Jung's Journey

Let’s consider just how potent the motif of the journey is in the work of  Carl Gustav Jung, the psychologist who creatively wove mythology, religion, philosophy and spirituality into his explorations of the psyche, indeed the human soul.  He saw dream-work and the power of symbolism and archetypes as sustaining our inner lives, and his aim was to bring what is unconscious in us into consciousness.

Jung’s journey of individuation is a voyage of discovery incumbent on all of us.  What does that mean?  Individuation is the life-long process of transforming ourselves into who we are meant to be - unique, whole and conscious of those forces and drivers which are apt to push and pull us all over. We become healthy and fulfilled, both in ourselves, and in our relationships with others.

Jung believed that our growth and understanding of who we really are continued way past childhood and never really ends.  Indeed,  his own richest development started in mid-life and reached fruition in old age.  We can’t really achieve our potential unless we realise that the ‘front’ we show to the world - and perhaps prefer to believe in ourselves - is just a mask, our persona.  The difficult task is becoming aware of what he called our Shadow, those aspects of ourselves we find difficult or painful, and therefore repress.  if we don’t integrate the totality of who we are, we remain incomplete.  Our fearful egos are harsh with ourselves, and consequently with others too.

And it’s not only our personal unconscious which must be plumbed.  Jung developed the concept of a collective unconscious, where we are at one with a vaster human experience of patterns, symbols and instincts, across all cultures, throughout all times, and which we mine as we journey to the centre of the Self, moving beyond the constraints of our own egos.  For instance, everybody’s dreams will throw up similar symbolic images, even though they occur in individual and disparate contexts.

Jung’s ideas can be dense and complex, but his vision of the journey we make in the individuation process has its roots in the well-known ancient and universal narrative of the hero on a quest.  And it’s recognisable to us now in so many of our stories and films; Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and my family’s Christmas favourite, The Box of Delights. Its key feature is that their heroes become aware of a challenge or something which needs addressing, and so set out from all that is familiar to put this right. ‘I am my own and not my own’.  They do have the option to refuse the challenge - in which case their destiny remains unfulfilled.  They grapple with testing encounters, but by staying true they ultimately triumph.  Transformed by their experience, they return to ordinary life, but with new insight.    Whist we have life, it’s a purpose which is never totally complete;  just as the cells of our body are in constant renewal whilst we have breath, so too the fulfilment of our selves is forever evolving.

All blessings,   Valerie

October 2025