Individuation, a concept developed by Carl Gustav Jung, involves bringing out hidden aspects of oneself and integrating them into the personality. It involves encountering archetypes and integrating the personal unconscious. This process can be achieved through therapy or self-exploration and can take a lifetime.
Individualization is the development of the person which gradually leads to a greater knowledge and sense of the whole being. It’s a concept that was made famous by the late Carl Gustav Jung, who is credited with creating a psychological method of viewing the psyche very different from Sigmund Freud’s. Jung had a very different view of how people progressed in life and how they could come to better self-satisfaction through inner examination of the psyche. At its core was this process of individuation, where people brought out hidden aspects of themselves and integrated them into the personality.
The idea of individuation is a complex one and is often best viewed in relation to Jungian interpretation of literature. As the hero moves through a journey, he encounters specific archetypes from which he must learn and integrate. Unlike works of myth and fiction, however, individuation in a person is rarely so linear. People may struggle with the same problems again and again until they “get it” or recognize and make use of the whole self.
There are a few concepts that help clarify individuation. The first of these is the personal unconscious, i.e. all those non-integrated aspects of the person that are difficult to reach and may not be easy to access. Within this unconscious are found archetypal figures, such as the shadow or the most repressed aspects of the self, and the anima/animus or the masculine/feminine side of the person, whichever is the opposite of real gender.
People too have a persona, according to Jung, and this is the outer face they wear to the world and/or their social face. The outer center of the self is the ego, but in the unindividuated person, the ego may not differ much from the person, and is the ruler of an unknown land (shadow, soul, etc.) or ruled by it.
From a therapeutic point of view, a therapist would help an analysand or patient begin to understand the person and then dig deeper to begin encountering the shadow and the anima or animus. This could be extensive work and it could take many years to uncover the unconscious and many more to actually use the unconscious matter found. Discovery is not just discovering what is hidden, but incorporating it into the personality. There are many ways to get this type of work done, and these could include speaking, hypnosis, dream work, art or music therapy, sand expressions, and other things.
In fictional work, heroes or heroines often achieve individuation within the length of a text. For the non-fictional individual, this job can be terrifying, exhilarating, and alternately slow and fast. People face and process some of their worst fears and also those things about themselves that they least want a character to show. As the work continues, and it may take a lifetime, where even then full individuation may never be achieved, people may find themselves more fully in touch with an authentic and complete self. In Jungian theory the true self may be the most hidden thing of all, revealed only when the shadow work and the anima or animus have been considered and integrated.
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