question and doubt the whole process
of therapy at this point.
Henderson notes that Jung implied that “psychotherapy” and “analysis”
required a different method. Psychotherapy is thought of as an unbinding
therapeutic alliance to meet specific immediate psychological needs or crises,
and is thus ego oriented, while analysis implies intensive work with the
unconscious over a long period of time, which is ultimately Self oriented.
Guggenbugl-Craig defined the goal of psychotherapy as “well being” and that of
analysis as “individuation”. HEP is an individuation model.
Stein makes a distinction between aims and goals. Aims refers to the
many small specific changes in attitude, behaviour, perception, psychological
structure and dynamics that is the day to day work in Jungian analysis – called
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working through in psychoanalysis, which occupies the therapeutic foreground,
and which eventually adds up to the more significant larger scale goals. By goal,
what is meant is the endpoint toward which analytic work as a whole is oriented.
The most obvious goal of analysis is the alleviation of psychological suffering,
which is what brings most people into therapy. Jung speaks of the goal of
analysis as “curing souls”, through working with the unconscious. A more
precise statement of the goal of analysis is that of facilitating individuation. A
particular difficulty about defining a goal for analysis stems from the fact that the
outcome is precisely not governed by the ego-intentions or the conscious
knowledge of the analyst or analysand. Rather, persons in analysis are meant to
stay receptive to the unconscious – to the less rational, more intuitive, more
ambiguous, and often mysterious side of the personality. Jungian psychology
believes the unconscious has a valid perspective that is closer to the existential
ground of being and to the transpersonal level. It can be said to have an
intelligence that is non rational, systemic, holistic while it can also be said to be
primitive, unpredictable and sometimes threatening. Jung also instructs us to be
careful about setting up specific ego based therapeutic goals for analysis partly
because they may be based on limited culturally biased opinions of what is
psychologically normative and may not actually fit the particular individual.
Coming to terms with the unconscious involves increased insight into
psychodynamic relations despite, and ultimately through, the psychological
interference caused by the personal complexes and defenses. This also enables
one to respond to demands emerging from the archetypal layers of the
unconscious. Brooke talks of the ego’s relationship with the archetypes,
identifying four possibilities: 1) The ego may be engulfed by them (inflation) or a
variation where a weak ego fragments at the mercy of the archetypal powers
possibly leading to a psychosis or dissociation. Another variation is participation
mystique, still a fusion state with inadequate differentiation between inner and
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outer reality. 2) The ego may heroically and defensively fight their influence,
creating an inner conflict that manifests as neurotic symptoms. 3) The ego may
detach from them, losing contact with Self, and becoming alienated and
deadened. 4) The ego may relate to archetypes as an equal partner in a
dialogue, moving to a deeper more humble sense of participation in the
mysterious dance of life, of which the ego is not an author; a shift from the ego to
the Self mediated by the ego. This is a general goal in Jungian analysis and in
HEP.
In Jungian analysis, “insight” means not only cognitive understanding but a
kind of (re-)experiencing that maintains a connection to the emotional and
somatic background of the content or dynamic being understood. Because of
trauma or developmental deficits, as adults we sometimes return to memories of
childhood and find bits of our child personality still unconsciously alive, which are
very powerful in their emotional and somatic effect. They can lose their infantile
aspect and be integrated only when they are reunited with adult consciousness.
Gaining this kind of insight into the infantile tendencies of the personality, and
thereby freeing oneself from their tyrannical unconscious control, is part of
establishing mature adult functioning and is a precondition for meaningful
engagement with the archetypal layers of the psyche. Once a person is freed
from this with it’s attending dysfunctionality and crippling defensiveness, s/he can
experience new feelings and potentialities, due to the activation of archetypal
layers and contents of personality. Thus analysis is sometimes understood as
building a bridge over the gulf between consciousness and the more
unconscious archetypal world, thereby making the relationship more functional
and dynamic.
Coming to terms with the shadow is one of the most difficult parts of
analysis, precisely because the shadow is what we most don’t want to, or feel we
cannot, deal with. It often involves difficult emotions but also the experience of
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devalued parts of self that may have been deemed inferior, unworthy or
dangerous through personal history or cultural conditioning. In addition, the
archetypal aspects of the shadow contain elements of religious or spiritual
concerns with the problems of death, the battle between good and evil, the void
experience of total loss of identity, existential meaninglessness and so on.
Encountering these shadow experiences can be profoundly disturbing and
require a well developed therapeutic relationship as well as a certain maturity in
psychological mindedness, so that problems of overwhelm and of literalization or
possession can be dealt with. Resolution of shadow problems, both personal
and transpersonal, is a significant theme in analysis and results in increased
vitality, freedom, wisdom and a functionality more related to the true self of the
individual, which may include a redefinition of life purpose and goals. Challenges
to integrate more of the spiritual aspect of life for an individual often come
through shadow activation.
Jung regarded individuation as the central concept of his psychology.
There is an innate striving within the personality to overcome partial selfexpression and the condition of conscious one-sidedness. Through
individuation, ego consciousness and underlying structures are brought into an
intensely conscious relation to unconscious, unintegrated aspects of the psyche
(including emerging archetypal influences) in dreams, life experiences or the
transference relationship. This often painful process dislodges the ego’s identity
with it’s dominant underlying pattern and a new pattern is formed that more
approximately represents the whole Self. Hillman says that this dialectical
encounter is what energizes the individuation process and helps activate “the
mystery of the soul’s alchemy” and achieve it’s transformation.
Jungian psychology includes a significant psychosomatic and body focus.
Jung conceptualized psychic energy as having a ”dense end which correspond to
the most primordial instinctual level of biology” and because of the focus on
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wholeness as the theme of individuation this must be taken into account in
analysis. Jung insisted on integration of spirit and body as central to
individuation and correlated this with emotion. Schwartz – Salant says that a
“transformation of the psyche such that a feeling centre exists” is necessary.
“…then, and only then, does a descent into the body lead to transformation and
the experience of the somatic unconscious.” As well as being a talking cure,
Jungian analysis involves dance, singing, dramatic enactment, art work and
direct work on the body.
The theme of the propensity toward transformation or synthesis through
awareness of the tension of opposites is prevalent in Jungian psychology. This
can occur anywhere – in the analysand’s everyday psychological awareness, in
dreams, in the life field. The evocation of conflictual, dualistic polarities and the
resolution of these into a differentiated, complementary, dialectic synthesis is
basic to the process of individuation. Stein points out that through out each of
Jung’s four “stages of treatment” – confession, elucidation/interpretation,
education and transformation – the dialectical relationship of analyst and
analysand through transference/counter transference is particularly fundamental.
At the deeper levels of change and particularly in the transformation stage, the
atmosphere is “thick with unconscious material, and there is engendered
potential for profound union…, insight and differentiation, as well as for wounding
and betrayal: both analyst and analysand have the opportunity to be transformed
by the process.”
Together the analyst and analysand try to build channels of permanent
openness between ego consciousness and the unconscious, including the
archetypal dimensions. To accomplish this, the ego must arrive at an
observation point from which the dynamic relations between the consciousness
and the unconscious can, to some degree, be registered and monitored. Jung
called this the “transcendent function”. It consists of a self observing ego that is
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alert but not overly conscious or critical; receptive, yet discriminating about
emerging psychic contents; knowledgeable without being inflated or dogmatic;
stable but flexible. With the ego in this position, the unconscious can percolate
through and continue affecting the attitudes and structures of consciousness.
According to Stein, if analysis has succeeded, it will have been a time in a
person’s life when the complexes and defenses that blocked his or her most
intense, profound, and honest relation to life were rendered less effective, and
when a rich appreciation of the soul’s reality of it’s depth and genius was amply
nurtured. For many people the call to this, and the possibility for this, occurs at
the mid life point – anywhere from the mid 30’s to mid 50’s. The “mid life crisis”
is a particular theme addressed by Jungian psychology as a time calling for deep
self questioning with a radical open-ended existential attitude. It is a time when
the individuation process can reach a significant, thought not final, culmination
point re complex identity (including the integration of spiritual themes), life
purpose, meaning and a deep reworking of relationships.
Definitions
There are some terms used in Jungian psychology that require definition
because of some distinctiveness from psychoanalysis, but also because they are
HEP definitions.
1 Consciousness: Energetic psychological potentials, present at birth, become
differentiated through life experience and are transformed into conscious
experience. Consciousness and unconsciousness are two dynamic interacting
realms of the personality. Two structures comprise consciousness: the ego,
seen as an individual’s feeling of identity and continuity; and the persona, a
variable “public mask” created in response to societal demands, which contains
roles, attitudes and behaviours in response to others. Consciousness is the
range of experience a person is aware of at any given moment, which has the
capacity through time to coalesce the changing perceptual field to provide the
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individual with a sense of continuity as a personality or character structure. The
relationship between consciousness and the ego is determined mutually and
reciprocally.
2 The Unconscious: Jung saw the unconscious as being comprised of two
realms, the personal and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious
is more superficial and contains one’s thoughts, memories, experiences etc. that
have been too painful to accept in consciousness and therefore have been
‘forgotten’ or repressed. The personal unconscious contains complexes,
affectively charged psychic energy centers around which are clustered ordering
themes of ideas, actions and experiences. Jung believed the personal
unconscious contained sexual and mythical elements, as well as a sense of
ethical standards comparable to the Freudian superego. In the therapeutic
process, working with one’s life history through “…a remembering that is also a
re-experiencing…” (Jung), and through integrating the contents of the personal
unconscious into consciousness, the stage is set for the work of encountering
transpersonal archetypal material from the deeper layers of the unconscious.
The collective unconscious or “objective” psyche is the part of the psyche that is
inherited, the product of human evolution and is shared with others. It contains
the deeper, more universal and primal aspects of the psyche, and it’s energies
are capable of creating powerful numinous images and experiences independent
of conscious experience. These images are raw material for dreams, fantasies
and creative unconscious and are thought to reach right down to primal
constituents of inorganic matter. The collective unconscious is the deep seat of
consciousness, the source out of which the ego develops; it “is the true basis of
the individual psyche.” (Jung)
3 Ego: The ego is the centre of conscious identity, the “I” that thinks, sees,
makes conscious decisions, is concerned with questions of personal identity.
The ego exists in a field of associated psychological contents, such as memories
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and familiar thoughts, feelings, and fantasies: together they make up egoconsciousness. The ego-consciousness is a structured psychological entity – a
“character structure” made up of habitual tendencies of thought, impulse
management. Ego-consciousness is in the functional agency of the Self which is
the central organizing principle of the personality. The ego is subordinate to the
Self and is related to it like a part to the whole. It is, however, responsible for
mediating and modulating expression of the Self so that they are not
overwhelming.
4 Persona: Derived from the Latin word for mask, persona refers to the social
face a person puts on to confront the world. It can refer to gender identity, stage
of development or profession; it can highlight one or more aspects of a person’s
personality, and over a lifetime many may be worn. The persona is a necessary
adaptation to the social world and becomes pathological only if a person
identifies too closely with it, implying rigidity and repression of other aspects of
personality appropriate to one’s developmental stage. A collapse of the persona
often occurs at mid life (with feelings of loss of meaning, depression, anxiety,
loss of identity), where symbols arise such as the psychological death of the
hero, one’s own literal death, being lost in the wilderness. Jung saw the persona
as an archetype.
5 Archetypes an Archetypal Psychology: An archetype may be described as an
“innate, inherited pattern of psychological performance, linked to instinct and,
when activated, manifested in behaviour and emotion” or, more simply, as the
source of typical human patterns of behaviour, reaction, and experience, the
same way that nest building, for example, characterizes the behaviour of birds.
Different cultures or historical settings can produce many images for the same
archetype. Archetypal images and affects are reciprocal; images can evoke the
meaning and the intensity of the emotions, and the emotions are the media
through which the images are realized. The archetype shows the seamless
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nature of the relationship between the personal unconscious and the collective
unconscious, as the archetype requires ordinary experience to become fully
embodied. The complexes of the personal unconscious are a major constellation
place for archetypal energies, where they are bound in psychopathological forms.
Archetypes tend to be realized in typical situations such as death, puberty,
marriage, separation, birth. Their existence, however, is more inferred than
demonstrable, and their essential core of meaning remains an “unfathomable
mystery”. Archetypal motifs include the divine child, the eternal youth, the
mother, the shadow, wise old man/woman, anima/animus, wounded healer.
Archetypes, whether from the collective unconscious or in complexes, express
themselves in polarities (e.g. mother and child, perpetrator and victim, hero and
maiden), and even each archetype is bipolar (e.g. the great mother’s embrace
can nurture and suffocate). This dialectic relational tension, conflict and
movement toward resolution is an ordering capacity inherent in the psyche,
identified in psychoanalysis also.
Archetypal psychology is a tradition that has developed from Jungian
psychology. James Hillman, Adolf Gugenbhul Craig, Ginette Paris and others
are key figures in this field. Archetypal psychology asserts that the basic
structures of the psyche are archetypal patterns. The language used to
understand these patterns is that of myth. Referring to myth as the fundamental
pattern in the study of human nature, archetypal psychology moves away from
empirical understanding toward the imaginative. Henry Corbin, the second
founding figure of archetypal psychology (Jung being the first), described the
fundamental nature of the archetype as being accessible first to the imagination,
and that the archetype first presents itself as an affect charged image.
Therefore, the entire approach of archetypal psychology is imaginative or
imaginal.
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The charged image is primary to archetypal psychology, as is the
connection between image and soul. Soul is structured as images and the soul
generates images through dreams, fantasies, poetics. From this concept, active
images can be seen as independent of mental activity in that they come and go
at will, as in dreams. Archetypal psychology recognizes that “the mind is in
imagination rather than imagination in the mind.” (J. Hillman). Imagination is an
activity of the soul to which we bear witness. Crafting images, or imagining, is
called soul-making. This to release events from their literal understanding into a
mythical appreciation. Soul-making is the underlying aspiration of archetypal
psychology. Poetic language is required to reveal the imaginal world of the soul,
rather than narrative speech that is tied to linearity, sequence, cause and effect.
The soul-as-metaphor transposes meaning and releases interior
underlying significance that might otherwise be missed. Its metaphorical nature
connects the soul to shadow, or death. Archetypal psychology sees the
necessity of pathologizing, or falling apart, as a means to break through the
barriers of rigidified Western subjectivity and restoring and reactivating the
imagination of our culture, thus deepening our sense of soul.
6 Shadow: The shadow is the negative side of the personality and usually is
what one wants to hide; the parts of oneself considered inferior, undeveloped,
worthless or primitive, and is often associated with such unpleasant feelings as
anger, hatred, envy, guilt, shame. All people have a shadow side and Jung
emphasized that one must come to terms with one’s shadow, achieving a nonjudgmental attitude to extract what is worthy from it, and integrate it. To attempt
to eradicate or deny it creates a dangerous polarity and strengthens it’s
unconscious effect on the psyche, usually in the form of disowned projections.
Although the shadow is archetypal, non-personal and a “dumping ground” for the
collective disavowed parts of a culture, for each person it is also formed
according to one’s history and is therefore a personal complex. The shadow can
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be said to be the antithesis of the persona and the acknowledgment of this
dialectic contributes to their synthesis in the work of individuation.
7 Anima/Animus: Anima (Latin: soul) is the feminine aspect of a man,
experienced as a feminine figure or patterns such as connectedness, depth,
imagination, fantasy, play. Animus (Latin: mind or intellect) is the masculine
aspect of a woman, carrying associated qualities of focused consciousness,
height, differentiation, authority, respect and may be experienced as a masculine
form. It is important that these images become optimally differentiated from the
influence of the archetypal parents and also the personal parents. In speaking of
their qualities, Jung says the anima/animus have a “positive feeling value, as
fascinating or numinous, and are surrounded by an atmosphere of sensitivity,
touchy reserve, secretiveness, painful intimacy and even absoluteness.” Jungian
thinking on anima/animus draws heavily on Jung’s interpretation of Alchemy.
This theme is fundamental to Jungian psychology but has undergone recent
changes under the impact of gender politics. It should be noted that feminine and
masculine are not, in this sense, gender based terms. They are more like yin
and yang from Taoist thought. Every woman and man has both feminine and
masculine aspects. Feminine and masculine themes can be read into nature,
and into all phenomena of existence. In Western culture, however, certain
masculine characteristics have been into how a man should be in his social roles,
and similarly for women, making the roles significantly stereotyped. This has
been challenged since the 60’s.
8 Complex: A psychic energy centre derived from one or more archetypes and
characterized by a common emotional aura around which are clustered particular
types of, or themes within, personal experience in accordance with those
patterns that have developed in the life history of the individual. Examples are
the mother complex, the oedipal complex, the castration complex. When
complexes come into play, they contribute to behaviour and affect, whether a
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person is conscious of them or not. The idea is valued for its capacity to link the
personal and archetypal components of an individual’s various experiences,
particularly those that occurred in infancy and childhood that are carried into
adulthood as psychopathology. They are the primary analytic tools for
understanding and healing neurosis in Jungian psychology. Wholesome
development depends on the ego differentiating itself from the unconscious
effects of the complexes, seeing through to the archetypal meaning at their core.
Although most of Jung’s theoretical focus was on the archetypes, Brooke notes
that most practical work takes place at the level of the complexes, requiring an
extensive psychodynamic working through focus.
9 Spirit: Jungian psychology is a spiritual tradition in that it values this part of
human experience, giving it primacy rather than reinterpreting it as projected
psychodynamics. Archetypes have a spiritual quality that is numinous,
transpersonal, transformative. The psychological aspect of the spiritual theme in
the Christian religion was addressed by Jung in developing his psychological
model. He came to see the challenges inherent in the God – human relationship,
as definitive in the evolution, perhaps even survival, of Western culture in the 20th
century. Jungian psychology, however, also draws on mythology (esp. Greek)
for its account of spirit. As incorporated into Jungian psychology, alchemy, in its
practical and phenomenological account of the nature of existence and, in
particular, of conscious evolution, is spiritual. Jungian spirituality also has a
Gnostic quality in that it suggests that to fully know oneself is to know one’s
divine origins and this self knowledge (gnosis) can only be attained by
experiential in searching. Corbett speaks of the religious function of the psyche,
suggesting that individual human development over the life span, as well as
manifesting hidden personal potential through conscious choice in relationship,
involves an embodiment of the Self as a spiritual experience of God.
Developmental difficulties then, as well as having a psychodynamic aspect, also
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have a spiritual aspect that must be addressed in psychotherapy. A significant
part of the theory and methodology in Jungian psychology specifically addresses
this.
10 Synchronicity: When the relationship between a person’s inner and outer
world takes on an acausal, non-linear, dream-like quality, synchronicities are said
to occur. Synchronicity is “an acausal connecting principle .” It has also been
called “meaningful chance.” The connection is given through pattern recognition
and a felt sense of meaning. It is seen to be a deeply significant manifestation of
meaning for the individual. It tends to occur around particular poignant, or crisislike, points in a person’s therapy process. As their awareness of the world
becomes more dynamic, archetypal and existential, for individuals the Self often
manifests through synchronistic events which cannot be understood in rational,
linear, cause and effect mode. In the egoic mode A→B→C. In synchronistic
mode A→B→C→A. Synchronicity has a non-deterministic, systemic, literary
quality. The connection between characters and between events within a typical
narrative story is egoic. The co-creative, relationship between author and
character is synchronistic. Synchronicities are important to recognize because
they mark a significant move toward Self, are typically personally ego-dystonic
and ego-alien, both personally but also to Western cultures empirical
understanding of reality. They are usually, therefore, disturbing and can signal
an upcoming regression in the therapy process or a possible flight into health. If
marked and accepted they can facilitate significant new ego–Self integration.
One of the reasons they are frightening is that they radically undermine the ego’s
sense of control and affirm the power of something larger then the ego, that the
ego derives from and rests within.
11 Self: The Self has been referred to as the totality of the personality, as the
ordering and purposeful tendency of the psyche, the tendency for the psyche to
produce symbols of something beyond the ego, a unifying principle, and as the
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implicit psychological unity of the mind at birth that serves as a template for
integration and wholeness. Its paradoxical nature should be noted: the totality of
one’s unique innate potentialities, but also the centre of the total personality. It is
where opposites and tensions are resolved. As the centre and totality (and
ultimately author) of one’s life, it is psychologically akin to the God image or
experience. Further, the Self can be understood as the source and goal of
human life, if one accepts that psychological development is a deepening of
consciousness so that ultimately the divine is realized in the individual as
individuation. Jung viewed accounts of the alchemical procedure of finding the
Philosopher’s Stone through a conniunctio or union of opposites (particularly
masculine/feminine, spirit/matter, inner/outer integration) as symbolizing the
individuation process and as symbolizing the Self – the consciousness of
wholeness. The ego and the Self are in dialectical relationship, in the way that
author and character produce a story. The ego is both a part of and distinct from
the Self. The ego mediates the integration of the potentially overwhelming
experience of Self into a mature personality.
12 Individuation: A life-long process in which a person becomes a psychological
individual, or a separate indivisibility, a whole. It is a process of becoming
undivided against oneself in a way that is appropriate to one’s years. In defining
individuation, Jung emphasizes three things: 1) the goal of the process is the
development of the whole personality; 2) individuation does not occur in a state
of isolation but presupposes and includes social relationships; 3) individuation
involves a degree of opposition to social norms that have no absolute validity.
Individuation involves a continual pressure to make available to consciousness
the potential latent in the individual and to relieve inherent tensions by reconciling
or balancing opposites. Coming to terms with contents that are “other” than or
opposite to the ego and persona is an essential feature of the individuation
process. These contents may derive from complexes, archetypes, the shadow.
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In this way there is a fuller realization of Self, which is the goal of individuation.
However, since the depths of the collective unconscious are unfathomable, selfrealization is never completed, so individuation cannot be a fixed state that has
been attained. Rather, it is a natural process of unfolding and becoming.
13 Typology: Jungian psychology speaks of four typical styles of perceiving,
experiencing and doing based in thinking, feeling (or valuing), imagining,
sensing. Usually certain functions are preferred over others by an individual or a
culture. The Meyers–Briggs Typological Assessment identifies a persons
superior and inferior function, as well as the introverted or extroverted nature of
each function. The process of individuation and the goal of therapy involves
bringing more balance to the interactions of the various typological functions.
This assessment is also used in business to determine workers suitability for
certain jobs and to assist them in work relationships because the typology is
basically an assessment of how styles function in relationship to one another. In
addition to perceiving/experiencing/doing typology, Jungian psychology also uses
mythological traditions to understand typical, predictable characterological
phenomena. They particularly draw on Greek and Mediterranean mythology, but
by no means exclusively.
14 Dreams: As in psychoanalysis, dreams are considered very important
psychological manifestations. Jungians see the dream as manifesting the
personal unconscious of complexes and psychodynamics, but in addition they
see the archetypal world manifesting with particular visibility in dreams. Dreams
are often read as landmarks and signposts. A mythological understanding is
often used in interpreting dreams. There is a Jungian and, particularly,
Archetypal psychology perspective which sees a dream like dimension in the
everyday world in its phenomenology and significance. There is a suggestion that
we may be dreamed rather than just being the dreamer i.e. archetypes dream us
as well as us dreaming (of) archetypes. This gives rise to a radical revisioning of
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‘nature’ as being both conscious and meaningful, with a kind of transpersonal
intentionality.
15 Transference/Counter Transference: These two concepts are understood in
Jungian psychology pretty much as they are in psychoanalysis. Not as much
specific insight is given to labeling, identifying and working with defenses per se,
but working through resistance is considered very important.