The Individuation Process
The task consists in integrating the unconscious, in bringing together “conscious” and “unconscious.” I have called this the individuation process, and for further details must refer the reader to my later works.
Symbols of Transformation (1912/1952), CW 5, § 459.
[Y]ou cannot be redeemed without having undergone the transformation in the initiation process.
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Vol. I (22 May 1935), p. 502.
Conscious and unconscious do not make a whole when one of them is suppressed and injured by the other. If they must contend, let it at least be a fair fight with equal rights on both sides. Both are aspects of life. Consciousness should defend its reason and protect itself, and the chaotic life of the unconscious should be given the chance of having its way too—as much of it as we can stand. This means open conflict and open collaboration at once. That, evidently, is the way human life should be. It is the old game of hammer and anvil: between them the patient iron is forged into an indestructible whole, an “individual.”
This, roughly, is what I mean by the individuation process. As the name shows, it is a process or course of development arising out of the conflict between the two fundamental psychic facts.
“Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation” (1939), CW 9i, §§ 522–23.
[I]ndividuation is not an intensification of consciousness, it is very much more. For you must have the consciousness of something before it can be intensified, and that means experience, life lived. You can only be really conscious of things which you have experienced, so individuation must be understood as life. Only life integrates, only life and what we do in life makes the individual appear. You cannot individuate, for instance, by locking yourself up in a cell, you can only individuate in your concrete life, you appear in your deed; there you can individuate and nowhere else. Real consciousness can only be based upon life; upon things experienced, but talking about these things is just air. It is a sort of conscious understanding, but it is not individuation. Individuation is the accomplishment through life. For instance, say a cell begins to divide itself and to differentiate and develop into a certain plant or a certain animal; that is the process of individuation. It is that one becomes what one is, that one accomplishes one’s destiny, all the determinations that are given in the form of the germ; it is the unfolding of the germ and becoming the primitive pattern that one was born with.
Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. II (22 June, 1932), pp. 757–58.
It was only after the illness that I understood how important it is to affirm one’s destiny. In this way we forge an ego that does not break down when incomprehensible things happen; an ego that endures, that endures the truth, and that is capable of coping with the world and with fate. Then, to experience defeat is also to experience victory. Nothing is disturbed—neither inwardly nor outwardly—for one’s own continuity has withstood the current of life and of time. But that can come to pass only when one does not meddle inquisitively with the workings of fate.
Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962), p. 297.
Human beings have one faculty which, though it is of the greatest utility for collective purposes, is most pernicious for individuation, and that is the faculty of imitation. Collective psychology cannot dispense with imitation, for without it all mass organizations, the State and the social order, are impossible. Society is organized, indeed, less by law than by the propensity to imitation, implying equally suggestibility, suggestion, and mental contagion. But we see every day how people use, or rather abuse, the mechanism of imitation for the purpose of personal differentiation: they are content to ape some eminent personality, some striking characteristic or mode of behaviour, thereby achieving an outward distinction from the circle in which they move. We could almost say that as a punishment for this the uniformity of their minds with those of their neighbours, already real enough, is intensified into an unconscious, compulsive bondage to the environment. As a rule these specious attempts at individual differentiation stiffen into a pose, and the imitator remains at the same level as he always was, only several degrees more sterile than before. To find out what is truly individual in ourselves, profound reflection is needed; and suddenly we realize how uncommonly difficult the discovery of individuality is.
The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious (1916/1928), CW 7, § 242.
[I]t is utterly important that one should be in this world, that one really fulfills one’s entelechia, the germ of life which one is. Otherwise you can never start Kundalini; you can never detach. You simply are thrown back, and nothing has happened; it is an absolutely valueless experience. You must believe in this world, make roots, do the best you can, even if you have to believe in the most absurd things—to believe, for instance, that this world is very definite, that it matters absolutely whether such-and-such a treaty is made or not. It may be completely futile, but you have to believe in it, have to make it almost a religious conviction, merely for the purpose of putting your signature under the treaty, so that trace is left of you. For you should leave some trace in this world which notifies that you have been here, that something has happened. If nothing happens of this kind you have not realized yourself; the germ of life has fallen, say, into a thick layer of air that kept it suspended. It never touched the ground, and so never could produce the plant. But if you touch the reality in which you live, and stay for several decades if you leave your trace, then the impersonal process can begin. You see, the shoot must come out of the ground, and if the personal spark has never gotten into the ground, nothing will come out of it; no linga [creative core] or Kundalini will be there, because you are still staying in the infinity that was before.
The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1932 (19 October, 1932), p. 29.
If you fulfil the pattern that is peculiar to yourself, you have loved yourself, you have accumulated and have abundance; you bestow virtue then because you have luster. You radiate; from your abundance something overflows. But if you hate and despise yourself—if you have not accepted your pattern—then there are hungry animals (prowling cats and other beasts and vermin) in your constitution which get at your neighbours like flies in order to satisfy the appetites which you have failed to satisfy. Therefore, Nietzsche says to those people who have not fulfilled their individual pattern that the bestowing soul is lacking. There is no radiation, no real warmth; there is hunger and secret stealing.
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Vol. II (29 January 1936), p. 801.
[I]f your soul is detachable, as in the primitive condition, you are simply hypnotized into a sort of somnambulistic state or trance, and whatever you experience in that condition is not felt because it has not been experienced in the body; you were not there when it happened. Only if you first return to the body, to your earth, can individuation take place, only then does the thing become true.
Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. II (21 February 1934), p. 1314.
[I]t is part of the message of Zarathustra to preach the importance of the body, otherwise his message would have no basis; the idea of individuation, as he preaches it in that chapter, implies the body. You cannot individuate if you are a spirit; moreover, you don’t even know how spirit feels because you are in the body. So if you speak of individuation at all, it necessarily means the individuation of beings who are in the flesh, in the living body. It is of course meant to become a reality, or it would remain only a good idea in the mind—one would be individuated because one had such an idea in one’s head. People ordinarily think that a right thought must be throughout, not realizing that it is only a very small noise in the attic, and the rest of the house is as it always was, nothing having happened at all. It is just an illusion when you think the right thought in your head means a reality; it is a reality as far as a thought reality reaches; the thought itself is real, but it has not become a reality in space. It has not been expressed by the whole of you. So Zarathustra has the right idea no doubt; he includes the body in the process of individuation, and he emphasizes it because without the body there would only be a disincarnated spirit.
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Vol. I (31 October 1934), p. 202.
The aim of individuation is nothing less than to divest the self of the false wrappings of the persona on the one hand, and of the suggestive power of primordial images on the other.
The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious (1916/1928), CW 7, § 269.
[O]ne cannot individuate as long as one is playing a role to oneself; the convictions one has about oneself are the most subtle form of persona and the most subtle obstacle against any true individuation. One can admit practically anything, yet somewhere one retains the idea that one is nevertheless so-and-so, and this is always a sort of final argument which counts apparently as a plus; yet it functions as an influence against true individuation. It is a most painful procedure to tear off those veils, but each step forward in psychological development means just that, the tearing off of a new veil. We are like onions with many skins, and we have to peel ourselves again and again in order to get at the real core.
Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. II (23 November 1932), p. 821.
In general, it [individuation] is the process by which individual beings are formed and differentiated; in particular, it is the development of the psychological individual as a being distinct from the general, collective psychology.
Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 757.
Even if you don’t become a complete realization of yourself, you become at least a person; you have a certain conscious form. Of course, it is not a totality; it is only a part, perhaps, and your true individuality is still behind the screen—yet what is manifested on the surface is surely a unit. One is not necessarily conscious of the totality, and perhaps other people see more clearly who you are than you do yourself. So individuality is always. It is everywhere. Everything that has life is individual—a dog, a plant, everything living—but of course it is far from being conscious of its individuality. A dog has probably an exceedingly limited idea of himself as compared with the sum total of his individuality. As most people, no matter how much they think of themselves, are egos, yet at the same time they are individuals, almost as if they were individuated. For they are in a way individuated from the very beginning of their lives, yet they are not conscious of it. Individuation only takes place when you are conscious of it, but individuation is always there from the beginning of your existence.
The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1932 (12 October, 1932), p. 5.
A plant that is meant to produce a flower is not individuated if it does not produce a flower, it must fulfill the cycle; and the man that does not develop consciousness is not individuated, because consciousness is his flower, it is his life, it belongs to our process of individuation that we shall become conscious. You see, all that a man does, whatever he attempts, means his individuation, it is an accomplishment, a fulfillment of his possibilities; and one of his foremost possibilities is the attainment of consciousness. That really makes him man: to man, life should be conscious.
Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. II (22 June 1932), p. 759.
Animals generally signify the instinctive forces of the unconscious, which are brought into unity within the mandala. This integration of the instincts is a prerequisite for individuation.
“Concerning Mandala Symbolism” (1950), CW 9i, § 660.
It is obvious that a social group consisting of stunted individuals cannot be a healthy and viable institution; only a society that can preserve its internal cohesion and collective values, while at the same time granting the individual the greatest possible freedom, has any prospect of enduring vitality. As the individual is not just a single, separate being, but by his very existence presupposes a collective relationship, it follows that the process of individuation must lead to more intense and broader collective relationships and not to isolation.
Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 758.
In the last analysis every life is the realization of a whole, that is, of a self, for which reason this realization can also be called “individuation.” All life is bound to individual carriers who realize it, and it is simply inconceivable without them. But every carrier is charged with an individual destiny and destination, and the realization of these alone makes sense of life.
Psychology and Alchemy (1944), CW 12, § 330.
[I]f the individuation process is made conscious, consciousness must confront the unconscious and a balance between the opposites must be found. As this is not possible through logic, one is dependent on symbols which make the irrational union of opposites possible. They are produced spontaneously by the unconscious and are amplified by the conscious mind. The central symbols of this process describe the self, which is man’s totality, consisting on the one hand of that which is conscious to him, and on the other hand of the contents of the unconscious.
Answer to Job (1952), CW 11, § 755.
Individuation appears, on the one hand, as the synthesis of a new unity which previously consisted of scattered particles, and on the other hand, as the revelation of something which existed before the ego and is in fact its father or creator and also its totality.
“Transformation Symbolism in the Mass” (1942/1954), CW 11, § 400.
Individuation has two principal aspects: in the first place it is an internal and subjective process of integration, and in the second it is an equally indispensable process of objective relationship. Neither can exist without the other, although sometimes the one and sometimes the other predominates.
The Psychology of the Transference (1946), CW 16, § 448.
[I]ndividuation is an expression of that biological process—simple or complicated as the case may be—by which every living thing becomes what it was destined to become from the beginning. This process naturally expresses itself in man as much psychically as somatically.
“Foreword to White’s God and the Unconscious” (1952), CW 11, § 460.
One of the most important and difficult tasks in the individuation process is to bridge the distance between people. There is always a danger that the distance will be broken down by one party only, and this invariably gives rise to a feeling of violation followed by resentment. Every relationship has its optimal distance, which of course has to be found by trial and error.
Letter to Oskar A. H. Schmitz, 20 September 1928, Letters, Vol. I, pp. 53–54.
[Y]ou can never get to yourself without loving your neighbour—that is indispensable; you would never arrive at yourself if you were isolated on top of Mt. Everest, because you never would have a chance to know yourself. You would have no means of comparison and could only make a difference between yourself and the wind and the clouds, the sun and the stars, the ice and the moon. And if you lose yourself in the crowd, in the whole of humanity, you also never arrive at yourself; just as you can get lost in your isolation, you can also get lost in utter abandonment to the crowd. So whoever insists upon loving his neighbour cannot do it without loving himself to a certain extent.
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Vol. II (24 June 1936), pp. 1019–20.
Individuation does not shut one out from the world, but gathers the world to oneself.
“On the Nature of the Psyche” (1947/1954), CW 8, § 432.
[L]ife makes no sense if completely detached, we are only complete in a community or in a relationship. There is no possibility of individuation on the top of Mount Everest where you are sure that nobody will ever bother you. Individuation always means relationship.
Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. II (21 March 1934), p. 1367.
[I]t may be that for sufficient reasons a man feels he must set out on his own feet along the road to wider realms. It may be that in all the garbs, shapes, forms, modes, and manners of life offered to him he does not find what is peculiarly necessary for him. He will go alone and be his own company. He will serve as his own group, consisting of a variety of opinions and tendencies—which need not necessarily be marching in the same direction. In fact, he will be at odds with himself, and will find great difficulty in uniting his own multiplicity for purposes of common action. Even if he is outwardly protected by the social forms of the intermediary stage, he will have no defence against his inner multiplicity. The disunion with himself may cause him to give up, to lapse into identity with his surroundings.
Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962), pp. 343–44.
As a rule people are simply forced through the logical development of analysis to take up their individual fate, their particular situation with all its advantages and shortcomings. You could call it individuation.
Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. I (5 November 1930), p. 58.
The individual is the only reality.
“Approaching the Unconscious” (1966), Man and His Symbols, p. 58.
The instinct of individuation is found everywhere in life, for there is no life on earth that is not individual. Each form of life is manifested in a differentiated being naturally, otherwise life could not exist. An innate urge of life is to produce an individual as complete as possible.
The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1932 (12 October, 1932), p. 4.
Every advance in culture is, psychologically, an extension of consciousness, a coming to consciousness that can take place only through discrimination. Therefore an advance always begins with individuation, that is to say with the individual, conscious of his isolation, cutting a new path through hitherto untrodden territory.
“On Psychic Energy” (1928), CW 8, § 111.
One cannot individuate without being with other human beings. One cannot individuate on top of Mount Everest or in a cave somewhere where one doesn’t see people for seventy years: one can only individuate with or against something or somebody. Being an individual is always a link in the chain; it is not an absolutely detached situation, in itself only, with no connection outside.
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Vol. I (13 June 1934), p. 102.
Individuation is becoming the thing which is not the ego, and that is very strange.
The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1932 (19 October, 1932), p. 39.
The goal of psychological, as of biological, development is self-realization, or individuation. But since man knows himself only as an ego, and the self, as a totality, is indescribable and indistinguishable from a God-image, self-realization—to put it in religious or metaphysical terms—amounts to God’s incarnation. That is already expressed in the fact that Christ is the son of God.
“A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity” (1942/1948), CW 11, § 233.
The goal is important only as an idea; the essential thing is the opus which leads to the goal: that is the goal of a lifetime.
The Psychology of the Transference (1946), CW 16, § 400.
The concept of individuation plays a large role in our psychology. In general, it is the process by which individual beings are formed and differentiated; in particular, it is the development of the psychological individual as a being distinct from the general, collective psychology. Individuation, therefore, is a process of differentiation, having for its goal the development of the individual personality.
Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 757.
[W]e must not understand the individual as turned in only upon himself; otherwise individuation would lead to the complete disappearance of the sane individual. He must reappear again. In the case of the really creative artist, he goes on being the creative artist because that is the means by which he links himself up and communicates with the outside world. There is no point in turning in—disappearing—if you are not coming back with a message to the people outside.
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Vol. I (6 November 1935), p. 668.
[W]hen you get into a disagreeable situation where you see no opening, no direct path, you assume that you are quite alone with yourself. In a way it is a very good thing that you think so; otherwise you would never make up your mind, you would remain merely a child. You must believe that you are practically alone. But you may find yourself in a really tight place where you can’t get out, where you are helpless. Then you recognize that you are not alone, because such an absolute impasse is an archetypal situation, and an archetypal figure becomes constellated, a fact in your psychology, a potential, and so you are up to the situation. This has repeated itself innumerable times in history, man has again and again passed through such situations and has a psychological method of adapting, the thing to do in such a case. For by his consciousness alone, particularly the dim consciousness of early ages, man was quite unable to invent such a thing; to primitive man everything was revealed, he invented absolutely nothing, he could not think, it thought. So it is the totality of the psyche that functions in that way; the psyche produces a double, it brings up another figure; that is a psychological fact. The psychopompos is this second figure; you can call it the daimon [divine manifestation], or the shadow, or a god, or an ancestor spirit; it does not matter what name you give it, it is simply a figure; it might even be an animal. For in such a predicament we are dépossèdés [dispossessed], we lose the power of our ego, we lose our self-confidence. Until that moment, we were willful or arbitrary, we had made our own choice, we had found out a way, we had proceeded as far as this particular place. Then suddenly we are in an impasse, we lose faith in ourselves, and it is just as if all of our energy became regressive. And then our psyche reacts by constellating that double, which has the effect of leading us out of the situation.
Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. I (3 June 1931), p. 385.
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 Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious (1916/1928), CW 7, § 266.
The metaphysical process is known to the psychology of the unconscious as the individuation process. In so far as this process, as a rule, runs its course unconsciously as it has from time immemorial, it means no more than the acorn becomes an oak, the calf a cow, and the child an adult. But if the individuation process is made conscious, consciousness must confront the unconscious and a balance between the opposites must be found. As this is not possible through logic, one is dependent on symbols which make the irrational union of opposites possible. They are produced spontaneously by the unconscious and are amplified by the conscious mind.
Answer to Job (1952), CW 11, § 755.
Have your congregation understood that they must close their ears to the traditional teachings and go through the darknesses of their own souls and set aside everything in order to become that which every individual bears in himself as his individual task, and that no one can take this burden from him?
Letter to Dorothee Hoch, 3 July 1952, Letters, Vol. II, p. 76.
The transcendent function does not proceed without aim and purpose, but leads to the revelation of the essential man. It is in the first place a purely natural process, which may in some cases pursue its course without the knowledge or assistance of the individual, and can sometimes forcibly accomplish itself in the face of opposition. The meaning and purpose of the process is the realization, in all its aspects, of the personality originally hidden away in the embryonic germ-plasm; the production and unfolding of the original, potential wholeness. The symbols used by the unconscious to this end are the same as those which mankind has always used to express wholeness, completeness, and perfection: symbols, as a rule, of the quaternity and the circle. For these reasons I have termed this the individuation process.
This natural process of individuation served me both as a model and guiding principle for my method of treatment.
On the Psychology of the Unconscious (1917/1926), CW 7, §§ 186–87.
[I]ndividuation is an ineluctable psychological necessity.
The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious (1916/1928), CW 7, § 241.
The more you cling to that which all the world desires, the more you are Everyman, who has not yet discovered himself and stumbles through the world like a blind mind leading the blind with somnambulistic certainty into the ditch. Everyman is always a multitude. Cleanse your interest of that collective sulphur which clings to all like a leprosy. For desire only burns in order to burn itself out, and in and from this fire arises the true living spirit which generates life according to its own laws, and is not blinded by the shortsightedness of our intentions or the crude presumption of our superstitious belief in the will.
Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955–56), CW 14, § 192.
One often finds that motif, the hidden treasure, or the blossoming of the treasure or the flower in mythology or folklore. It is supposed to blossom after a certain period, say nine years, nine months, nine days. On the ninth night, the treasure comes up to the surface and whoever happens to be on the spot on the ninth can take it, but the next night it goes down to the depths, and then it takes nine years and nine months and nine days before it blossoms again. That is the demonstration in folklore of the difficulty of psychological realization.
Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928–1930 (4 June 1930), p. 653.
We can see today that the entire alchemical procedure for uniting the opposites, which I have described in the foregoing, could just as well represent the individuation process of a single individual, though with the not unimportant difference that no single individual ever attains to the richness and scope of the alchemical symbolism. This has the advantage of having been built up through the centuries, whereas the individual in his short life has at his disposal only a limited amount of experience and limited powers of portrayal.
Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955–56), CW 14, § 792.
[I]ndividuation is a natural phenomenon, and in a way an inescapable goal, which we have reason to call good for us, because it liberates us from the otherwise insoluble conflict of opposites (at least to a noticeable degree). It is not invented by man, but Nature herself produces its archetypal image.
“Jung and Religious Belief” (1958), CW 18, § 1641.
[I]f one is allowed to speak of complete individuation at all, I should say that it would be conscious experience of the totality of nature. But such a thing is only possible if the individual in every moment of existence fulfills his complete being, lives the primitive pattern, fulfills all the expectations that he was originally born with. Naturally one would be abstracted from that universal consciousness through any attempt at a provisional life, for the moment one looks ahead one neglects what is here. The provisional life is a mutilated existence, it is only half a life, giving absolutely no chance of fulfillment, which is the only guarantee for a consciousness that is in harmony with the totality of nature. Only when you behave exactly as you are meant to behave are you the friend and the brother of all living things; then you are right in your place, and then you suddenly understand that everything else is in its place. That is the experience which old China called Tao, but that is a very mystical concept. One realizes how rare, how almost impossible such an experience is, because it is linked up with the completeness of experience in every stage of life.
Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. II (22 June 1932), pp. 760–61.
The difference between the “natural” individuation process, which runs its course unconsciously, and the one which is consciously realized, is tremendous. In the first case consciousness nowhere intervenes; the end remains as dark as the beginning. In the second case so much darkness comes to light that the personality is permeated with light, and consciousness necessarily gains in scope and insight. The encounter between conscious and unconscious has to ensure that the light which shines in the darkness is not only comprehended by the darkness, but comprehends it.
Answer to Job (1952), CW 11, § 756.
The conscious realization of what is hidden and kept secret certainly confronts us with an insoluble conflict; at least this is how it appears to the conscious mind. But the symbols that rise up out of the unconscious in dreams show it rather as a confrontation of opposites, and the images of the goal represent their successful reconciliation. Something empirically demonstrable comes to our aid from the depths of our unconscious nature. It is the task of the conscious mind to understand these hints. If this does not happen, 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 walking upright, if only we had taken the trouble and had been patient enough to understand in time the meaning of the numina that cross our path.
Answer to Job (1952), CW 11, § 746.
When a summit of life is reached, when the bud unfolds and from the lesser the greater emerges, then, as Nietzsche says, “One becomes Two,” and the greater figure, which one always was but which remained invisible, appears to the lesser personality with the force of revelation.
“Concerning Rebirth” (1940/1950), CW 9i, § 217.
When Lao-tzu says: “All are clear, I alone am clouded,” he is expressing what I now feel in advanced old age. Lao-tzu is the example of a man with superior insight who has seen and experienced worth and worthlessness, and who at the end of his life desires to return into his own being, into the eternal unknowable meaning. The archetype of the old man who has seen enough is eternally true. At every level of intelligence this type appears, and its lineaments are always the same, whether it be an old peasant or a great philosopher like Lao-tzu. This is old age, and a limitation. Yet there is so much life that fills me: plants, animals, clouds, day and night, and the eternal in man. The more uncertain I have felt about myself, the more there has grown up in me a feeling of kinship with all things. In fact it seems to me as if that alienation which so long separated me from the world has become transferred into my own inner world, and has revealed to me an unexpected unfamiliarity with myself.
Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962), p. 359.