Individuation
“Everything living dreams of Individuation,
for everything strives towards
its own wholeness and the greatest possible
actualization of
the Self
is
the aim of life.”
The
Individuation process happens in 2 stages:
1.
Dissolution of the Persona
2.
Dis-illusion of the Archetypes; specifically:
Anima/Animus
Shadow
Self
Individuation 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.
We could therefore translate individuation as "coming to selfhood" or
self-realization"
“The salvation of the human being is
not to be found in either behaviorism or in psychoanalysis, (which deals
with only the darker, meaner half of the individual).
We must deal with the questions of value,
individuality,
consciousness, purpose,
ethics and the higher reaches of human nature.
“This process is, in effect,
the spontaneous realization of the whole man.”
This
process of
Individuation represents a
development
rather than a goal to achieve. The person is in a constant state of
movement, stability, movement and stability, whereby ultimately, movement
represents a new kind of stability.
It
is the stage in which
personal Mastery flourishes
and where the Self comes
to
the centre of the
circle, is
rid of the accumulations of
Persona &
Archetypal influence, and where the individual truly is:
individual.
With all
humans there are incremental stages that build on one another that one
graduates to psychologically.
Different societies and cultures have also discovered their own
paths of
enlightenment, but this is a guide for Westerners in our own language, and
fortunately for us, the stages have already been navigated and mapped-out,
so they are both predictable and foreseeable, and there is no longer reason
for the ‘unknown’ to cause
fear
or doubt.
The
Individuation drive is as powerful as any other natural urge
and as the
unconscious causes you to make mistakes on purpose for the
sake of of
balance – the individuation process can drive you down some
strange paths in
life in unexpected places and times in an attempt to force your progress via
undesired challenges.
“In the journey of
Individuation, the first major obstacle is to differentiate the
ego from the
personal Unconscious, particularly the
Persona,
Shadow, &
Anima/Animus”.
The stages
of psychological development
progress like this:
1.
Discovery of opposites - the
conscious (& Ego?) is born
2.
Preference of opposites - the
Shadow is born
3.
Out of opposites comes a distinction between I and not-I.
The qualities identified with at this stage are not uniquely
individual, but identified with the
collective - this is the beginning of the development of the
Persona.
4.
Persona development - copying others in order to ‘fit in’.
5.
Re-cognizing the
Persona (become
conscious of the MASK).
6.
Dissolution
of the Persona
- strictly by ‘act of will’.
7.
Persona complex
gets
replaced by
Archetypes
8.
Re-cognizing the
Archetypes:
9.
Dissolution
of the Archetypes:
(the Shadow,
the Anima or
Animus, and
the Self)
10.
Individuation
The driving force, so far as it is possible for us to
grasp it, seems to be in essence only an urge towards
self-realization.
If it were a matter of some general teleological plan, then all
individuals who enjoy a
surplus of unconsciousness
would necessarily be driven towards higher
consciousness
by an irresistible urge
This process of individuation helps to maintain physical, emotional, and
spiritual health. Individuality allows for the process of
centering, a
deep understanding of self and a
union with God. Indeed, a
hypothesis of
the genesis of cancer is that the abnormality of the human
cell is a mirror
image of the pathology of the human soul. Individuation represents a
homeostatic
equilibrium of the biological,
psychological, sociological and
spiritual dimensions of the
individual. If this process is thwarted or
stagnates, the system itself overcompensates for this deficiency by presenting
some pathology. Illness is life's natural process of healing.
JewishViJP 26
The
process of individuation is a process of inner growth to which one is
attached; one cannot get away from it. If one says no to
it and does not accept it, then, since you are not in it, it grows against
you. Then it is your own inner growth which kills you.
If you refuse the growth, then it kills you, which means that if a
person is completely infantile and has no other possibility, then not much
will happen. But if the person has a greater
personality within – that is, a
possibility of growth – then a psychological disturbance will occur.
That is why we always say that a
neurosis is in a way a positive symptom. It shows
that something wants to grow; it shows that that person is not right in his
or her present state and if the growth is not accepted then it grows against
you, at your expense, and produces what might be called a negative
individuation. The
process of individuation, of inner maturing and growth, goes on
unconsciously and ruins the personality instead of healing it.
That is how the death-tree, the death-mother tree and the life-tree
are essentially connected. The inner possibility of
growth in a person is a dangerous thing because either you say yes to it and
go ahead, or you are killed by it. There is no other
choice. It is a destiny which has to be accepted.
TPoPA 59
(Dorn’s) medicine does not immediately cure the sick, but at first
kills them, after which they get cured. This means that a
personality’s higher consciousness has at first a very disturbing if not
destructive effect on people. That is why the general
public loathes psychology and tries to block it off with all sorts of
“nothing but” reductive prejudices. The underlying, not
consciously realized thought is that if one gets deeper into psychology, one
will have to give up all one’s present weltanschauung, thoughts, and
occupations. Thus people feel threatened – and in a way
they are right, they are threatened, because if
they get in touch with their own depth, their former frame of life will
collapse. Thus, in that form, medicine has a
primarily destructive effect on the former framework of the personality’s
rational consciousness.
AAI 56
…
a really
individuated personality emanates a feeling-effect on other people by
triggering within them the same process. You could
attribute this to the positive, contagious effect of a personality that has
become more conscious than the average crowd:
involuntarily, that stimulates other people, and the less deliberate, the
more effective it is. In that way other people get pulled
into the healing process. AAI 55
Re: Dreams
The symbols of the process of individuation that appear in
dreams are images
of an archetypal nature which depict the
centralizing process or the
production of a new
centre of personality.