The goal of Jungian analysis; the process of becoming the unique individual that you were born to be. The opposite of neuroticism. This is done by reclaiming and integrating all the lost, projected parts of ourselves. It doesn’t lead to a “perfect” person but one who is perfectly themselves. Some characteristics of people who have progressed far down the path of individuation are: a flexible and resilient personality, deep humanity, and an acceptance of oneself and others.
Individuation means becoming a single, homogenous being, 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.”
- Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, Collected Works, Vol. 7, p. 171
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 Function of the Unconscious, CW 7, par. 269
Again and again I note that the individuation process is confused with the coming of the ego into consciousness and that the ego is in consequence identified with the self, which naturally produces a hopeless conceptual muddle. Individuation is then nothing but ego-centredness and autoeroticism. But the self comprises infinitely more than a mere ego, as the symbolism has shown from of old. It is as much one’s self, and all other selves, as the ego.
- On the Nature of the Psyche,” CW 8, par. 432
In this way there arises a consciousness which is no longer imprisoned in the petty, oversensitive, personal world of the ego, but participates freely in the wider world of objective interests. This widened consciousness is no longer that touchy, egotistical bundle of personal wishes, fears, hopes, and ambitions which always has to be compensated or corrected by unconscious counter-tendencies; instead, it is a function of relationship to the world of objects, bringing the individual into absolute, binding, and indissoluble communion with the world at large.
- The Function of the Unconscious, CW 7, par. 275
The goal of the individuation process is the synthesis of the self.
- The Psychology of the Child Archetype, CW 9i, par. 278
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