My Favorite Chapter in ALL of Jung’s Work: A Study in the Process of Individuation
My favorite passage from all of Jung’s work is an explanation of him working with a patient. I love it because it shows his ideas in practice, instead of in theory.
Now that I’ve started taking on ladies and gentlemen professionally, I’ve quickly learned the gravity of this cliche.
Of course, the “type” of person who gets into psychology is almost always stuck in their head. The typical intellectual. Jung himself had to face this part of himself right at the beginning of The Red Book.
The woman in Jung’s story from this chapter of The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious is a perfect snap shot of of this intellectual type.
You see, us intellectuals are “thinking types” and favor the head over the body, much to our detriment!
A big part of the glory of The Feminine is it’s ability to simply trust “big feelings” without having to understand them.
This is the language of Life: instincts.
Now what these instincts want can be seen in the flower all the way up to mankind.
They desire we all struggle until we find place in the sun and then blossom and be fertile.
Jung, knew from long experience that this was the individuation process; Life’s “plan” for you.
Of course us rational human beings often get in the way of Life’s processes and sterilize ourselves. Jung knew that by simply encouraging his patient to tune into the part of her mind where dreams come from or as she called it: the Eyes, Life would “have its say” and encourage the individuation process along.
He didn’t explain any theory to her, that would have triggered the jargon junkie within her, instead he nudged her towards right action. This gradually did the work.
She tuned out of the abstract jargon addicted mind and tuned into the second mind within, the place that dreams, the naturally creative place.
Allowing this second mind to speak is a lot like allowing an emotion out of you.
You have to let the feeling take over and use your body to express itself. You have to suspend control. It’s like orgasm.
The experience of this in Art is akin to channeling energy.
The entire crux of Jung’s thesis can be found in this idea.
When you surrender to this second mind and allow it to speak through you, like you are a channeller, the deep mind starts to output an ordered message, and what’s more is that it speaks in archetypes.
Like dreams. You don’t make this message, it happens to you, it comes from somewhere else.
Imagine it like the instinct talking freely for the first time without your rational Ego jumping in with its hot take. The instinct would tell its vivid and emotionally charged story of it’s desire to struggle and blossom. It would use it’s ancient language of symbols, and like the Woman, it would move you to your very core.
My only concern with all this, is that Jungians often sever the instinct from it’s purpose. A childless woman discovering the archetypes feels like a tepid substitute for what her instinct truly wants: an actual child.
Though some can become benevolent childless Nuns or Priests, and their struggle in learning to tame this instinct can certainly be helped by Jung’s methods, most people should use these ideas in alignment with Life’s deepest impulse.
I’ll leave it at that.
If you’d like to learn how to cuckold your rational Ego so bad that it scampers to the corner of the room and watches you and Life to have a vivid and emotionally charged experience, I highly recommend you grab a membership and check out my series on The Red Book.
I really loved the video, and I find you eloquent and funny. This article provokes an answer though, because I simply dont agree that our instinct to become parents is in any way a higher purpose or that one should blindly follow this instinct over other needs. Furthermore, I think it should be 100% about the needs of the child over the selfish need to procreate, which many people are unconscious of when they conceive.
Fertilising my life with imagination can create many other types of offspring in the form of artwork/life-art, while the masses unconsciously bring forward children without ever exploring who they are and imprinting the next generation with their unresolved traumas.
In other words, I believe that the instinct towards individuation should come first…and that to some degree, this can be taught as values, in stead of f ex teaching young girls that their highest dream should be to get married.
It is also interesting to note that we judge women especially as childless, when they in fact happily choose to be childfree, and to me this comes, inter alia, from an archaic view of womens worth only as child-bearer for the man, many who was free to develop intellectually and creatively at or after work, while the woman raised the kids and did everything at home. It is not even that long ago females became free to choose, come to think of it, many women still arent across the globe.
I do suppose that you mean both men and women have this deep need to spread their genes, otherwise then yes, I found what you said offensive;) even though I can see the context of a fertile divine goddess/empress archetype. I just dont see her pregnant as the only viable option.
Last thing, it is something of an interesting use of the word autistic, which I find to be an inaccurate interpretation since I am a female on the spectrum who frequently uses channeling in my artwork. Though I see what you mean, the material one finds covering actual autism is still limited, and in my opinion autistics are often highly intuitive, emotional and many of us are primarily creatives, though over-thinking takes over a lot too. (The reason for the limited understanding of autism is that the criteria are still largely based on research on autistic boys only. Still, most autistic men also fall short of the criteria when they are mainly creative.)
Excellent, let me clarify this sentiment: “one should blindly follow this instinct”
The key theme here is how our “abstract ego” can often “sever” itself from our “instincts” (which Jung said lay at the root of the “unconscious”)
The warning for a woman, especially an intellectual one, is to make sure that she is properly in touch with these instincts, and their purest desire in a child.
If she makes this connection, then any choice regarding children she makes thereafter will be in touch with herself and not coming from a place of “ego”!
This “ego” is not really in the pride sense, but more the “love of intellectualism” at the EXPENSE of actual LIFE (the instincts), when the goal should be certainly to unite the opposites no?
This is why blindly following your instincts is unbalanced aswell. If I allowed my instincts to lead I’d be stuck on pornhub all day… hardly “healthy” behavior…
The case study here is a woman, but you see it ALOT in male intellectuals.
Ever met a guy who “knows all about women and psychology” but creeps girls out?
Very interesting on autists! Thank you for your comments!