Challenges, Aids and Rewards of the Path of Individuation: Insights from Jung’s Letters

Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes…

                                                                                                            Jung (1916)[1]     

The opus consists of three parts: insight, endurance and action…. It is conflicts of duty that make endurance and action so difficult.

                                                                                                            Jung (1945)[2]

The question is, of course, what do you feel to be your task? Where the fear, there is your task!

                                                                                                            Jung (1956)[3]

Since man’s nature is temperamentally set against wisdom, it is incumbent upon us to pay its price by what seems foolish to us.

                                                                                                            Jung (1960)[4]

You must go in quest of yourself, and you will find yourself again only in the simple and forgotten things. Why not go into the forest for a time, literally? Sometimes a tree tells you more than can be read in books…

                                                                                                            Jung (1947)[5]

It is always important to have something to bring into a relationship, and solitude is often the means by which you acquire it.

                                                                                                            Jung (1960)[6]

Where you are not conscious, there can obviously be no freedom. Through the analysis of the unconscious, you increase the amount of freedom….

                                                                                                            Jung (1953)[7]

 

            Some of Jung’s most accessible prose, from a layman’s point of view, is found in the wealth of letters he wrote in reply to people who wrote to him from all over the world. Aside from fleshing out Jung the man, his letters offer us a glimpse into what the path of individuation looked like, from his perspective. The 1,219 pages of letters also provide us with a rich trove of tips for living. In this essay, I’ve picked out excerpts from the most relevant of Jung’s letters, for insights into what he saw as the challenges, the aids and the rewards that are a part of the journey to individuation.

 

Some of the Challenges of the Journey

 

            “Challenges” are the tasks or components of the individuation process that do not come easily to us. These include actions like:

_looking into one’s own heart, so as to see clearly.

Fanny Bowditch had written to Jung, expressing the need to see clearly what was going on with her. Jung reminded her that, as long as she focused on externals, or looked without, “everything would seem discordant; only within does it coalesce into unity.”[8] She would have to look inside, into her heart, before her vision would become clear. This is linked to another challenge.

_making a shift in perspective

In reply to a letter from the Earl of Sandwich (who had met Jung on one of Jung’s trips to England), Jung ventured to suggest that “… we [i.e. Western people] look at the world from the wrong side and that we might find the right answer by changing our point of view and looking at it from the other side, i.e. not from the outside, but from the inside.”[9] What’s challenging about doing so? The numerous distractions of Western culture are constantly pulling us out of an inward focus, to tend to all the “stuff” of daily life, and ours is a society that puts little value on introspection and things of the heart. Neither Fanny Bowditch nor the Earl would have had any easier a time than we do now, decades later, in applying Jung’s advice.

_taking back projections

To Eugen Diesel, Jung wrote “… One must never look to the things that ought to change. The main question is how we change ourselves.”[10] Hoping for outer things to change is to project our power out of ourselves, to disempower ourselves, and to live out of harmony with ourselves. Jung told Fanny Bowditch “… as long as you look at other people and project your psychology into them, you can never reach harmony with yourself…”[11]

_doing shadow work

The task of taking back projections becomes especially important (and especially difficult) when we are dealing with the shadow, our “own darkness.” But Jung recognized that “Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people. Coming to know one’s own darkness is not about “studying books only,…”[12] although Jung recognized book learning can help. Much more effective in facing, wrestling with and integrating the shadow are the interpersonal relationships we have with people who “constellate our shadow.”[13] Jung was quite explicit in replying to an anonymous woman who wrote complaining about a woman she did not like:

“…She constellates your shadow naturally and it gives you a nice feeling of inferiority, thus far quite healthy. Only don’t take it too seriously and don’t believe that Mrs. X has not her private hell too. Everybody has, but it is the extravert’s particular game to show the least of trouble and to cause the most of it. …”[14]

Jung was a strong Introvert, so we are seeing a bit of his shadow projection in this quote!

            Somewhat less difficult is working with our shadow through interactions with close friends. Jung suggested to Kendig Cully “… if you have a close friend, try to look behind his screen in order to discover yourself.”[15] By “screen” I assume Jung meant the persona, or mask, that we all wear to some degree. In relationships between close friends, this mask may become obvious, allowing each friend to see his/her shadow in the other.

_handling a host of negative feelings

These feelings range from fear, doubt, ego issues and aridity to holding the tension of opposites and coping with depression. Jung was quite blunt in his reply to Warner McCullen, who asked how he might identify his task or mission in life: “…Where the fear, there is your task! You must study your fantasies and dreams in order to find out what you ought to do or where you can begin to do something. Our fantasies are always hovering on the point of our insufficiency where a defect ought to be compensated….”[16] No slacking! No cowardice! When we feel fear, we spot where we feel insufficient, and that’s where we must work.

            Jung felt doubt was an inevitable part of the journey toward a complete life, as he explained to his long-time correspondent, Father Victor White:

…There is no place where those striving after consciousness could find absolute safety. Doubt and insecurity are indispensable components of a complete life. Only those who can lose this life really, can gain it. A “complete” life does not consist in a theoretical completeness, but in the fact that one accepts, without reservation, the particular fatal tissue in which one finds oneself embedded, and that one tries to make sense of it or to create a cosmos from the chaotic mess into which one is born…[17]

To a Dr. S, Jung wrote that his doubt was neurotic—the result of his being unable to accept the inner changes that were underway, because they seems like a “figurative death against which one naturally has all kinds of objections to make.” But Jung reminded Dr. S that life’s wisdom asks us to “… go along with natural developments that spring from the functioning of the whole personality…”[18]

            Reluctance to change is one feature of ego. The ego was also source of other forms of emotional suffering, for Jung recognized that it is the ego that “… doubts, hesitates, lingers, has emotions of all sorts,…”[19] and doesn’t like experiencing its dissolution. To an anonymous recipient, Jung suggested that he/she “Try to live without the ego.”[20] To a Mrs. C, who wrote Jung complaining of feeling isolated, Jung suggested she humble herself: “… If you are all alone then it is because you isolate yourself; if you are humble enough you are never alone. Nothing isolates us more than power and prestige….”[21]

            Aridity is another problematic feeling that can show up on the path to wholeness. Jung knew such “arid patches” could not be avoided:

In the confrontation with the unconscious there are indeed a considerable number of arid patches to be worked through. They cannot be circumvented. At such time it is a good thing to have some occupation which has the character of an opus divinum. Something like a careful shaping of images, such as many patients paint or carve in wood or stone. These primitive methods have the great advantage that the unconscious continues to work on these patterns, is enthralled and transformed by them….[22]

By “occupation” here Jung does not mean formal, income-generating work but some activity, like a hobby or avocation, that provides a creative outlet and stimulates the unconscious.

            Being creative can also help assuage depression, which is another common negative feeling encountered on the path to individuation. Besides raising animals and plants, surrounding oneself with beauty, eating well and being out with people, Jung advised an anonymous correspondent to go into the darkness of his/her depths and work with the pain until the intensity of the emotion worked an enantiodromia (a “running to the opposite”). He felt the person in such a situation faced one of two choices: either back out or go down into his/her depths.[23] Jung had many other suggestions on how to handle depression, which we explored in an earlier blog essay.[24]

            Another common, difficult emotional situation occurs when we have to “hold the tension of opposites.” Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, Jung’s hostess at the annual Eranos conferences, was one correspondent who wrote Jung for advice on how to endure this. Jung reminded her that

The opus consists of three parts: insight, endurance, and action. Psychology is needed only in the first part, but in the second and third parts moral strength plays the predominant role. …Your life’s work for Eranos was unavoidable and right. Nevertheless it conflicts with maternal duties which are equally unavoidable and right. The one must exist, and so must the other. There can be no resolution, only patient endurance of the opposites which ultimately spring from your own nature. You yourself are a conflict that rages in itself and against itself,… Everyone goes through this mill, consciously or unconsciously, voluntarily or forcibly….[25]

The only solution was to hold the tension as consciously as possible and wait for the appearance of the “reconciling third” thing to take shape.

            Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn was not the only one of Jung’s associates to write him about the tension of opposites. Father Victor White wrote inquiring if anyone could finally reach a high enough level of consciousness that he would escape from the inner conflict. Jung wrote back in the negative: not even a person with a “higher level of consciousness [can] … escape the raging conflict of opposites in his soul, as God wants to unite His opposites in man…”[26] and Erich Neumann, one of Jung’s former students, wrote him of a situation in which Jung could see “… what a fantastic tension of opposites there must be in you….”[27] One might wonder why Jung chose “fantastic” as an adjective (as if to imply it was positive). From Jung’s perspective it was positive, because “… such a tension is highly beneficial for the progress of your inner development as it brings out the meaning with particular clarity.”[28] As I read Jung’s response I found myself wondering how much comfort Neumann took from Jung’s interpretation.

_making sacrifices

Jung knew that the spiritual journey requires sacrifice (literally Latin sacer + facio = “to make holy). Father Victor White had complained of the sacrifices that he had to make, and Jung replied: “Of course huge sacrifices are expected of you, but I wonder whether there is any vocation or any kind of meaningful life that does not demand sacrifices of a sort…”[29]

_recognizing the psychological meaning in illness

Given the materialism of our culture, it is uncommon for us to inquire about the meaning of a physical ailment, but Jung felt  

…it is advisable to approach every illness from the psychological side as well, because this may be extraordinarily important for the healing process. When these two aspects [physical and psychological] work together, it may easily happen that the cure takes place in the intermediate realm, in other words that it consists of a complexio oppositorum, like the lapis. In this case the illness is in the fullest sense a stage of the individuation process….[30]

The complexio oppositorum, or “union of opposites,” refers to the body and mind coming into some unity. The lapis is the alchemical Philosopher’s Stone that can represent the goal or final product of the alchemist’s work.[31] By working on both mental and physical planes, Jung felt, a person could foster the unity that is a key feature of individuation.

_handling conflicts of duty

Every person confronts these conflicts—those times in life when we are expected to fulfill obligations that are mutually exclusive. Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, whom we met above, faced such a conflict in her dual roles as mother and Eranos hostess. She wrote Jung asking how to handle the demands of her daughter while still fulfilling her obligations to the conferences (which had become very popular with the attendees). If she was hoping that Jung would get her off one or the other hook, she was disappointed in his reply:

Your present situation is the result of pressure of circumstances which are unavoidable. It is conflicts of duty that make endurance and action so difficult. Your life’s work for Eranos was unavoidable and right. Nevertheless it conflicts with maternal duties which are equally unavoidable and right. The one must exist, and so must the other. There can be no resolution,…[32]

Not only did Jung not get her off either hook, he assured her that “The apparently unendurable conflict is proof of the rightness of your life. A life without inner contradiction is either only half a life or else a life in the Beyond, which is destined only for angels….”[33]

_adjusting our attitude as we pay attention to the unconscious

L. Kling wrote Jung for advice on what he should do. He got little satisfaction, as Jung reminded him that “… We certainly shouldn’t think we know what good advice to offer or what, if anything, ought to be done. On the contrary we must endeavor to find out what the unconscious thinks and adjust our attitude accordingly….”[34] Rather than presume to know what was the right course of action for Kling, Jung told him to tend to his own inner life and what the unconscious had to say. That in itself is a challenge, as we rarely want to listen to the unconscious, or even recognize that it exists. But there is a further challenge in Jung’s reply: adjust our attitude so as to comply with what the unconscious is telling us.

_seeking completion within

Jung reminded the English psychoanalyst Michael Fordham that “… we shouldn’t seek completion without, but within,…” and doing so can be daunting because, when we look within, “One becomes aware that there is so much to improve in the field of the inner man…”. No person’s upbringing has been without problems, woundings, “defects of development,” and these come to our awareness when we set the intention to heal ourselves.[35]

_waiting on events

Inner healing is not something that can be forced or fitted into the ego’s timetable. When we tend to the soul, we must conform to the “unfathomable law of nature herself….”[36] and very often this conforming will involve waiting in the “cloud of unknowing”[37] that leaves the ego without a sense of when things will change. Kairos time—the “right time” in Nature’s timetable[38]—is difficult for the ego to appreciate. In my experience and the experience of my students, this is one of the most difficult of the challenges of the journey. One student, for whom the waiting at one point seemed interminable, told me that he was instructing his family to engrave on his tombstone (should he die before the waiting ended), “Here lies Joel. He waited a lot.”

_living the will of God

William Kinney, a young student at Northwestern University, wrote Jung asking about ethics, values and how to find meaning in life. Jung wrote back that he didn’t know of any books Kinney could read that would give him answers. Rather, the answers lay in living, and the relationship between man and God. Jung urged the young man not to aspire to use a moral code as the “supreme arbiter” of how to live, as this would usurp the role of God in his life. Instead, Jung suggested, Kinney should

…live thoroughly and very consciously for many years in order to understand what your will is and what Its will is. If you learn about yourself and if eventually you discover more or less who you are, you also learn about God, and who He is. … So try to live as consciously, as conscientiously, and as completely as possible and learn who you are and who or what it is that ultimately decides….[39]

Jung knew the young freshman college student had many years of ego development before he would face mid-life and be ready to take up the challenge of individuation.

_following foolishness to find wisdom

As the son of a Protestant minister, Jung was quite familiar with the Bible, and he recognized the truth of Paul’s statement that “the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom…”[40] All spiritual truths are paradoxes, and hence we must expect to encounter both paradox and the challenge of following what seems like folly, if we hope to find true wisdom.

_keeping an eye on inner developments that become conscious, lest they fall back into the unconscious

Jung understood that just because something has come “up” into consciousness does not mean that it will stay there. Inner developments have to be watched so they don’t get stuck in “… the realm of the [psychoid] unconscious which merges with the body, where they give rise to pathological formations…”[41] Such formations could lead to both physical ailments and mental disturbances.

            These are just some of the challenges Jung mentions in his letters to people who sought out his advice.

 

Some Aids for the Journey

 

            In his letters Jung also provided his correspondents, and us, with helpful suggestions and types of aid for making the journey easier. Some of these include :

_using creative activities to get in touch with the unconscious

In the years when he worked intensely on himself, Jung found it helpful to draw, paint, work with stones and blocks, and other modalities that served to create images. He recognized that there is something in the “careful shaping of images” that “enthralls” and “transforms” the unconscious.[42] In a letter to Erich Neumann, Jung suggested that, when working with powerful dreams, “drawing and painting yield particularly good results…”[43] because such techniques give the unconscious a chance to express itself.

_going out into Nature

Jung lived close to Nature, especially at his tower retreat at Bollingen. He drew both inspiration and a feeling of rootedness from the land, and he encouraged multiple of his correspondents to own land of their own,[44] to get out into Nature, into the forest,[45] to listen to the wisdom in a tree, to plant plants and tend their growth, and, in so doing, to “celebrate the marriage of the human psyche with the Great Mother,…”[46]

_living an independent  life

Once he left the Burghölzi clinic, Jung was both self-employed and also the husband of a very rich woman, so he never had to submit to others. He found this very valuable, given his unconventional interests and independent mind.[47] He recognized that Father Victor White was not in a similar position: as a Roman Catholic priest, he had much more limited a range of freedom in terms of self-expression. Since Jung’s psychology and philosophy still is outside the norm, it is much easier for those on the path of individuation to live and work outside the conventions of the corporate business world.

_tuning out the gossip

Jolande Jacobi, one of Jung’s students and colleagues, once wrote him complaining that people were gossiping about her. Jung replied:

You are much too sensitive to gossip. As soon as one has anything to do with analysis one becomes the butt of rumors. If I had listened to them I would have been dead long ago. Better to listen to your dreams than to the mouthings of human lemurs.[48]

As an Extravert, Jacobi would have been more attuned to things like gossip.[49] It is easier for an Introvert to ignore the scuttlebutt that goes around. The phenomenon Jung describes is still with us: Few people understand or appreciate analysis, a life lived attentive to dreams, or the person who puts his/her soul and its development front and center in life. The “monkeys” (lemurs) will talk.

_valuing solitude

Robert Rock wrote to Jung 7 months before Jung died, asking him how to cope with loneliness. Jung encouraged him to seek companions, feeling sure he would find a “suitable interlocutor,”[50] and suggesting that the best way to make a good relationship with another person would be to “bring something into the relationship.” How to do that? Jung felt solitude was the means. In saying this, I assume Jung understood that by learning how to be alone with oneself, a person discovered his/her worth, value and inner gifts, and these would then be what would be brought into a relationship with another person.

            In a similar vein, Jung urged Frau N. to avoid collaborations and situations where “teamwork” was expected. In our day and age, given our American Extraversion, love of teams and stress on collaboration, Jung’s attitude seems strange. But Jung felt teamwork and collaboration were “the quickest possible way to lose” the “jewel” of one’s uniqueness. Jung recognized that each person is unique, with a set of talents to be cherished, rather than submerged in some sort of team endeavor. These talents are to be guarded by “enduring the solitude.”[51]

_knowing about the soul and its mysteries

To a Dr. N who wrote to Jung complaining about her involvement with a psychiatrist, Jung replied that she needed to know more about the soul and its mysteries, which would help her take back the projection of her animus on to the doctor. He noted that this need is a “general problem” for people in the second half of life: Once past mid-life, men and women “should begin to get acquainted with the inner world.”[52]

            As I noted in an earlier blog essay,[53] American culture does not like mystery. We avoid things we can’t figure out logically, and we mishandle sources of mystery—like symbols—by reducing them to signs. Since the soul has fundamental mysterious qualities, it is something many find hard to appreciate and impossible to understand with the logical, rational mind.

_feeling one’s way along by dreams

Just as “soul” is difficult for us to handle, so it feels strange, in our speed-driven culture, to proceed slowly along the path, tentatively feeling our way, guided by the products of the soul, i.e. dreams. L. Kling wrote to Jung in 1958 for guidance on how to handle a particular patient, and Jung told him how he worked: “In such cases I always carefully feel my way along by the dreams and assiduously avoid having better ideas about them.”[54] Jung admitted this is a “difficult and delicate affair,” and anyone who has worked with his/her dreams will agree that this is not an easy way to live.

_being realistic

Elisabeth von Sury invited Jung to speak to a group in 1933,[55] but Jung demurred, aware that speaking before people who were “unprepared” (i.e. not already familiar with his work and ideas) would not be worthwhile. He recognized that his psychology was then (and, to a lesser extent, still is) not much “in accord with the conscious expectations of the time…” Even today, over a decade into the 21^st century, I get reactions from some people, when they hear that I teach people how to work with their dreams, like “Dreams? What sort of stupid thing is that??”

            Jung was adamant that people had to stay in touch with reality. He was explicit on this point in his reply to an anonymous correspondent in 1937:

… You know what my attitude is to the unconscious. There is no point in delivering oneself over to it to the last drop. If that were the right procedure, nature would never have invented consciousness,… In my view it is absolutely essential always to have our consciousness well enough in hand to pay sufficient attention to our reality, to the Here and Now. Otherwise we are in danger of being overrun by an unconscious which knows nothing of this human would of ours. … consciousness must keep one eye on the unconscious and the other focused just as clearly on the potentialities of human existence and human relationships….[56]

In his own life, Jung was grateful for his work, his family, his home and all his outer-life responsibilities, for they kept him in touch with reality.

_appreciating the fool

Being willing to seem foolish was mentioned above as one of the challenges of the path. Recognizing the value in the archetype of the fool—the jester, the clown, the heyoka, the trickster—can also be a help along the way, which is one reason why medieval courts, Native American tribes and other groups appreciated and made a place for this figure.[57] In our own lives the fool can be a great leaven to the serious sobriety of the senex and can help to balance the pain that is an inextricable part of the growth process.

 

Some of the Rewards of the Journey

 

            The laughter provided by the fool or clown is one of the ways to assuage the pain in the process. If we find our inner fool—the part within that can laugh in the midst of misery—we discover a great inner treasure. That is one reward of the process of soul growth. Some others Jung mentioned in his letters include :

_discovering the healing power of Nature

If we follow Jung’s advice and get out of the house, into the beauty of Nature, we can discover its power to heal on both the mental and physical planes. Thoreau was not exaggerating when he noted that “In wildness is the preservation of the world.”[58] “World” here includes us. Nature can inspire, revivify, and put us in touch with our depths. Living close to Nature as he did, Jung recognized this.

_appreciating grace

To a Mrs. C. Jung wrote back noting her strength, which seemed to him “enough to cope with unusual situations.”[59] He suggested that she use this strength wisely, for it would be a “strong defense,” but he urged her not to “… assume that it is your personal property, being rather a grace than anything else.” If we pay attention, there are many times, along the spiritual path, when we have opportunities to appreciate how we have been graced by Spirit.

_finding our life purpose

Jung knew that one of the most important facts one can know about oneself is one’s purpose, the task that the soul has set for this life.[60] By identifying our fears and then setting to work on the deficiencies that give rise to the fears, we come to discover our life task. Accompanying this is meaning: Life comes to be more meaningful when we know our purpose and work to fulfill it.

_experiencing liberation

Most people, hearing the word “liberation,” think it means being free of something, getting out of jail (literally or metaphorically), leaving something behind. Jung, of course, as he did on so many occasions, had a very different take on the idea. To him achieving freedom was not about leaving stuff behind but about “fulfilling our task as mixta composita, i.e. human beings between the opposites….”[61] We attain true freedom by holding the tension of opposites until the “transcendent third” arises and resolves the opposition. This is not something the ego mind can force or make happen, nor can it set a timetable for the process. But when the resolution occurs, the inner feeling is certainly like a release.

_consciousness giving rise to freedom

In replying to the Rev. S.C.V. Bowman, Jung noted that

…Where you are not conscious, there can obviously be no freedom. Through the analysis of the unconscious, you increase the amount of freedom. … If unconscious contents approaching the sphere of consciousness are not analyzed and integrated, then the sphere of your freedom is even diminished through the fact that such contents are activated and gain more compelling influence upon consciousness than when they were completely unconscious….[62]

Jung here is echoing what Jesus said when he warned people not to put their hand on the plow if they were going to have second thoughts: “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”[63] Once a person sets out to analyze the unconscious, the process must proceed, or the little freedom he/she had will be reduced even more.

_the achievement of a life worth living

For Jung, the only life worth living was a life with depth. He had little use for the superficial lifestyles of the typical American Extravert—all persona and transient fads and fashions. In a reply to Martin Flinker Jung noted that the depth in life is what makes it worth living.[64]

           

Conclusion

 

            Living at one’s depths means facing challenges and growing through them, using the myriad of aids and supports that life provides us, and, eventually, through working and waiting, tending to dreams and engaging in creative endeavors, reaping the rewards of inner work. Through his letters Jung sought to encourage his correspondents to choose the path of individuation. Through this essay I sought to give you a taste of what that path involves, as Jung defined it.

 

Bibliography

 

Jung, C.G. (1959), ”The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious,” CW 9i. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

________ (1970), “Civilization in Transition,” CW 10. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

________ (1967), “Alchemical Studies,” CW 13. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

________ (1975), Letters, ed. Gerhard Adler & Aniela Jaffé. 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Kirsch, Thomas (2000), The Jungians: A Comparative and Historical Perspective. Philadelphia: Routledge.

Neihardt, John (1972), Black Elk Speaks. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Wolters, Clifton (1961) trans., The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works. New York: Penguin Books.