By Philip Chanin, Ed.D., ABPP, CGP
Board Certified Clinical Psychologist
Assistant Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
www.drphilchanin.com
philchanin@gmail.com

“But when one follows the path of individuation, when one lives one’s own life, one must take mistakes into the bargain; life would not be complete without them. There is no guarantee—not for a single moment—that we will not fall into error or stumble into deadly peril. We may think there is a sure road. But that would be the road of death. Then nothing happens any longer—at any rate, not the right things. Anyone who takes the sure road is as good as dead.”
(Memories, Dreams, Reflections, by Carl Gustav Jung, 1962, p. 297)

“The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me. Or, conversely, I myself am a question which is addressed to the world, and I must communicate my answer, for otherwise I am dependent upon the world’s answer.” (p. 318)

“Nevertheless it may be that for sufficient reasons a man feels he must set out on his own feet along the road to wider realms. It may be that in all the garbs, shapes, forms, modes, and manners of life offered to him, he does not find what is peculiarly necessary for him. He will go alone and be his own company.” (p. 343)

Carl Jung is the person most associated with the concept of “Individuation.” This is the process of becoming a distinct, whole individual by integrating conscious and unconscious aspects of the self and differentiating from family and societal influences. This psychological process involves developing a unique identity, understanding one’s strengths and limitations, and achieving a sense of personal wholeness and self-realization.

In Jung’s theory, individuation is a lifelong process, involving an ongoing psychological journey of differentiating from others to develop a unique personality and sense of self. It includes bringing the unconscious mind to conscious awareness, to better understand oneself. It can include confronting and integrating aspects of the self, such as one’s “shadow” (repressed or denied traits), and developing the skills to express one’s identity.

Individuation involves becoming one’s own person, including making choices about one’s life, one’s career, friends, and hobbies–that may differ from your family’s or society’s expectations. Individuation is a process that leads to a secure and autonomous identity, often viewed as a key developmental task of adolescence and young adulthood. It can also include resolving inner conflicts, such as those between introverted and extraverted tendencies, to develop a balanced personality.

As stated above, individuation is not a one-time event but a lifelong journey, with inevitable ups and downs, as suggested in the opening quote from Jung. In his theory, the first half of life is often focused on ego development, while the second half of life focuses on integrating the whole self, including the unconscious. In individuation, it is normal to have conflicts with family or friends, as the individual seeks more independence and autonomy.

Symptoms of a lack of individuation include low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, and a strong dependence on others. Individuals may also struggle with motivation, feel a lack of personal purpose, and have difficulty making decisions, leading to poor relationships and a general sense of being lost, hopeless, and of not knowing what one wants from life. Lack of individuation also leads to insecurity, loneliness, and a sense of not fitting in.

Behavioral and relationship symptoms of a lack of individuation include relying too heavily on others for validation, support, or decision-making, having difficulty making independent decisions, having difficulty in romantic or professional relationships due to an inability to set boundaries, and sometimes turning to addictive behaviors. Often there is a lack of self-reflection, as a result of not spending time alone or with oneself, making introspection difficult.

Other aspects of lack of individuation include difficult setting or accomplishing goals, feeling emotionally or functionally immature for one’s age, often changing jobs or relationships without a clear sense of direction, and believing that others should be responsible for meeting one’s own needs.

“Know thyself” is a maxim with roots in ancient Greece, most famously associated with Socrates, who believed it was the beginning of wisdom. It was originally inscribed on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi and has been interpreted as a call to self-reflection, introspection, and understanding one’s own limitations and potential.

“Know thyself” can be understood as encouraging a deep understanding of one’s own thoughts, strengths, and weaknesses. It can be seen as the first step toward gaining true wisdom and a more meaningful life. Other figures have echoed this sentiment, such as Aristotle, who said, “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom,” and Benjamin Franklin, who said that knowing oneself is one of the hardest things to do.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote an essay in 1841 entitled “Self-Reliance.” He wrote, “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, ‘What have I to do with the sacredness of tradition, if I live wholly from within?’, my friend suggested—‘But these impulses may be from below, not from above.’ I replied, ‘They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil.’ No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.” (p. 4)

Other writers and psychologists such as Henry David Thoreau, Abraham Maslow, and Carl Rogers have followed in this tradition of insisting that we listen to our own natures to find how to live. “I do not wish to exorcise my devils,” as Rainer Maria Rilke has written in Letters To A Young Poet (1908), “If I lose my devils, I’ll lose my angels, too.” Or, as R.D. Laing stated in his book The Politics of Experience (1967), “If you cling to the good without the bad, denying the one for the other, what happens is that the dissociated evil impulse, now evil in a double sense, returns to permeate the good and turn it into itself.” (p. 63). I seek what Emerson terms “an original relation to the universe,” in which I might more often act out of my awareness rather than out of others’ expectations.

Hermann Hesse, the German-Swiss poet and novelist, described in his novels his characters’ search for inner truth. Demian is his 1919 novel about a young man who embarks on a journey of self-discovery and spiritual awakening. Hesse wrote, “And at this point I felt the truth burning within me like a sharp flame, that there was some role for everybody but it was not one which he himself could choose, re-cast and regulate to his own liking. One had no right to want new gods, no right at all to give the world anything of that sort!”

“There was but one duty for a grown man; it was to seek the way to himself, to become resolute within, to grope his way forward wherever that might lead him…Anything else was merely a half-life, an attempt at evasion, an escape into the ideals of the masses, complacency and fear of his inner soul. The new picture rose before me, sacred and awe-inspiring, a hundred times glimpsed, possibly often expressed and now experienced for the first time.”

“I was an experiment on the part of nature, a ‘throw’ into the unknown, perhaps for some new purpose, perhaps for nothing and my only vocation was to allow this ‘throw’ to work itself out in my innermost being, feel it’s will within me and make it wholly mine. That or nothing!” (p. 120)

Hesse, whom I first read as an undergraduate, encouraged me to “listen to myself” and also to fully experience the world: “It is a good thing to experience everything oneself, he thought…Now I know it not only with my intellect, but with my eyes, with my heart, with my stomach. It is a good thing that I know this.” (Siddhartha, p. 98)

The Farther Reaches of Human Nature is a posthumous collection of essays by psychologist Abraham Maslow, published in 1971. He wrote, “Recovering the self must, as a sine qua non, include the recovery of the ability to have and to cognize these inner signals, to know what and whom one likes and dislikes, what is enjoyable and what is not, when to eat and when not to, when to sleep, when to urinate, when to rest. The experientially empty person, lacking these directives from within, these voices of the real self, must turn to outer cues for guidance, for instance eating when the clock tells him to, rather than obeying his appetite (he has none). He guides himself by clocks, rules, calendars, schedules, agenda and by hints and cues from other people.”

“In any case, I think the particular sense in which I suggest interpreting neurosis as a failure of personal growth must be clear by now. It is a falling short of what one could have been, and even, one could say, of what one should have been, biologically speaking, that is, if one had grown and developed in an unimpeded way. Human and personal possibilities have been lost. The world has been narrowed, and so has consciousness. Capacities have been inhibited.”

“I think for instance of the fine pianist who couldn’t play before an audience of more than a few, or the phobic who is forced to avoid heights or crowds. The person who can’t study, or who can’t sleep, or who can’t eat many foods has been diminished as surely as one who has been blinded. The cognitive losses, the lost pleasures, joys, and ecstasies, the loss of competence, the inability to relax, the weakening of will, the fear of responsibility—all these are diminutions of humanness.” (pp. 34-35)

I have a trust in the ultimate “goodness” of my own and my patients’ inner wisdom. I believe that the purpose of psychotherapy is to help my patients to remove their blocks to growth and to become conscious of their “animal urges, needs, tensions, depressions, tastes, anxieties.” (p. 33). Maslow further stated, “What we have learnt is that ultimately the best way for a person to discover what he ought to do is to find out who and what he is, because the path to ethical and value decisions, to wiser choices, to oughtness, is via ‘isness,’ via the discovery of facts, truth, reality, the nature of the particular person.”

“The more he knows about his own nature, his deep wishes, his temperament, his constitution, what he seeks and yearns for and what really satisfies him, the more effortless, automatic, and epiphenomenal become his value choices…Many problems simply disappear; many others are easily solved by knowing what is in conformity with one’s nature, what is suitable and right. (And we must also remember that knowledge of one’s own deep nature is also simultaneously knowledge of human nature in general). (pp. 115-116)

I have always been moved by Maslow’s writing, because I experience my own personal processes in so many of the ways that he describes. I find that more and more of my own and my patients’ “decisions” do disappear as we better know or own needs, anxieties, and proclivities. “What to do” follows naturally from knowing who and what we are.