THE CENTERING/INTEGRATING STAGE OF INDIVIDUATION
The most significant and interesting contribution of Jungian psychology to the idea of psychological development is what it says about the part of life that follows the second stage of individuation. This is where most other psychoanalytic theories stop. What is still left to do, they might ask, after a person has successfully passed over from the attitude of dependency upon nurturing environments in the first stage of psychological development and has taken up the responsibility of living like an adult in a world of other adults in the second stage? Is there anything more beyond the psychologically advanced stage of entering the father world of adaptation and adjustment and being willing and able to cope with reality? For the Jungian psychotherapist the answer is “yes”, because in fact many people enter Jungian therapy in the second half of life looking for something more than fine-tuning of their patriarchal attitudes and the further elimination of residues of childish complexes. They are often successful adults who have held jobs, raised families, succeeded in reaching many of their goals, and now wonder if this is all there is to life. It is at this point that Jungian reflection on the individuation process in the second half of life becomes relevant. This is the phase of psychological development described classically by Jung in such works as “A Study in the Process of Individuation”, when mandala symbolism, the religious function, and the search for individual meaning become important.
The task in this stage of life, if all has gone relatively well in earlier phases, is not to become a responsible member of the community and a relatively independent and self-sufficient personality (this has been achieved in the second stage), but rather to become a centered and whole individual who is related to the transcendent as well as the immediate concrete realities of human existence. For this, another level of development is called for.
The first separation was from the mother, initially from her body (the first birth), then from her nurturing parental psyche (a second birth). At that point the psychological individual stepped forth into the world. Now there is another passage, a third birth, when the ego puts away the primary importance given to the achievement of adaptation, which calls for conformity to the standards and expectations of the collective (the world of the “fathers”), and embarks upon the journey of becoming an individual. The second stage, a stage of conformity, is often entered, paradoxically enough, by violent acts of adolescent rebellion, undergirded by the energy of the hero archetype. The adolescent breaks out of the parental container with determined force.
The third stage, on the other hand, is usually entered into with a rather depressed and questioning attitude, as a person in the middle of life begins to shed the trappings of conformity and enters slowly and often painfully into a process of becoming born anew as a whole and integrated individual. Sometimes this stage is entered as the consequence of tragic loss that shatters fixed collective assumptions. Generally synchronicity (defined by Jung as “meaningful coincidence) plays an important role in the entry into and in the ongoing process of individuation in the third stage.
Entering the stage of centering and integrating means gradually abandoning the previous collective definitions of identity and persona and assuming an image of self that emerges from within. Of course this does not mean leaving collective reality behind. Social reality does not disappear from the ego’s horizon or concern, but coping with it and adapting to its demands absorb less energy. There is a shift of interest and emphasis, toward reaching out to dimensions of living that have less to do with survival and more to do with meaning. Spiritual life becomes more crucially important and individualized.
Much of the identity that is established in the second stage of individuation is derived from collective images and stereotypes, also from parental models. The persona assumed by the ego in the second stage is a structure offered by society and made of a socially constructed set of elements that more or less suit the individual. Personality in the second stage of individuation is largely a social construction. This persona is highly useful for adapting to cultural imperatives and expectations. In the third stage, the ego, which has taken on this persona and largely identified with it, begins to draw away and create a distinction between a true inner self and the social self that has been dominant. As the light between these two psychological structures widens, an element of choice enters with respect to what kind of person one is and is going to become. This new person is more unique and individual, less a social construction.
This does not mean that one can now become anything, or anyone, one wants to be or can imagine. Rather, the truth is that an underlying structure of the psyche – called by Jung the Self (capitalized to denote its transcendence and essential difference from the ego) – comes into play in a new way and takes over the dominant position formerly held by external authority, by the voice of reality and by the “father” and the social persona. The ego now begins to answer to an inner demand and call to obedience from the psyche, rather than primarily to an outer one derived from authorities in society. The new structure that emerges from the inner world of the psyche, in the form of dream images, intuitions, inspirations, remembered ambitions, fantasies, and a strong impulse toward personal meaning, gradually destroys and replaces the persona. Working to live and to survive is no longer sufficient; one must now find something that is worth living for, and this new direction must be tailor made to fit the individual. In fact, it grows out of the individual who is deeply and constructively individuating in the second half of life.
For someone entering upon this stage of development, psychotherapy is quite different from what it is for people who have not made it through the first two stages.
While everyone, no matter how developed or mature, shows some residual elements from the earlier stages of development – some borderline and narcissistic features, some degree of participation mystique with others and the environment, some lingering childishness and puerile qualities and defensiveness – these are not the paramount issues in therapy with a person in the third stage of individuation. What is central is, first, separating from the identification with the persona formed in the second stage, and then finding a personal center, a point of inner integrity that is free of the stereotypes of collective culture and based on intimations of the Self. What is aimed for is a degree of integration of the inner opposites inherent in the Self, which allows for striking a vital balance in ones everyday life. Jung speaks of integrating the shadow and relating in a new conscious way to the anima or animus.
Transference is fundamentally different, too, in the psychotherapy of people who are entering or pursuing further the third stage of individuation. The therapist is not consciously or unconsciously related to as nurturing mother or guiding father. Instead, the therapist is typically seen (truly or not) as a wisdom figure, as someone who has achieved individuality and wholeness and relates personally to the Self. This projection is cast upon the therapist because this is the unconscious content that the patient needs and must find a model for somewhere in the world at this stage of life. That job lands at the feet of the therapist. People look for, and seem to find, the models they need for their further growth in their therapists, and an image of psychological wholeness is what is now required by the psyche.
A wisdom figure is someone who is seen to have arrived at an inner center and lives out of the resource found there. It is not necessarily someone who has all the answers to life’s concrete problems. It is a person in whom we see containment of the opposites, who is able to remain intact and balanced in even the most splitting and tension-ridden situations, who maintains an even attitude of connection with others but also detachment from ego preferences. It is a person who has found the Self and lives in relation to that inner reality rather than seeking approval from others or being possessed by desire and attachment to egoistic goals. Most importantly, it is a person who shows spontaneity, freedom, and a distinctive personality. This person is vivid and displays a sense of uniqueness based upon having made many clear individual choices in life.
This image is what is found in the transference projection. Much of it is, of course, a projection based on unconscious patterns that are emerging in the field between patient and therapist. One can think of it as a sort of idealizing transference, but one that is grounded in the archetype of the Self rather than in the unconscious mother or father images.
The goal of this third stage of individuation is the inner union of pieces of the psyche that were divided and split off by earlier developmental demands and processes. In this stage of integration, a strong need arises to join the opposites of persona (good person) and shadow (bad person), of masculine and feminine, of child and adult, of right brain and left brain, of thinking and feeling, of introversion and extraversion. All of the undervalued pieces of potential development that were earlier separated from consciousness and repressed in the course of the first two stages of individuation, so that one could grow an ego and enter into relation to the world of reality in an adaptive way, now come back for integration. In those first two stages one typically becomes a certain psychological type, one identifies with one gender and one gender preference, one adopts a certain persona from among those offered by family and wider culture and identifies with it. In the centering/integrating stage, on the other hand, one reaches back and picks up the lost or denied pieces and weaves them into the fabric of the whole. In the end, nothing (or very little) that is human is foreign to the Self. And as the ego approximates the Self, it too feels less alienated from all of humanity and from the profound complexities of reality. In short, one becomes more accepting of complexity within and without.
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