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This document discusses C.G. Jung's concept of individuation and its implications. It argues that individuation is an existential imperative for reconciling opposites and transcending the limitations of Western thought. Symbols play an important role in the individuation process by providing meaning and new perspectives. The essay aims to show how a new myth may be emerging from the collective unconscious through symbol formation that can transform consciousness.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
193 views20 pages

The Individuation Project Implications o PDF

This document discusses C.G. Jung's concept of individuation and its implications. It argues that individuation is an existential imperative for reconciling opposites and transcending the limitations of Western thought. Symbols play an important role in the individuation process by providing meaning and new perspectives. The essay aims to show how a new myth may be emerging from the collective unconscious through symbol formation that can transform consciousness.

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juanmarcosav
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1

Running Head: THE INDIVIDUATION PROJECT

The Individuation Project: Implications of a New Myth

Kiley Q. Laughlin

870 Adams Street, APT C

Davis, CA 95616

Kiley.Laughlin@my.pacifica.edu

(530) 701-0015

Quadrant Submission

September 1, 2012
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THE INDIVIDUATION PROJECT
The Individuation Project: Implications of a New Myth

Introduction

A central tenet of C.G. Jung's psychology is the process of individuation. What is

individuation? It is problematic, if not entirely impossible to circumscribe the richly nuanced

meaning of the word. Drawing from its etymological roots, Jung (1939/1959) coined the term

individuation “to denote the process by which a person becomes a psychological 'in-dividual,'

that is, a separate, indivisible unity or ‘whole’” (CW9i, para. 490). In his Gnostic Seven Sermons

for the Dead, Jung (1961) referred to the principium individuation as “the essence of the

creature” (p. 380), making individuation the bedrock, the sine qua non, of his psychology. In his

book The Principle of Individuation, Jungian analyst Murray Stein (2006) said:

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. (p. xiii)

Stein (2006) indicated that Jung introduced the concept as a result of his own

confrontation with the unconscious in which he faced the task of differentiating his personality

from the archetypal images within the collective unconscious that substitute for true

individuality. Rather than a fixed thing, individuation is best characterized as a dynamic process

consisting of a series of psychic relationships between the conscious mind and its unconscious

backdrop. Jolande Jacobi (1967) aptly articulated what it means to individuate:

Like a seed growing into a tree, life unfolds stage by stage. Triumphant ascent, collapse,
crises, failures, and new beginnings strew the way. It is the path trodden by the great
majority of mankind, as a rule unreflectingly, unconsciously, unsuspectingly, following
its labyrinthine windings from birth to death in hope and longing. It is hedged about with
struggle and suffering, joy and sorrow, guilt and error, and nowhere is there security from
catastrophe. For as soon as a man tries to escape every risk and prefers to experience life
only in his head, in the form of ideas and fantasies, as soon as he surrenders to opinions
of ‘how it ought to be' and, in order not to make a false step, imitates others whenever
possible, he forfeits the chance of his own independent development. Only if he treads
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THE INDIVIDUATION PROJECT
the path bravely and flings himself into life, fearing no struggle and no exertion and
fighting shy of no experience, will he mature his personality more fully than the man who
is ever trying to keep to the safe side of the road. (p. 99)

My point of departure for this essay is Jacobi's above cited reference to the “safe side of

the road” where I suggest most of modern consciousness resides. It seems to me that something

new—“6,000 feet beyond man and time” (Nietzsche, 1888/2005, p. 123)—is ascending from the

fathomless abyss of the collective unconscious while the ego struggles to preserve the illusion

that it is the sole master of its house. In this essay, it is my central aim to show how and why the

individuation project is an existential imperative that represents a possible solution to the core

problem presented hereafter: the tenuous capacity for civilization to reconcile its opposites (e.g.:

West and East, Logos and Eros, masculine and feminine) and individuate. In order to address the

significance of Jung's psychology in our time and its role in the emergence of a new myth for the

future of civilization, I discuss the limitations of the epistemology of Western thought and the

relationship of symbol-formation to the process of individuation, followed by a case study

demonstrating that the psychological imperative for individuation transcends cultural boundaries.

I end by affirming Jung’s contention that a new myth for our time may be gradually emerging

from the enantiodromic throes of the collective unconscious; and experienced by consciousness

as symbols of transformation. We begin our journey by stepping away from the safe side of the

road.

Epistemological Limits

The current paradigm of scientific materialism well illustrates man's inherent

epistemological limits. According to Quantum theory, an object does not exist independently of

the conscious subject observing it. Though counterintuitive, it may be said that both the subject
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and object are ontologically entangled in a mutually dependent psychoid field. As Stein (2006)

described:

At the boundary of the psyche there is a psychoid area, psyche-like but not limited to
subjectivity; it is both inside and outside of the psyche. Jung's notions of the objective
psyche embraces a space that is beyond the usual subject-object, inner-outer dichotomy
and includes parapsychological phenomena and synchronicity. (p. 156)

Most adherents of the scientific enterprise have failed to recognize that any measurement

influences, however subtly, the object of its study. With a few notable exceptions, the mainstream

scientific community has avoided addressing any metaphysical considerations implied by its

theories and instead has ceded these problems to philosophy professors who in turn often reduce

them to logical algorithms and linguistic analyses. Other contemporary thinkers—for instance,

Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris—approach materialism with a quasi-religious

fervor, narrowly interpreting the revelations of quantum physics through the limited purview of

ego-consciousness.

The gods have subsequently been replaced by selfish genes and an array of collective

representations—atheism, positivism, materialism, physicalism, behaviorism, etc. What the

clergy of science have ostensibly failed to recognize is that by denying the reality of the psyche,

they have in turn denied their own nature. Thus, instead of engineering a true science of religion,

man has unconsciously—and continues to do so—created a new religion of scientism. Scientific

materialism has merely introduced a new hypostasis (Jung, 1954/1958, CW11, para. 765). In

psychological terms, modern science suffers from acute one-sidedness, privileging Logos at the

expense of Eros, and any model of science that fails to recognize the primacy of the psyche, and

the concomitant importance of balancing Eros with Logos, can only be a partial one.
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Symbols

The rational, linear mode of consciousness representative of modern western civilization

is significantly limited, occupying only a very narrow range of the total phenomenological

bandwidth of consciousness. The West has tended to privilege the principle of Logos at the

expense of Eros. In fact, over the course of millennia, the West seemingly has relegated Eros to

the unconscious. As thinking and the rational domain of Logos dominate feeling and the non-

rational realm of Eros, the repressed Eros, according to Jung (1954/1959), will tend to express

“itself as will to power” [italics added] (CW9i, para. 167). Absent a compensatory Eros to

counterbalance the West’s devotion to linear thinking and abstract logic, one may say that the

individuation process will remain only a partial one.

In order to address the limitations of western consciousness, it is necessary to underscore

the importance of the symbol as “the best possible expression for something unknown” (Sharp,

1991, p. 131). Symbols comprise the language of the psyche and thus form the fundamental units

of psychological meaning. One need only turn to introspection to recognize that consciousness

seeks some measure of meaning; every living person hopes that his existence is meaningful. As

Jung (1961) said: “Meaning makes a great many things endurable—perhaps everything” (p.340).

Symbols then are like clues, subtle messages, scintillae of meaning, partially occluded

within the unconscious. Symbols can transform psychic energy into something intelligible;

otherwise, the psyche tends to produce mere symptoms, while symptoms interpreted as symbols

can help make psyche’s troubles intelligible and meaningful. Thus, one could say that symbols

construct new modes of apprehension through the use of metaphors. These symbolic ways of

seeing things provide the necessary perspicacity to see through the dark glass of the previous

paradigm into what may emerge as a new world-view. Symbol-formation further provides the
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means to make a quantum leap from one paradigm to another. For instance, since the human

species has a natural propensity to construct models, any model that it formulates—scientific,

social, psychological, or otherwise—operates via principles tantamount to symbol-formation.

Jung (1954/1958) has addressed this idea in his writings: “Matter is a hypothesis. When you say

matter, you are really creating a symbol for something unknown” (CW11, para. 762). Put a

different way, the phenomenal world comprised of trees, roads, clouds, and stars, is symbolically

constructed through consciousness.

The Numinosum

The individuation project—following the imperative to incarnate the self more fully—

depends upon one’s ability to explore the images within one’s mind and life as symbolic

communications from the unconscious. Another essential component of individuation is the “idea

of the holy” also termed numinosum (Otto, 1923/1958, p. 6). Religious scholar Rudolf Otto

conjectured that at the core of any authentic religious experience is a tremendous and fascinating

mystery. Jung applied Otto's idea to the unconscious. For Jung, a genuine numinous experience

could equate to an encounter with an autonomous archetype (i.e., unconscious collective content)

charged with more psychic energy than the ego. If one could sublimate the archetype,

assimilating the psychic material into consciousness, he may reach another milestone along the

individuation journey. Conversely, Jung (1961) indicated that “the numinosum is dangerous

because it lures men to extremes, so that a modest truth is regarded as the truth and a minor

mistake is equated with fatal error” (p.154). Yielding to or identifying with the numinosum as

opposed to integrating the experience is counter to the goals of individuation since the

numinosum can significantly distort the clarity of consciousness. As Stein (2006) has said:

Numinous contents of the unconscious pull thinking magnetically into an orbit where it
becomes merely ingenious rationalization. This is what one commonly finds in people
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who are absolutely convinced of a religious teaching. Filled with faith and belief, their
thinking is decisively influenced by an archetypal image of massive but largely
unconscious proportions, which lends privileged ideas a certain triumphant dogmatic
certainty. Only one step further along this road one finds the martyr, whose identification
with the archetypal image is so extreme that mortal life itself loses priority. (p. 46)

If, on the other hand, the individual succeeds in sublimating the unconscious content, it brings

with it a sum increase to consciousness so that a more whole, complete personality may emerge.

Each such sublimation contributes to the ongoing process of individuation.

Modern consciousness, however, seems to have failed to deliver in this most critical area.

The current consensus of scientific materialism is that there is no unconscious and the mind is

merely an epiphenomenon of matter. As Francis Crick (1994) suggested in The Astonishing

Hypothesis: “ 'You.' Your joys and sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of

personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve

cells and their associated nerve cells” (p. 3). The drawback of this one-sided materialist attitude

is that it denies first-hand psychological facts and attempts to dismiss what is self-evident to

every conscious human being: “I do not comprehend all that I am” (Augustine as cited in

Hillman, 1975, p. 196).

Intimations of a New Myth

Over fifty years have passed since Jung died. Toward the end of his life, he more ardently

evinced the necessity of myth, going so far as saying: “That seems to be man's metaphysical

task—which he cannot accomplish without mythologizing. Myth is the natural and indispensable

intermediate stage between unconscious and conscious cognition” (1961, p. 311). Stein (2006)

added the following: “The myths of peoples reflect to a degree the archetypal patterns of the

collective unconscious, but they also include the history, that is, the collective complexes, of the

people to whom they belong” (p. 124). As I suggested at the introduction to this essay, something
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THE INDIVIDUATION PROJECT
is stirring within the collective unconscious and a new myth is rising over a not-so-distant

horizon. Jung (1961) speculated on the meaning of a new myth constellating within the

collective unconscious. In this new myth, the opposites within the God image are reconciled (p.

338); and man can equally co-opt the principles of Logos and Eros. In Jung’s view, the principles

of Logos and Eros and the ideas of solar and lunar consciousness in the images of Sol and Luna

approximate one another. In one of his final works, Jung (1956) compared the former with the

latter:

Logos and Eros are intellectually formulated intuitive equivalents of the archetypal
images of Sol and Luna. In my view, the two luminaries are so descriptive and so
superlatively graphic in their implications that I would prefer them to the more pedestrian
terms Logos and Eros, although the latter do pin down certain psychological peculiarities
more aptly than the rather indefinite “Sol and Luna.” (CW14, para. 226)

Thus, whether using the psychological principles of Logos and Eros, or employing the

more archetypal Sol and Luna duplex, it seems that these ideas seek to communicate the

paradoxical nature of psyche. It may be useful then to approach the psyche as a complex

adaptive system of opposing forces that perpetually attempt to negate one another but are equally

necessary to form a whole, similar to the Taoist principles yin and yang. Applied to the central

subject of this essay, one could say that the purpose of individuation is to transcend the opposites

by becoming aware of them without yielding to the tendencies of negation and one-sidedness.

This would constitute a genuine coniunctio oppositorum, a union of two incommensurable

things. Jung (1949/1954) again turned to the archetypal images of Sol and Luna while

elucidating this point: “Becoming conscious of an unconscious content amounts to its integration

in the conscious psyche and is therefore a coniunctio Solis et Lunae” (CW18, para. 1703).

The late Jungian analyst and scholar, Edward Edinger (1984), dedicated an entire book to

Jung’s notion of a new myth for modern man. According to Edinger, “the new myth postulates
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THE INDIVIDUATION PROJECT
that the created universe and its most exquisite flower, man, make up a vast enterprise for the

creation of consciousness” (p. 23). Edinger, heavily influenced by Jung’s Answer to Job, treated

the new myth as a collective phenomenon with significant religious overtones, going so far as

calling it the new dispensation, a gospel heralded by the psyche and rooted in the tenets of depth

psychology. “The new psychological dispensation finds man’s relation to God in the individual’s

relation to the unconscious” (p. 23). Edinger, of course, was referring to the process of

individuation with this statement. Based on his premise that the new dispensation is

psychological, the singular importance of the process of individuation in the new myth cannot be

overemphasized. The religious and historical overtones of the new myth carry with them

significant implications that I will endeavor to address at the conclusion of this essay.

Individuation Case Study

From the perspective of analytical psychology, individuation is an autonomous process

and the archetype of wholeness, like the germ of a seed, is present in all cultures and all people,

whether one is conscious or unconscious of its presence. One could say that the difference

between individuating consciously and unconsciously is analogous to riding a broken horse by

saddle versus riding a mustang bare back. In other words, the unconscious will drag the person,

kicking and screaming, toward individuation until the individual either succumbs to his own

mortality or recognizes that there is more to the self than ego-consciousness.

I first acquired this insight while deployed in Iraq as a U.S. Soldier where I worked for

two years in Baghdad as an interrogator. During this time I interrogated nearly 800 detainees,

encountering a wide range of Muslim extremists, many of which were affiliated with a number

of terrorist groups, such as Al-Qaeda and the Mahdi Army. Though at the time I was but a

fledgling student of Jung's work, I was able to identify archetypal patterns, including what I
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interpreted as signs of individuation within the detainees I interrogated. Indeed, an encounter

with one detainee in particular confirmed for me that the psychological experience of

individuation is in fact a universal one.

On the day of that interrogation, I handed the detainee—who hereafter will be referred to

by the pseudonym Sayid—a blank sheet of paper and asked him to draw a picture. The intent of

the approach was to encourage him to talk by establishing an open dialogue. Sayid drew a

picture consisting of a tree with clouds above and two squiggly lines below, which, I realized,

symbolically described himself and his relationship to his world. The symbolic world was

divided between the earth and the sky. The sky was depicted by a group of clouds. Between the

two squiggly lines, Sayid drew a palm tree with two fruits hanging on opposite ends of the tree.

He also drew two roots that descended, but only shallowly, into the ground. I asked him to

describe what he had drawn and he said that he saw himself as the fruit because the tree gives

him life. Jung (1954/1967) wrote a great deal about tree symbolism in his essay “The

Philosophical Tree”:

Taken on average, the commonest associations to its meaning are growth, life, unfolding
of forming a physical and spiritual sense, development, growth from below upwards and
from above downwards, the maternal aspect (protection, shade, shelter, nourishing fruits,
source of life, solidity, permanence, firm-rootedness, but also being “rooted in the spot”),
old age, personality, and finally death and rebirth. (CW13, para. 350)

Sayid went on to describe the picture as a beautiful place evoking symbolic images of an

antediluvian realm and original state of paradise. When I asked him where God was in the

picture he pointed near or above the clouds. He also opined that only God knows where Satan is

in the picture.

Sayid produced rich archetypal imagery and was apparently unaware that he was doing

so. Viewed symbolically, the fruit can be interpreted as Sayid’s conscious personality, with the
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branches of the tree representing extensions of his ego complex. The tree represented life, with

the particularity of the palm tree indicating more precisely the cultural backdrop of his existence

(i.e., twenty-first century war-torn Iraq, the insurgency, tribal identity). God was a hypostatic

abstraction above the clouds and therefore outside of Sayid's boundaries of consciousness. The

roots in the picture were not firmly grounded in the earth and thus—if unable to sustain the life

force of the tree— leave it destined for an intense but brief life. Interpreted psychologically,

because it is not firmly rooted in the unconscious (e.g., the earth), the growth of the tree and new

fruit appears unsustainable, and thus the psychic situation cannot support the further

development of the detainee’s ego-consciousness. The shadow (e.g., Satan) is eclipsed by the

abstract projection of God. As Sayid said, “Only God knows where Satan is.” In Jungian terms,

the self throws light on the presence of the shadow. One could therefore say that further

development of Sayid’s personality through the relationship between ego and self cannot proceed

until a figurative root system is established within Sayid’s personal unconscious.

I also discussed dreams and their symbolic meaning with Sayid, who commented that

when he has dreams, “they sometimes come true.” In one such dream he drank water from an

urn. Then three days after the dream, while Sayid was helping prepare the burial site for an aunt

who had just died, one of the gravediggers hit something solid with his shovel, causing the object

to shatter. When the worker pulled the object from the hole, it emerged in three broken pieces.

When Sayid put the pieces back together, he discovered that he had found an Iraqi urn that

closely resembled the one he drank from in his dream three days earlier.

The number three repeats itself, once in the number of days between the dream and the

actual event and also in the number of broken pieces from the urn. Approached symbolically, the

urn is a projection-carrier and contains psychic elements of the self archetype. The water of the
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urn is the elixir of life, the creative agency of the unconscious. This image was apparently

projected into the urn discovered at the burial site of the Sayid's aunt. The shovel struck the urn

and shattered it into three pieces suggesting perhaps both death and fragmentation of

consciousness. The number three then appeared as another symbolic benchmark along the

individuation journey, that is, Sayid's struggle for wholeness that resulted in compensation

between the unconscious and his conscious personality. In this sequence of events between

Sayid’s life and his dream, death and rebirth were prominent archetypal motifs constellated

through a spontaneous occurrence in the form of a synchronicity.

Sayid's astrological sign is relevant as well. He was born on the second of February under

the sign of Aquarius, the Water Bearer. The imagery is strikingly similar to the dream image of

him holding an urn filled with water. Jung (1961) alluded to the Aquarian motif in his

autobiography: “The Water Bearer seems to represent the self. With a sovereign gesture he pours

the contents of his jug into the mouth of Piscis Austrinis, which symbolizes a son, a still

unconscious content” (p. 339). One could infer that Sayid’s inability to integrate shadow aspects

of his personality prevented a conscious coniunctio between unconscious contents and ego from

taking place.

I then asked Sayid to draw another picture regarding how he envisions his world. He

drew a picture containing a line denoting a two-dimensional plane of the earth and he drew three

flowers. One flower was much larger than the other two. Sayid again failed to articulate any sort

of root system belonging to the flowers. When I asked him to describe what was under the

flowers, he opined that there is a layer of flowing water. Then the description of the strata

beneath the flowers abruptly ended. For Sayid, it appeared that there is nothing else. His

underdeveloped consciousness combined with his autonomous complexes prevented him from
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going beyond the elements of earth (i.e., sensation) and water (i.e., feeling), suggesting an

inferiority of the thinking (i.e., air) function in his typology. Water and earth, though sufficient in

the short-term, eventually produce an imbalance in the conscious personality—Sayid’s figurative

flowers. He further communicated a desire to return to paradise and that he wished he were the

fruit of the tree and the scent of the flower. He wanted to return to the primal, archetypal source

of the unconscious but was locked in a quasi-psychic purgatory. In the final analysis, I am

suggesting that Sayid’s psyche was trying to individuate; however, due to an obstruction of

psychic energy, he was stuck in the psychic energy of a fragmented three, only able to drink from

the cup of the self unconsciously, and could not approach four, a number that Jung equated to

wholeness.

My experience as an interrogator, though a controversial one, was of tremendous

personal value. My many hours in the interrogation booth provided a rich source of

psychological material for me to draw from. Through careful introspection and close study of the

psychological material obtained from detainees, I am convinced that individuation is a natural

process—transcending nation-state, culture, and religious persuasion. The personality’s goal, like

Sayid's flower, is to blossom and become what nature intended it to be. However complexes,

formed from affect-laden experiences that accumulate around the archetypal patterns of our lives,

can significantly stall the individuation process. One could say that a complex is tantamount to a

psychic Gordian knot where disparate psychic energies are entangled as a result of infantile

trauma and/or certain modes of experience the ego has deemed incompatible with the prevailing

attitude of consciousness. Each conscious choice to maintain the ego’s one-sidedness has the

tendency to cause the individual to shed more psychic totality and subsequently relegate the
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repressed contents of experience—one’s unlived life—to the darker, less traveled hinterlands of

the personal unconscious which Jung called the shadow.

Cultural Complexes

Jungian scholars have theorized that the personal complex has a collective analogue in

the form of the cultural complex (Singer & Kaplinsky, 2010). Moreover, as potential patterns of

experience, archetypal structures are made manifest through cultural and personal forms, for

example, Sayid’s image of a palm as the archetypal Tree of Life. Joseph Henderson, a first

generation Jungian, defined the cultural complex as:

an area of historical memory that lies between the collective unconscious and the
manifest pattern of the culture. It may include both these modalities, conscious and
unconscious, but it has some kind of identity arising from the archetypes of the collective
unconscious, which assists in the formation of myth and ritual and also promotes the
process of development in individuals. (as cited in Singer & Kaplinsky, p. 6)

The notion of a cultural complex is implied within Jungian theory. If the complex is the

fundamental unit of the personal psyche, it follows that cultures and civilization—the sum

products of personal psyches—are grounded within the same archetypal dynamics and reality.

The cultural complex is a sensitive issue and should be approached with due caution. According

to Psychiatrist Thomas Singer and Jungian analyst Catherine Kaplinsky (2010), after the 1936

publication of his essay Wotan, a paper that articulated psychological differences along racial and

cultural lines, Jung was castigated in the wake of the Holocaust and labeled a racist for

distinguishing Teutonic psychology from Jewish psychology. The difficulty in addressing

cultural complexes lies partly in the extent to which cultural and personal complexes intertwine,

and both consciously and unconsciously, influence the interpretive element of perception. Just as

Jung’s writing was not free of cultural complex, it met readers wrestling with their own

complexes and as a result Jung incurred a scourge of criticism. Singer and Kaplinsky wrote:
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What Jung wrote in 1936 resonates with our current crisis between Islam and the West.
The ancient archetypal riverbed of conflict—among Christians, Jews, and Muslims—is
once again overflowing with a rushing torrent that threatens to flood the world. Can we
say something about this situation from the perspective of the ‘cultural complex?’ (p. 19)

This is a critical observation that heavily figures into this essay’s conclusion.

Conclusion: Implications of a New Myth

My final thoughts approach the future with an optimistic outlook. In the central themes

of this essay—the symbolic function, cultural complexes, the universality of the drive to

individuate, and the meaning of Jung's psychology in our time—I see the emergence of a new

myth to chart the course of the life-line of civilization. The unconscious not only contains the

entirety of the time-past, but subsumes time-future as well. The psyche fortuitously has a

prospective outlook and is goal-oriented. Turning to the future, I oft-wonder which symbol or

group of symbols will characterize our successive generations. Jung (1957) opined:

We are living in what the Greeks called the kairos—the right time—for a ‘metamorphosis
of the gods,' i.e, the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time,
which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious
man within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take to account this
momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its
own technology and science. (p. 123)

What are the signs of our time telling us? It is as if the Abrahamic religions—Judaism,

Christianity, and Islam—have deposited symbolic clues in the ancient riverbeds of our

civilization’s past. One may further derive psychological insights by comparing and contrasting

the evolution of the God image within these religions. While living abroad in the Middle East, I

conducted an informal comparative analysis of Islam and Christianity. Though I but scratched

the surface of that vast reservoir of archetypal and symbolic material, I hypothesized the

following: The unconscious—steeped within a new globalized complex—is constellating toward

a new myth and forging together an archetypal paradigm from extant psychic material. Jung saw
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this new myth constellating in the collective unconscious, a story in which the opposites within

the God image are reconciled. What results is a coniunctio oppositorum, akin to the symbolism

of Sol and Luna.

Viewed in this way, one could argue that Islam is a harbinger of lunar consciousness.

Take, for instance, the symbol of the crescent moon—known as the hilal in Arabic—and star

symbolism that oversee the domes of the near billion mosques of the world. Lunar consciousness

typically represents the archetypal feminine. The crescent and star image is an archaic symbol for

the Great Mother (Nozedar, 2008). The symbol pre-dates Islam by thousands of years and is

associated with a number of pagan fertility goddesses: Isis, Astarte, Hathor, Tanit, Ishtar, and

Aphrodite. In his seminal book The Great Mother, Erich Neumann (1955) amplified the star-in-

crescent symbolism:

Star, half-moon, and star-in-crescent are astral symbols referring to the Great Goddess as
queen of the sky and particularly of the night sky, with which the planet Venus and the
moon are archetypally correlated both in Europe and in America. (p. 141)

On the other hand, the archetypally masculine solar symbolism typical of Christianity

may be construed as a patriarchal demiurge embodying Logos, or the divine word of the Father

God. In 312 CE on the eve of the battle of the Milvian Bridge in Italy, Constantine the Roman

Emperor had what may be characterized as a numinous experience. According to an account

given by Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, in 312 CE, Constantine experienced a vision: “Above

the setting sun the Emperor, and his army with him, saw the sign of the Cross, outlined in rays of

light, and, with it, the words: ‘In this sign thou shalt conquer.’ The following night Constantine

reported encountering Christ in a dream (as cited in Alfoldi, 1948, p. 16). In Jungian terms, one

could infer that an archetype had constellated during the battle resulting in the Roman Empire

adopting Christianity as its official religion. Conversely, Osman (1258 CE-1326 CE), the first
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sultan of the Ottoman Empire, dreamed that the shadow of the moon descended on the entire

world (Finkel, 2006, p. 2). If one juxtaposes Osman's dream with Constantine's vision, East to

West, a strong case for a coniunctio oppositorum arises. Jung (1954/1958) added:

The extraverted tendency of the West and the introverted tendency of the East have one
important purpose in common: both make desperate efforts to conquer the mere
naturalness of life. It is the assertion of mind over matter, the opus contra naturam, a
symptom of the youthfulness of man, still delighting in the most powerful weapon ever
devised by nature: the conscious mind. The afternoon of humanity may evolve a different
ideal. In time, even conquest will cease to be the dream. (CW11, para. 787)

The account of Osman’s and Constantine’s images of ascendency is but one anecdotal

articulation of what I consider a deeply rooted archetypal situation. The more I seriously examine

the symbolism surrounding Islam the more I am convinced that a deus absonditus—the hidden

presence of the feminine aspect of god—is an operative factor, albeit an unconscious one. A new

symbol gestates below the somatic surface of Islam. Unconscious psychic material, however,

does not necessarily produce a one-for-one result after the symbol sublimates into the conscious

mind of the subject. As Stein (2006) has put it: “These psychic contents need to be interpreted;

their meaning is not self-evident” (p. 180).

In his late years, Jung emphasized the importance of joining the feminine with the

Godhead (1952/1969, p. 96). In solar Christianity, Jung saw in the Assumption of Mary in

Catholicism as the heralding of Sophia: the feminine prototype of wisdom. Stein (2006) has also

suggested the following: “New images of God that are inclusive of the feminine are beginning to

appear, gender-inclusive language is being used in some church prayers, and a new sense of the

meaning of ‘God is at work in history' is emerging” (p. 165).

Though no one knows the form of any prospective Sol and Luna coniunctio, or what

cultural and global changes the integration of Logos and Eros would bring, it is clear that in our

time the archetypal conditions necessary to quicken the individuation project are steadily arising.
18
THE INDIVIDUATION PROJECT
Observed through the lens of the perpetual conflict in the Middle East, the principles of Sol and

Luna appear to cancel out each other, however, viewed psychologically one could say that the

tension between them make the transcendent function of opposites possible and thereby create a

living third thing. Indeed, this third thing is a central aim of the individuation project, the

psychological imperative of both American soldier and Iraqi detainee.

The fate of the world is in the hands of individuals and their ability to reconcile the

opposites within the unconscious. We can no longer remain in our unconscious slumber and thus

are propelled forward, spirited away by a calling to individuate, so that we may depart the safe

side of the road. I think Jung (1957) would agree.

I am neither spurred on by excessive optimism nor in love with high ideals, but am
merely concerned with the fate of the individual human being —that infinitesimal unit on
whom a world depends and in whom, if we read the meaning of the Christian message
aright, even God seeks his goal. (p. 125)
19
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Edinger, E. (1984). The creation of consciousness: Jung’s myth for modern man. Toronto, ON,
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Finkel, C. (2006). Osman’s dream: The story of the Ottoman Empire 1300-1323. New York, NY:
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Hillman, J. (1975). Re-visioning psychology (2nd ed.). New York, NY: HarperPerennial.

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University Press.

Nietzsche, F. (1888/2005). Ecce homo: How to become what you are. In A. Ridley and J.
Norman (Eds.), The anti-christ, ecce homo, twilight of the idols and other writings (J.
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Nozedar, A. (2008). The element encyclopaedia of secret signs and symbols. London, UK:
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Otto, R. (1923/1958). The idea of the holy (J. Harvey, Trans.) (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.

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