Is individuation a free for all process? Is the unconscious your friend? Are you that great or are you in an inflation? Read on to explore the major pitfalls of misunderstanding Jungian psychology.
As a mental health pro who also writes on the subject (from trauma-informed lens), I'm glad to read your thoughts and cautions about this kind of work. I think so much of what you shared here echoes some of the same warnings I have about shadow work and any deep psychological work. It's very tempting to view this word from a superficial perspective given the ubiquity of it online these days, but as you stated the work can be destabilizing and disorienting. It must always be grounded in the reality of our everyday lives to be worth the risks.
Thank you for sharing the vulnerability in your experiences!
Appreciate you shinning light on these areas of self-work and Jungian psych. It is easy to find ourselves slipping into the pitfalls if we aren't vigilant. This work would be best done through lineage, containment, and at the very least, a secure dyad. Alas, we've become so unrooted from these traditions that we're left wandering through the process without much guidance. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Thanks for the reflections. I agree, I myself felt uprooted and found the containment and lineage very nurturing in my training. I wrote about this because I made those very mistakes myself when there was no one to guide me and I learned the slow and hard way (thankfully no one was hurt, I believe).
This is a wonderful post. Thank you for laying out so clearly some of the risks and difficulties of introspective work. I don't follow Instagram and had no idea shadow work had become a fad. In my experience it's been a wry and humbling experience of having my Jungian-fluent friends shine a light on my failings. There's no kind of banter I love more than psychwork banter with someone who's encountered my shadow in person and I theirs. It's both cutting and healing.
I did find it odd that you pointed to individuation work as coming late in life. I took a different trajectory, where my twenties were full of heavy internal work and I didn't turn to raising a family until my thirties. I don't think I could have approached raising a child in a healthy way until I'd addressed those unconscious needs.
Your comment about society's obsession with doom-scrolling pithy spiritual quotes from a mishmash of religious figures and quantum babble is so painfully accurate.
Thank you for your comment and for seeing what I was trying to get across. You're probably lucky to not be on Instagram, a lot of complex psychological and spiritual ideas are watered down and misused. Sometimes it's funny, other times it's demoralising.
I think you're right, it doesn't have to start late in life. I often think that when there's lots of trauma or maybe even other factors, people start the work much sooner. In his time, Jung mostly worked with people in their second half of life, so that's where the comment comes from. From his perspective, they'd attained worldly status and could now turn inwards. And while it might be different for some of us, I also know from astrology that there are some very important transits beginning around 44 and carrying through the early fifties that are meant to really shake us and put us in contact with who we truly are. But maybe it's better to say that individuation never really ends and we go through many cycles.
And on your last comment–yep. To me it's about that painful reality when narcissism meets spirituality and turns it into one-upmanship and another tool to feed the grandiose self.
I think it's a symptom rather than a cause. Like we could blame obesity on the plentiful availability of sugar and processed foods in the modern diet, but it would be more accurate to look at poverty and the time and energy crunch that results in people grabbing the easiest and cheapest option. A nuanced understanding of spiritual growth requires education and thought.
Primarily I think it's up to the computer scientists devising the social media engagement algorithms, and the C-suite and shareholders who set corporate priorities. They're shaping the landscape in which people fall so easily into quick fix soundbites. It's like planting people in the middle of Times Square and expecting them to respond to the sensation of a butterfly's wings fluttering against their palm. But honestly I think platforms like this one, and the writers here, are taking part in the fix as well. That's one of the reasons I signed up. Long-form blogging, with an engaged community, transparent profit strategies, and no intrusive ads. Doomscrolling follows from psychic exhaustion and addiction. So I think anything that counters those forces will help.
I agree with you, I appreciate Substack because of conversations like these. It's the nature of social media platforms that content is consumed quickly, without the necessary reflection time (and no space for critical thinking and debate). Not that everyone should engage at that level, but I'm noticing a fatigue around scrolling through endless quotes lifted without context or catchy soundbites that are either spiritual bypassing or just psychobabble. It's easy to feel like you're consuming meaningful content (and some of it is) and "doing the work", but at that pace it's simply overwhelming for the brain to process all the information.
And I'm entirely with you on the responsibility of the people "up there" for what they're creating. And perhaps our responsibility as well for what we're actually participating in and whether it's actually serving. It's easy to get tricked into the Instagram model of growth, which is centred around posting tons of very short content and following trends. Thank god therapists have stopped dancing and pointing at words on the screen, that was a bad time for instatherapy!
Oh wow, dancing and pointing at words? Now I'm really glad I'm not on Insta.
I have a friend who has a tiny Etsy store with LGBTQ+ friendly merchandise. Recently they tried advertising on Facebook for the first time, and then watched in amused horror as the algorithm seemed to deliberately show the post to radical conservatives in order to get some hateful comments, and then a couple hours later, started showing it to left wing activists to fight the conservatives. Meanwhile the metrics dashboard was basically saying, "Look at me! I got engagement! Whee, look at all the engagement!"
These things are primed to appeal to the base sides of our nature, all for the sake of some corporation's growth statistics. I hope that the more time passes, the more people learn to recognize how they're being manipulated this way.
I am enjoying the humbling-down of this lifelong process, perhaps I needed to hear this whilst engaging with my own pursuit of knowledge and being keenly aware of my impatience with the journey. Sometimes I can read and feel that energetic experience which may be an inflation (often when reading Marion Woodman) and it’s good to know that perhaps I need to put a foot on the ground and look to ego strength to be more considered about what’s happening to me. Love that maybe it’s about the balance and not only the deep dive.
“the individuation that Jung writes about is a lifetime process, particular to the second half of life; it’s destabilising; and it’s not very Instagrammable.”
I highlighted so many quotes from this brilliant essay. Thank you for your work! ✨
Thank you so much, Lara. I’m glad the essay resonated with you. And it’s true, Jung mostly worked with people in the second half of life who had already done the family, career, social life bit and wanted more. I don’t think we can’t start individuation earlier, but I do think a lot of people bypass the “real world” and jump to the archetypal without a solid base first. We still have to make up for the gaps in our development.
As a mental health pro who also writes on the subject (from trauma-informed lens), I'm glad to read your thoughts and cautions about this kind of work. I think so much of what you shared here echoes some of the same warnings I have about shadow work and any deep psychological work. It's very tempting to view this word from a superficial perspective given the ubiquity of it online these days, but as you stated the work can be destabilizing and disorienting. It must always be grounded in the reality of our everyday lives to be worth the risks.
Thank you for sharing the vulnerability in your experiences!
Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
Appreciate you shinning light on these areas of self-work and Jungian psych. It is easy to find ourselves slipping into the pitfalls if we aren't vigilant. This work would be best done through lineage, containment, and at the very least, a secure dyad. Alas, we've become so unrooted from these traditions that we're left wandering through the process without much guidance. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Thanks for the reflections. I agree, I myself felt uprooted and found the containment and lineage very nurturing in my training. I wrote about this because I made those very mistakes myself when there was no one to guide me and I learned the slow and hard way (thankfully no one was hurt, I believe).
This is a wonderful post. Thank you for laying out so clearly some of the risks and difficulties of introspective work. I don't follow Instagram and had no idea shadow work had become a fad. In my experience it's been a wry and humbling experience of having my Jungian-fluent friends shine a light on my failings. There's no kind of banter I love more than psychwork banter with someone who's encountered my shadow in person and I theirs. It's both cutting and healing.
I did find it odd that you pointed to individuation work as coming late in life. I took a different trajectory, where my twenties were full of heavy internal work and I didn't turn to raising a family until my thirties. I don't think I could have approached raising a child in a healthy way until I'd addressed those unconscious needs.
Your comment about society's obsession with doom-scrolling pithy spiritual quotes from a mishmash of religious figures and quantum babble is so painfully accurate.
Thank you for your comment and for seeing what I was trying to get across. You're probably lucky to not be on Instagram, a lot of complex psychological and spiritual ideas are watered down and misused. Sometimes it's funny, other times it's demoralising.
I think you're right, it doesn't have to start late in life. I often think that when there's lots of trauma or maybe even other factors, people start the work much sooner. In his time, Jung mostly worked with people in their second half of life, so that's where the comment comes from. From his perspective, they'd attained worldly status and could now turn inwards. And while it might be different for some of us, I also know from astrology that there are some very important transits beginning around 44 and carrying through the early fifties that are meant to really shake us and put us in contact with who we truly are. But maybe it's better to say that individuation never really ends and we go through many cycles.
And on your last comment–yep. To me it's about that painful reality when narcissism meets spirituality and turns it into one-upmanship and another tool to feed the grandiose self.
What do you imagine is the way forward?
I think it's a symptom rather than a cause. Like we could blame obesity on the plentiful availability of sugar and processed foods in the modern diet, but it would be more accurate to look at poverty and the time and energy crunch that results in people grabbing the easiest and cheapest option. A nuanced understanding of spiritual growth requires education and thought.
Primarily I think it's up to the computer scientists devising the social media engagement algorithms, and the C-suite and shareholders who set corporate priorities. They're shaping the landscape in which people fall so easily into quick fix soundbites. It's like planting people in the middle of Times Square and expecting them to respond to the sensation of a butterfly's wings fluttering against their palm. But honestly I think platforms like this one, and the writers here, are taking part in the fix as well. That's one of the reasons I signed up. Long-form blogging, with an engaged community, transparent profit strategies, and no intrusive ads. Doomscrolling follows from psychic exhaustion and addiction. So I think anything that counters those forces will help.
I agree with you, I appreciate Substack because of conversations like these. It's the nature of social media platforms that content is consumed quickly, without the necessary reflection time (and no space for critical thinking and debate). Not that everyone should engage at that level, but I'm noticing a fatigue around scrolling through endless quotes lifted without context or catchy soundbites that are either spiritual bypassing or just psychobabble. It's easy to feel like you're consuming meaningful content (and some of it is) and "doing the work", but at that pace it's simply overwhelming for the brain to process all the information.
And I'm entirely with you on the responsibility of the people "up there" for what they're creating. And perhaps our responsibility as well for what we're actually participating in and whether it's actually serving. It's easy to get tricked into the Instagram model of growth, which is centred around posting tons of very short content and following trends. Thank god therapists have stopped dancing and pointing at words on the screen, that was a bad time for instatherapy!
Oh wow, dancing and pointing at words? Now I'm really glad I'm not on Insta.
I have a friend who has a tiny Etsy store with LGBTQ+ friendly merchandise. Recently they tried advertising on Facebook for the first time, and then watched in amused horror as the algorithm seemed to deliberately show the post to radical conservatives in order to get some hateful comments, and then a couple hours later, started showing it to left wing activists to fight the conservatives. Meanwhile the metrics dashboard was basically saying, "Look at me! I got engagement! Whee, look at all the engagement!"
These things are primed to appeal to the base sides of our nature, all for the sake of some corporation's growth statistics. I hope that the more time passes, the more people learn to recognize how they're being manipulated this way.
I am enjoying the humbling-down of this lifelong process, perhaps I needed to hear this whilst engaging with my own pursuit of knowledge and being keenly aware of my impatience with the journey. Sometimes I can read and feel that energetic experience which may be an inflation (often when reading Marion Woodman) and it’s good to know that perhaps I need to put a foot on the ground and look to ego strength to be more considered about what’s happening to me. Love that maybe it’s about the balance and not only the deep dive.
“the individuation that Jung writes about is a lifetime process, particular to the second half of life; it’s destabilising; and it’s not very Instagrammable.”
I highlighted so many quotes from this brilliant essay. Thank you for your work! ✨
Thank you so much, Lara. I’m glad the essay resonated with you. And it’s true, Jung mostly worked with people in the second half of life who had already done the family, career, social life bit and wanted more. I don’t think we can’t start individuation earlier, but I do think a lot of people bypass the “real world” and jump to the archetypal without a solid base first. We still have to make up for the gaps in our development.