The flower of humanity

Jung’s own way of speaking about the growth of consciousness in human beings tended to be simpler, and, from a contemporary standpoint, more soulful. For instance, while giving a seminar, he was once asked, “Is not individuation, in our sense of the word here, rather living life consciously? A plant individuates but it lives unconsciously” Jung’s answer was:

“That is our form of individuation. 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 who 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.”

In allowing the subtitle of the first translation of Psychological Types to be “The Psychology of Individuation,” Jung implied that the flowering of consciousness has something to do with the progressive emergence of the psychological types, and it’s this idea I prefer to the idea of a monadic “ego” developing over time. Sticking to Jung’s metaphor of flower, I find it best to say that if a person individuates, that is, goes on to flower, then the various function of consciousness that Jung describes in Psychological Types will be the petals of his or her flower. This notion does not assume that consciousness originates in the ego, even though when consciousness emerges it is associated with an ongoing narrative of self, that is, as part of what a person can refer to as “mine.” If anything, consciousness would seem to arise out of what Jung described in a talk with students as “the peculiar intelligence of the background."

- John Beebe, Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type