The Individuation Process: A Beginner’s Guide to Jungian Psychology

Overview: This in-depth guide explores Carl Jung’s individuation process, which is at the core of Jungian psychology.

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Individuation is the central theme of Jungian psychology.

Within this process, an individual goes from being a fragmented piece to a unique whole.

Individuation can be both challenging and exhilarating, treacherous and liberating.

Ready for a crash course in Jungian psychology?

Okay, let’s dive in …

What is Individuation?

In a general sense, individuation simply refers to the process of separating from the “collective”—including one’s parents and cultural norms—to become a unique individual.

However, the meaning of individuation goes far deeper in the context of Jungian psychology.

What is Jung’s Individuation Process?

Most of Jungian psychology—also called analytical psychology and depth psychology—centers on what Jung later termed the individuation process.

The individuation process was Jung’s way of explaining the path to optimal personal development for an individual.

As Jung explains in Two Essays on Analytical Psychology:1CG Jung, “Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious.” Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, CW, Vol 7, 1967.

The aim of individuation is nothing less than to divest the self of the false wrappings of the persona on the one hand, and the suggestive power of the primordial images on the other.

That is, to individuate, one ultimately needs to strip away two things:

  1. The social mask and false identity the ego created for itself in the course of early development, and
  2. The unconscious influences of the archetypes.

This is no small feat, but in doing so, a unique, total human being emerges.

What’s the Goal of Individuation?

The purpose of this individuation process is to increase the person’s consciousness.

With greater consciousness, individuals can heal the splits in their minds between what’s conscious and unconscious.

Bringing what’s unconscious—what a person doesn’t know about themselves—to consciousness helps guide an individual to wholeness in the psyche.

Jungian analyst Anthony Stevens explains in Private Myths:2Anthony Stevens, Private Myths: Dreams and Dreaming, 1997.

Individuation is the process, simple or complex as the case may be, by which every living organism becomes what it was destined to become from the beginning.

That is, individuation is meant to describe a natural process of development unique to the individual.

Becoming whole is the ultimate goal of individuation. Jung believed each person is unique and has a distinct destiny.

jungian psychology wholeness

When Does the Individuation Process Start?

In the first half of life, we make our way through the world, doing our best to develop healthy egos.

The first portion of life is mainly external as we seek to meet our basic needs.

Establishing a home, starting a family, having a career, and developing skills and competencies are all common external objectives for the first half of life.

But from Jung’s outlook, the second part of life ideally represents a turning inward toward a deeper part of ourselves.

This “inward turn” initiates the individuation process.

Carl Jung versus Sigmund Freud

Before we continue, it’s helpful to understand the context in which Jung arrived at his “Jungian psychology.”

Sigmund Freud was a pioneer in the field of psychology.

He named his new field psychoanalysis—as in, the study of psychotic and mentally ill people.

Early in Carl Jung’s career, Freud was like a father figure to him. (Freud was about 20 years older than Jung.)

In fact, Freud was grooming the younger Jung to be his successor. But the two men didn’t see eye to eye. (In the end, their professional relationship ended rather abruptly.)

Jung suggested a different name for their emerging field: psyche-analysis.

Psyche is a term representing the totality of a person’s being. Jung saw their role as an analysis of the human mind, soul, and spirit.

That is, Jung saw a very different picture of the human condition than Freud.

Freud perceived his patients to be ill while he, as an analyst, was not.

In contrast, Jung related to his patients, realizing he was in a similar mental condition as they were (or, capable of entering one).

Jung believed that we are ALL fragmented and divided, and knowingly or not, we’re all searching for our souls.

What is the Conventional World?

jung individuation process

A Map of Psyche Based on Jungian Psychology (From Joseph Campbell’s Mythos)

To understand Jungian psychology, we must appreciate the profound nature of the unconscious.

But first, let’s look at how the unconscious forms.

We all start out as part of a collective.

As we grow, our family, friends, school, religion, institutions, and culture shape our personality.

The Taoists refer to this personality as the acquired mind since we acquire it through our environment and conditioning.

In the external world, this environment is conventional in that it’s guided by conventional rules put forth by a larger group of people.

The conventional code holds specific guidelines of:

  • What we should believe,
  • What things mean,
  • How we should behave,
  • What we should value,
  • How we should perceive ourselves.

This conventional, outer world has structure and order.

What is the Unconscious?

But within us is an entirely different world.

And this inner world, for most of us, is as chaotic as the ocean during a storm.

Both Freud and Jung called this undifferentiated chaos the unconscious.

The unconscious essentially represents everything we don’t know about ourselves or can’t observe within us.

That is, the unconscious is everything within us that falls outside of our conscious awareness. As such, this psychic material is said to be unconscious.

While we want to believe we’re conscious of most of our thoughts, feelings, actions, attitudes, impulses, and behaviors, all evidence suggests otherwise.3Morsella E, Godwin CA, Jantz TK, Krieger SC, Gazzaley A. Homing in on consciousness in the nervous system: An action-based synthesis. Behav Brain Sci. 2016 Jan;39:e168. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X15000643. Epub 2015 Jun 22. PMID: 26096599.

Our Starting Point is Mostly Unconscious

We are, in truth, mostly unconscious beings (before individuating).

In the beginning, we are mostly asleep.

It’s as if we’re mostly running on autopilot with a set of programs operating in the background.

Society conditions our consciousness from birth onward.

And so, most of us remain unconscious to our Self for at least the first half of life.

As Jung explained in Aion:4Carl Jung, Aion, Christ: A Symbol of the Self, Pages 70-71.

The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.

jung unconscious fate

Individuation Begins with Self-Identity

Before the individuation process begins, we have a kind of certainty.

Through the course of our development, we form our self-identity.

Our self-identity, or self-concept, is a composite of traits, attributes, and other qualities that we associate with ourselves.

That is, self-identity is who we perceive ourselves to be (based largely on our early conditioning).

By young adulthood, our perception of ourselves is codified. We now have a construct that we identify as “me” or “I.”

But this self-identity is always what Jung called one-sided.

That is, it’s split between conscious and unconscious—what we think we know about ourselves and what’s relegated to the shadows.

As such, our self-identity is ultimately a distortion. In the Eastern traditions, they call this distortion Maya, or illusion.

Resolving the Tension of Opposites

Because we are mostly unconscious before initiating the individuation process, we don’t feel the amount of internal tension within us.

The inherent tension and opposition between the conscious self we know (ego) and the unconscious parts of ourselves (shadow) is enormous.

Resolving these tensions is the goal of Jungian psychology.

individuation process jungian psychology

You’re probably familiar with the Taoist symbol of yin and yang.

This ancient symbol represents the balance or harmony of opposites.

Yang is the sunny light side while yin represents the shadowy dark side.

Instead of seeing yin and yang as opposing forces, the Chinese view them as complementary forces that interact within a greater whole (represented by the circle encompassing them).

Now, let’s look at three common examples found in Jungian psychology:

Example 1: Masculine and Feminine

Consider how the values and worldviews of masculine and feminine principles can vary.

The masculine seeks autonomy. The feminine seeks communion or relationship.

These two forces seem to be in unrecognizable opposition, do they not?

Can you imagine what it would be like to integrate both masculine and feminine principles within yourself, not favoring either perspective over the other?

It’s not easy, but this is part of the goal of the individuation process.

Jung found that opposites create tension within the psyche.

If we don’t learn to address these tensions, denying the opposites instead, we repress or push the pressure out of our consciousness.

But repressing doesn’t eliminate the opposites or the tension itself. It only makes them more destructive in our psyche by strengthening our shadows (and leading to common mental problems like anxiety).

Repressing tension makes us one-sided, and it leads us to project our unconscious fantasies onto reality.

When we deny these internal tensions, we enforce our delusions and self-deception.

Example 2: Instincts and Psyche

A key pair of opposites in Jungian psychology are instincts and psyche.

The instincts are our biological roots, our body.

The psyche, in Jung’s conception, is the totality of mental processes that include both conscious and unconscious forces.

Any time we try to favor psyche over instincts—mind over body, spirit over nature—or vice versa, we cut ourselves off (dissociate) from a part of what we are.

Example 3: Good and Evil

Most of us prefer pursuing “good” while avoiding “evil.”

We want to realize God and cast out the Devil. We want angels, not demons.

However, as Jung points out in Aion, evil had a different meaning before Christianity.5C.G. Jung, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self (Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.9 Part 2).

The rise of Christianity added a kind of spirit of evil to the principle of evil which it did not have before. The sharpening of differentiation of ethical reactions into too clear-cut black-and-white lines is not favorable to life.

As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, “Good and evil are one.”

Jungian Psychology: The Path of Individuation

Individuation is Jung’s solution to our tendency toward one-sidedness.

In this process of becoming a complete human being, we integrate all the parts of our personality of which we aren’t presently conscious.

Why did Jung call the process “individuation”?

Jungian psychologist Robert Johnson explains in Inner Work:6Robert A. Johnson, Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth, 1989.

Because this process of actualizing oneself and becoming more complete also reveals one’s special, individual structure. It shows how the universal human traits and possibilities are combined in each individual in a way that is unlike anyone else.

Jung writes in Two Essays on Analytical Psychology:7CG Jung, The Collected Works of CG Jung, Vol. 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1972.

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.”

Johnson points out that individuation doesn’t mean we become isolated from the human race. He writes,8Ibid.

Once we feel more secure as individuals, more complete within ourselves, it is natural also to seek the myriad ways in which we resemble our fellow human beings … the essential human qualities that bind us together in the human tribe.

As we individuate, we begin to connect and identify with the entire human family.

Jung’s 3 Stages of the Individuation Process

Before we initiate the individuation process, we wear a series of personas or social masks. We subconsciously choose our social masks based on our experiences during our formative years.

I noticed online that some authors list “four stages” to Jung’s model. They include the personas as the first stage. However, this isn’t technically accurate as a person wearing a social mask hasn’t begun the individuation process yet.

While individuation is different for each person, Jung highlights three archetypes that coincide with three vital stages of psychological development:

  • Stage 1: The Shadow
  • Stage 2: The Anima-Animus
  • Stage 3: The Self

Now, let’s take a closer look at the three stages of the individuation process:

Stage 1: The Shadow

The shadow archetype represents all the personal traits we have ignored, denied, or cut off from ourselves.

In the individuation process, we first get to know and integrate our shadow—all the disowned parts of ourselves that we’ve alienated to create our personality.

In The Portable Jung, Joseph Campbell explains:9C.G. Jung, The Portable Jung. Edited by Joseph Campbell, 1976.

Jung’s concept is that the aim of one’s life, psychologically speaking, should be not to suppress or repress, but to come to know one’s other side, and so both to enjoy and to control the whole range of one’s capacities; i.e., in the full sense, to “know oneself.”

So getting to know and integrating the shadow is a critical first step in individuation.

In many cases, spontaneously becoming interested in knowing one’s shadow is what initiates the individuation process.

Stage 2: The Anima-Animus

The anima is the feminine aspect of a man’s personality. The animus is the masculine counterpart within a woman’s psyche.

Jung saw the anima-animus as enlivening souls or spirits within men and women.

They are, as Robert Johnson writes, “the interior companion or inspirer of life.”10Ibid.

This archetype connects us to the impersonal collective unconscious.

For Jung, anima-animus are essential building blocks in the psychic structure of every man and woman.

In The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Jung termed integrating shadow as the “apprentice-piece” of becoming whole while the integration of the anima or animus is the “master-piece.”11C.G. Jung. The Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious (Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.9 Part 1).

That is, integrating the anima-animus is considerably more challenging than integrating one’s shadow.

Stage 3: The Self

wise old man individuation process

Gandalf, the Wise Old Man, from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings

The Self is the archetype of wholeness and self-transcendence. A sage, or Wise Old Man/Woman, often represents this universal image.

Jung borrowed the concept of the Self from Hindu philosophy.

He described the Self as the “totality of the whole psyche,” distinguishing it from the ego.

The ego represents a small part of one’s whole psyche.

Think of the Self as an unknown, inner Divine center we explore throughout our lives.

I break down the differences between ego and Self in detail at the beginning of this guide on spiritual awakening.

Jungian Psychological Types

Whereas most of the self-improvement industry offers “one-size-fits-all” solutions, Jung understood more of the complexities of the human psyche.

Jung differentiated various orientations—ways in which an individual can process information, make decisions, and interpret the world.12C.G. Jung, Psychological Types (The Collected Works of C G Jung – Vol 6) (Bollingen Series XX), 1976.

An individual’s combination of these orientations highlights their path to individuation.

Now, let’s review some of the factors Jung highlighted in his Psychological Types.

Introversion versus Extraversion

The majority of people emphasized the outer world, on the pleasures and restrictions “out there.”

Jung labeled this group extroverts as they draw energy from others in their environment.

However, a smaller percentage of individuals emphasize the inner world in their subjective responses to outside events.

Jung called these individuals introverts as they draw energy from within themselves.

Extroverts move out toward the world while introverts instinctively pull back into themselves.

Jung realized that each person has a predisposition to one of these two approaches to life.

Jung’s Four Functions

Jung observed that some people favor thoughts to pass judgment while others follow their feelings.

Some individuals experience the world through their senses while others intuit intentions, potentials, and hidden relationships.

Thinking types approach life with little regard for their emotions. They arrange things with logic and order. They have firm codes of what’s right and wrong.

Feeling types understand what something is worth. Compared to thinker’s clear categories of thought, feelers embrace disorder. They appreciate the infinite gradations of value and meaning.

Sensing types most accurately interpret information through their five senses. They are the ultimate realists, accepting the world as it is.

Intuiting types are more interested in future possibilities than in things as they are. Intuitives see similarities whereas most people see differences.

jungs psychological types individuation

Superior Function versus Inferior Function

We like to do things we’re good at and avoid doing things in which we feel inadequate. Thus, we develop specific skills while undeveloped capacities remain in the unconscious.

Jung grouped these four functions into pairs: thinking and feeling, sensing and intuiting. Of the four functions, Jung found that each person has one dominant or superior function.

The opposite function is the person’s inferior function. This inferior function remains mostly unconscious to the individual.

For example, for people who rely on thinking to interpret information, feelings represent their inferior function. For people who trust their senses, intuition is their inferior function.

Remember the goal of the individuation process is to integrate the conscious with the unconscious.

Our superior function is what’s conscious—we know our strengths.

In contrast, our inferior function is unconscious because, in the course of our development, we’ve avoided it. And so the key to individuation, according to Jung, lies in developing our inferior function.

The Transcendent Function in Jungian Psychology

The purpose of Jung’s psychological types was to work your way out of these opposing functions and to arrive in the Center—at what he called the transcendent function in the middle.

As Campbell writes in The Portable Jung:13C.G. Jung, The Portable Jung. Edited by Joseph Campbell, 1976.

‘Individuation’ is Jung’s term for the process of achieving such command of all four functions that, even while bound to the cross of this limiting earth, one might open one’s eyes at the center, to see, think, feel and intuit transcendence, and to act out of such knowledge.

One way it was described (I don’t recall if this was from Jung or his protege, Marie Louise-von Franz) is that the ego is like a house with four sides represented by thinking, feeling, sensing, and intuition.

Your inferior function was the weakest side of the house that needed to be strengthened.

And it was through one’s inferior function that one finds their “path to God”—the transcendent function in the Center.

Jungian Methods for the Individuation Process

How do we proceed with our psychological development toward individuation?

Jungian psychology offers two related methods to support individuation: dream work and active imagination.

dreams von franz individuation

Jungian Dream Analysis

Dreams, Jung found, are the gateway through which the unconscious communicates with our conscious mind.

Our inner Wise Old Man or Woman (the Self) knows what’s best for us—not our conscious ego. The Self, however, doesn’t communicate through words and language. Instead, it uses symbols and images.

The Self, Jung found, cannot communicate directly with our conscious mind. Instead, according to Jungian psychology, it sends us messages through our dreams.

As Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz says in The Way of the Dream,14Fraser Boa, The Way of the Dream: Conversations on Jungian Dream Interpretation With Marie-Louise Von Franz, 1994.

Dreams are the letters of the Self that the Self writes us every night.

Stevens confirms in Private Myths:15Anthony Stevens, Private Myths: Dreams and Dreaming, 1997.

Jung maintained that a crucial factor determining how conscious we are is whether we attend to our dreams and the degree to which this enables us to make what is unconscious conscious. By working with dreams we ‘create soul’, we ‘wake up’ to our total situation, ‘become conscious’, achieve ‘wholeness’.

Dream analysis is a very deep topic. However, an accessible first step is to simply start recording at least one dream each morning in a journal.

Doing so helps begin building a bridge between the unconscious and the conscious—even if you don’t yet understand the messages held within your dreams right away.

Jungian Active Imagination

While in dreams, our dream ego interacts with the unconscious parts of our psyche, in active imagination this interaction takes place while we’re awake.

Instead of going into a dream, we go into our imagination, allowing the images to arise from the unconscious and communicate with us directly.

That is, active imagination is the process of engaging with our unconscious—including the characters within our psyche—using our conscious minds in a waking state.

jung on individuation process

Refusing the Call to Individuate

Although Jungian psychology and the individuation process can liberate us, it’s not considered a “safe path.”

That is, there’s no safety once we leave the everyday, conventional world.

Plus, to achieve success, we must strip away all of the false identities our egos have created. Doing so can trigger our ego’s fears.

That’s why most people resist their call to adventure and why, according to Jung, so few people individuate (achieve psychic wholeness).

Jung writes in his commentary of the Taoist classic, The Secret to the Golden Flower:16Richard Wilhelm. The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life, 1962.

The way is not without danger. Everything good is costly, and the development of the personality is one of the most costly of all things.

But, Jung believed, it can lead us out of the hall of mirrors and return us to our Self.

Individuation: The Pathway to Wholeness

To Jung, the purpose of life was to realize one’s potential and to become a whole person in one’s own right.

To realize this purpose, we must ultimately reconnect with the divine Self within us.

As Jungian psychologist Edward Edinger writes in Ego and Archetype:17Edward F. Edinger. Ego and Archetype (C. G. Jung Foundation Books Series), 1992.

Psychological development in all its phases is a redemptive process. The goal is to redeem by conscious realization, the hidden Self, hidden in unconscious identification with the ego.

Through this individuation process, we increase our consciousness.

In doing so, we not only dissolve our personal roadblocks to achieve positive mental health (which is also rare), but we also become more harmonious, mature, responsible adults.

Are you ready?

Books Related to Jungian Psychology and Individuation

Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C.G. Jung

Paperback | Kindle | Audio

The Portable Jung edited by Joseph Campbell

Paperback

Individuation in Fairy Tales by Marie-Louise von Franz

Paperback | Kindle

Inner Work by Robert Johnson

Paperback | Kindle | Audio

Ego and Archetype by Edward Edinger

Paperback | Kindle | Audio

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