Principle of Individuation: Toward the Development of Human Consciousness

by Murray B. Stein

Stein suggests new approaches―on both personal and communal levels―for gaining freedom from the compulsion to repeat endlessly the dysfunctional patterns that have conditioned us. In this concise and contemporary account of the process of individuation, he sets out its two basic movements and then examines the central role of numinous experience, the critical importance of initiation, and the unique psychic space required for its unfolding.

Using psychological insights from C. G. Jung’s writings, from myths and fairytales, and from years of clinical experience, Stein offers a vivid description of this lifelong and dynamic process that will be useful to clinicians and the general public alike. As a movement toward the further development of human consciousness in individuals, in cultural traditions, and in international arenas where the relations among diverse cultures have become such a pressing issue today, understanding the principle of individuation has relevance for students and workers in many fields. The principium individuationis is a phrase with a long and distinguished history in philosophy, extending from the Middle Ages to Leibniz, Locke, and Schopenhauer. In Jungian psychology, it is brought into the contemporary world as a psychological principle that speaks of the innate human tendency to become distinct and integrated―to become conscious of our purpose, who and what we are, and where we are going.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction

248 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 30, 2006

About the author

Not to be confused with other Analytical/Jungian Psychologist Murray Stein

Jungian psychoanalyst, author, lecturer

Murray Stein, Ph.D.is a training analyst at the International School for Analytical Psychology in Zurich, Switzerland. His most recent publications include The Principle of Individuation, Jung’s Map of the Soul, and The Edinburgh International Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis (Editor of the Jungian sections, with Ross Skelton as General Editor). He lectures internationally on topics related to Analytical Psychology and its applications in the contemporary world.

Dr. Stein is a graduate of Yale University (B.A. and M.Div.), the University of Chicago (Ph.D., in Religion and Psychological Studies), and the C.G. Jung Institut-Zurich. He is a founding member of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts and Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts. He has been the president of the International Association for Analytical Psychology (2001-4), and is presently a member of the Swiss Society for Analytical Psychology and President of the International School of Analytical Psychology, Zurich.

Reviews

[Oziel Bispo · Rating 3 out of 5]

O processo de individuação criado por Jung é explicado por um dos seus melhores conhecedores atuais ; Murray Stein.

Através de exemplos atuais, fazendo também o uso de contos de fada, ele explica esse processo contínuo e doloroso, mas libertador, em que a pessoa tem como objetivo se desamarrar do passado, se livrar de ferimentos passados , deixar a mesmice da vida , se livrar dos hábitos e comodidade e partir para um processo libertador e de autoconhecimento que nos levará a um outro grau de existência. O início da  individuação ocorre quando temos a necessidade de conhecer quem nós realmente somos, qual é a nossa finalidade neste mundo, é o início da busca de si mesmo.


Livro muito bom.

[Yitzchok · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite excerpts:

“As a dynamic force, individuation refers to an innate tendency – call it a drive, an impulse, or, as I will say in some passages, an imperative – for a living being to incarnate itself fully, to become truly itself within the empirical world of time and space, and in the case of humans to become aware of who and what they are.

…Jungian psychology seeks to overcome repression and raise the shadow aspect of the individual personality into consciousness as well as to deconstruct the familiar refrain of the ego as the stable and privileged center of the psychic universe.

…The denial of the individuation imperative exacts a price, however, and sometimes this is itself what comes to be the most important single factor in a person’s life.” – Introduction.

“The individuation project, which must be thought of as a lifelong opus, is actually, I will argue, based on an innate psychological imperative that willy-nilly seeks to increase consciousness. Health and growth are not optional in the psychological sphere, any more than they are in the physical.” – Pg. 5

“In short, it means potentially embracing all facets of the Self with a degree of acceptance and respect.” – Pg. 6

“The movement toward individuation is not optional, not conditional, not subject to vagaries of cultural differences. It is a given, although of course many people ignore it, repress it, and distort themselves in convoluted attempts to avoid acknowledging its presence out of fear of appearing nonconformist or being seen as “different.” – Pg. 8

“Identity, he says, “depends on the possibility of projection and introjection.” From this statement we can conclude that Jung saw individuation as a lifelong process of peeling away and making conscious a vast amount of unconscious material – all the introjections and identifications going into the unconscious identity with objects and people that accumulated through a lifetime. The imperative to individuate therefore never comes to a final resting place where one can say, “It is done.” It is an ongoing opus that is never final, never complete.” – Pg. 15

“…for Jung…the opus of individuation…requires reductive analysis on two fronts: on the persona side, it amounts to differentiating oneself from the psychosocial persona and to dissolving the identity that has built up over time in one’s personal history; and on the syzygy side it requires differentiating oneself from the archetypal images and fantasies that emerge and invite grandiose identification as a compensation for what has been lost through the analysis of the persona.” – Pg. 18

“In the case of Bill W., as Wilson is referred to in the literature of AA, the approach to the numinous and the attainment to numinous experiences changed him when he was able to free himself from the notion that opening himself to the numinous would oblige him to go back to the familiar religion of his childhood and to its prescribed teaching and dogmatic structures.

Since he could not do this, his path to the integration of the numinous was blocked. For Bill W., his religious tradition has become, as it has for modern people generally, Procrustean. The key came in the spontaneous advice from an alcoholic friend who had found a way to spirituality: “Why don’t you choose your own conception of G-d?”

Giving the ego choice and responsibility, rather than insisting on submission to dogma, was the answer to his religious conflict. Becoming freed to find his way to the numinous as an individual – this is the essential point for modern people – changed Bill W. in such a fundamental way that the illness corrupting the physical and psychological body could be overcome, From this forceful realization that the numinous element in spirituality can heal, an individual was freed from his addiction to alcohol and a worldwide self-help organization was born.

Once the true underlying craving for spirit was effectively addressed and integrated into daily life, the desire for alcoholic ecstasy could be held in check.

Are not all addictions, one wonders after having seen such a wide variety of them in clinical practice, a search for something so elusive as to be considered somehow “of the spirit”?” – Pgs. 39-40

“The desire to know yourself is a driving force of individuation, and it becomes manifest at many levels of emotional and cognitive life. …The drive to know separates us from those who don’t know and from those who don’t want us to know. The more you know, the more you remove yourself from the collective. This has been many people’s experiences as they grow out of childhood and adolescence. The drive to know and the drive to grow team up against the wish to rest and play it safe and blend into the crowd. But it’s risky to poke around in forbidden places and to learn by experience.” – Pg. 71

“In an essay written in 1936… “Psychological Factors Determining Human Behavior,” Jung postulate five “instinctive factors”: hunger, sexuality, activity, reflection, and creativity. These are deep human impulses that lie beyond the layers of acculturation. They belong to human nature itself. These instinctive factors influence human behavior, but they are also molded and shaped by other factors, physical, psychological, and cultural.

These Jung calls “modalities,” and they include gender, age, and hereditary disposition of the individual, as well as more psychological factors like the degree to which a person is conscious or unconscious… From this we can readily see how Jung conceived culture and history as important influences in determining how the instinct groups might be deployed.

…The main hindrance to this homeostatic psychic systems operations lies in the existence of personal complexes. The complexes, which are developed through one’s life history and instigated by trauma and then grow by gathering associations around themselves, form a layer, often impenetrable, between that one-sided ego-consciousness and the deeper, instinctive/archetypal layers of the psyche.

…It is as though the angel appears, announces the good tidings of a pregnancy, and a few hours later the girl forgets or ignores the situation, or thinks of all the reasons she cannot go through with it and aborts. So the epiphany passes and nothing changes. Here the complexes rule and block the individuation process of the deeper psyche.

The same things happen in the area of instinct. The instincts can be ignored, overridden, distorted, and turned to perverse and corrupt ends. The instinct for nurturance can get twisted into binging or anorexia; sexuality can be twisted into fetishism and countless other perversions; activity can wither or become hyper, as can reflection; and creativity can turn to inventing atom bombs, gas chambers, and devices of torture.

Or the instincts can become so occluded and blocked off that almost nothing passes through from this level of the unconscious to ego-consciousness, at least in some of the instinct areas. So we find a person with no creativity, or no sexuality, or very low levels of activity or reflection or nurturance. And it is not that one of these areas is capturing all the libido; rather, the libido levels are generally low, the complexes are absorbing the libidinal impulses, and the ego is more or less bereft of energy and motivation in any direction whatsoever. This is a picture of neurotic chronic depression.” – Pgs. 121-123

“The point here is that the wound, once delivered, becomes a powerful inner factor of inhibition. The rejecting Hera becomes an indweller of the psyche, and as such she can keep on dealing the blows that are now long since past and done with in outer reality. In relation to this psychic image, the person remains small and childlike, while the mother complex looms large. Hera towers like a monster, threatening continual rejection and abuse for any attempts at showing one’s creative colors.” – Pg. 131

“Complexes function to stall the individuation process by bullying a person into emotional dead ends. One can easily fall victim, for instance, to an implacable need for revenge and an unforgiving rage at wounds inflicted in childhood, or slip into the bottomless abyss of nostalgia. The complex has a will of its own – one that is often stronger than the ego’s capacity to resist.

A Hephasistean personality has to be released from a severe negative mother complex before he is able to individuate past an eternal angry adolescence. This requires a significant amount of energy, often instigated from the outside. But once free of his resentment toward his mother (Hera), he can come into his own and claim full identity as a creative personality. His vital connection to the creative instinct depends upon this separation from the mother complex. In earlier chapters, I discussed how individuation depends critically upon separation from identity with childhood images and narratives. This is tantamount to getting free of complexes.

The hero of “The White Snake” left the safety of a familiar role as servant and undertook a journey full of arduous trials and tests to his individuation goal, the integration of the self as symbolized by marriage. The heroine of “The Old Woman in the Forest” was thrown abruptly into an individuation crisis by sudden, catastrophic loss, which placed her in a state of radical separation from her previous images of identity and security. This eventually led to many new discoveries of inner potential and in the end resulted in a new consciousness in the marriage to a figure who had been previously bewitched. He too had to be released from the imprisonment in a complex, the negative mother.

This is the pattern of the individuation process: separation followed by union. Michael Fordham termed these deintegration / integration sequences. His point was that these begin in infancy, operate throughout childhood, and indeed continue throughout life. A full individuation process shows these sequences taking place frequently and in many orders of magnitude through an entire lifetime.” – Pgs. 139-140

[Joli Hamilton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hands down the clearest book I have read on the concept of individuation.

[B.gaist · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent introduction to Jung's concept of individuation, the process by which we become who we truly are. It is filled with illustrations from myth, fairy tales, literature and real case studies. It examines individuation as a process concerning individuals, but also collective groups such as nations and religions, especially Christianity. It also analyzes the two basic movements of individuation, namely separation and conjunction. It is clear and well - written, and I would highly recommend it to professionals and interested laymen.

[ReConnect · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks Murray, one if not the best Jungian I know, your books are simply delicious :)

[Egidija Šeputytė · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book a lot. In depth, but not over complicated. Stein's style of writting is so flowing. As an author he is in the same honorable rank for me together with C. G. Jung and M. L. von Franz.

[Gregory Diehl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book alternated between dense/esoteric/inaccessible and profoundly insightful. The best chapters are, hands down, chapter 3: A Tale of Initiation and Full Individuation and chapter 4: Deconstructing Bewitchment. They offer the clearest example of mythological individuation as it applies particularly in masculine and feminine archetypes.

[Polina]

My dad asked me to read this with him so here we go