Episode 61 - Individuation

This Jungian Life Podcast

Joseph Lee, Deborah Stewart, Lisa Marchiano

Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.7 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2019

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Individuation, the central concept of Jung’s psychology, is the foundational image and aspiration of Jungian psychoanalysis – and life. It is the theme of many a fairy tale, the sought-for treasure of a quest, and the “juice” that makes symbols compelling. Individuation has an innate developmental arc and a psychological trajectory that allows us to bring conscious intention to our own individuation process. However, vital transformational events are not simply occurrences ego alone can command; they are ultimately mysterious. They arise independently from the unconscious and what Jung termed the Self, the center, circumference and true center of the personality. In this episode Joseph, Lisa and Deb circumambulate and amplify the concept of individuation and images of the Self.

The Dream:

In the beginning of the dream, it's morning. I'm waiting for my father in the house where I grew up. We are about to drive halfway across the country to look at graduate schools. It is nearing afternoon and we still haven't left the house. I know from previous experience that it takes more than a full day of driving to reach our destination, which leaves me feeling anxious.

Now my parents and I are in the car heading down the highway. From the backseat, where I used to sit, I'm looking outside. We reach an empty stretch of road surrounded on either side by farmland. The sky is overcast- halfway between rain and sunset; I notice a few geese flying across the road from the left of my line of vision in a small V-shaped formation. Once they have reached the other side they circle back, flying in the opposite direction; they have doubled in numbers and form a more unified chevron.

I am standing in a field with my girlfriend. We are watching the dark shapes of the geese bobbing in the dusk. Suddenly they start to glow, one by one, as if each is carrying on their bodies a neon orb, similar to a brake light. I look down in the mud by my shoes and see a broken red light, one that could fit on a bike; I tell my girlfriend that the cracked object must have come from the geese. She agrees with me, which I find very reassuring.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to this Jungian life.
0:03.0	Three good friends and Jungian analysts, Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart and Joseph Lee,
0:09.0	invite you to join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
0:17.0	I'm Lisa Marciano and I'm a youngian analyst in Philadelphia.
0:22.0	I'm Joseph Lee and I'm a youngian analyst in Philadelphia. I'm Joseph Lee and I'm a youngian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
0:27.0	I'm Deborah Stewart, a youngian analyst on Cape Cod.
0:31.0	Today we are going to talk about individuation, a concept and a process that
0:37.8	Yung says it was the central concept of my psychology. So we are going to try to circumambulate a very, very big
0:47.9	concept in Jung's psychology and at least perhaps give you some ideas and some pointers as to what this involves
0:57.2	from a developmental point of view and ego development point of view and from the viewpoint of nomeness experience or relationship to the sacred.
1:09.3	So maybe it's just good to start off by saying for those of you who might be familiar with
1:17.4	Margaret Maller's work, separation and individuation, a lot of times people hear the term individuation and they think more along the lines of
1:27.5	Margaret Maller's work where she was really looking at how infants relate to their caregivers, this idea of sort of
1:34.7	of individuating in early childhood, which is I think not unrelated to Young's
1:40.0	concept, but actually Young's concept is quite different. I agree it's not
1:44.9	unrelated because what we can see in infancy and early childhood is the process of
1:51.9	a self appearing from you know a baby your brand new beautiful perfect
2:00.1	infant but defining terms because I think we're already kind of muddying the water is that people use the word self to mean very different things in different schools of psychology.
2:10.0	So for instance, when you were talking about the self-emerging in the child, you're really talking about the ego.
2:16.0	So I think let's kind of tighten up our terms so we can kind of be congruent.
2:21.0	So there is a process where the ego is formed in childhood which allows the child to have an experience of itself as an individual in relationship to the parents. And that's part of a structuring or a platform.
2:36.9	And then later in life, perhaps, this circumambulation of the self and this other maturation
	...

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