A psychological individual is a whole, and what makes it a whole (and keeps it together) is that it has personality character. That personality is like a sleeping (and dreaming) person, rather than a waking person. A waking person would be structured by consciousness, whereas a psychological individual, as a whole, is not characterized by that. This Jungian view is both weirder and more radical...
If not a subjective field, then what could be a plausible candidate for a structural principle on which the notion of a psychological individual can be based? (A principle, that is, which “expresses the whole” and “holds it together”?) It’s in answer to this question (remember, we are still reconstructing the argument of the individuation essay, GW IX/I, §§ 489-524) that Jung now (§§ 507-509)...
10. So far, we have seen that Jung explicitly assumes, as a basic premise shared in his tradition, that psychology must cover both consciousness and the unconscious; he also presupposes that a psychological individual (defined as a “whole”) must have a structural principle which “holds it together” and “expresses the whole”; he again assumes, this time with the broader tradition of modern...
Now that we have sorted out these distinctions to some degree, let’s compare how Jung employs them in those passages which introduce the “progression” on the path of individuation. I’m starting with a short, concise essay which Jung published precisely as an introduction to these themes: “Bewußtsein, Unbewußtes und Individuation”. The text sets the context with a brief statement of the basic...
The definitions of consciousness and the “I” contain another distinction on which Jung insists: that between the “field” of consciousness and its center (the “I”). Only on the basis of this distinction can he then go on and ask whether there is a similar center to the larger personality. The field of consciousness is an obvious and unproblematic, though metaphorical notion (carrying its...
From the fundamental idea of the unconscious, Jung’s writing normally proceeds in one of two directions: either towards a distinction between personal and collective unconscious; or else to the question of the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious in psychology. It is the latter direction that is relevant for the individuation progression.
Jung outlines the path of the individuation process in several of his works, and it is instructive to reconstruct his line of thought in each of these. For generally, in passages like that Jung’s thinking is concise and rigorous: it has the quality necessary for theory formation or development of ideas. (In contrast, once he launches into what he calls “amplification”, his texts become amorphous...
In my last post I have outlined an interpretation of Hillman’s central idea of soul-making, and connected it with the notion of projection (in analytical psychology), the relationship between individual souls and the collective psyche, and the theoretical move of treating both individual human beings and ideas as souls which can be perceived as personalized. In the background of this line of...
I have started to look at Hillman’s suggestion that the ego, rather than casting a shadow, is itself cast by the latter; and I have noted that this suggestion comes within a larger endeavor on his part to re-interpret the whole notion of the ego. Let’s dive a little deeper into Hillman’s account of the ego, then. 1. The ego is one of multiple complexes that exist within an individual human being...
Leif Frenzel is a writer and independent researcher. He has a background in philosophy, literature, music, and information technology.