Carl Jung's term for the lifelong psychological process of integrating the conscious and unconscious aspects of the self into a coherent whole. The goal of individuation is not perfection but completeness: the integration of the Shadow, the encounter with the Anima or Animus, the meeting of the Wise Old Man or Woman, and the eventual realization of the Self as the unified center of the psyche. In the 4th Tarot, the 22 Major Arcana cards trace the arc of individuation as a sequential journey from the Fool (0) to the World (XXI). Individuation is understood as cyclical rather than linear: the journey recurs at deeper levels with each pass.
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Jungian Psychology
Individuation
Related concepts
The World
wholeness
self-realization
becoming whole
integration
personal journey
unique self
psychological maturity
completion
More in Jungian Psychology
- Abraxas
- Acceptance of Evil
- Active Imagination
- Anima
- Animus
- Archetype
- Archetypes
- Collective Unconscious
- Compensation
- Complex
- Confrontation with the Unconscious
- Coniunctio
- Creatura
- Daimon
- Divine Child
- Ego
- Enantiodromia
- Eros
- Fantasy
- Forethinking
- God-Image
- Hero
- Inflation
- Integration
- Libido
- Logos
- Magic
- Mandala
- Mater Coelestis
- Nekyia
- Persona
- Phallos
- Philemon
- Pleroma
- Projection
- Quaternity
- Rebirth
- Sacrifice of the Hero
- Salome
- Self
- Shadow
- Spirit of the Depths
- Supreme Meaning
- Synchronicity
- The Irrational
- Transcendent Function
- Tree of Life
- Wise Old Man