The Search
for Meaning
Many
Americans are searching for deeper meaning in their lives. People
from all walks of life are looking for more out of existence than simply adapting to society and living functionally. Many
want the inner fulfillment of living an authentic, creative life connected to spirit. Jungian therapy is a means for achieving
this.
Central to Jungian therapy
is the concept of individuation, referring to the psychological evolution of an individual over time. Jung used the term to
describe a lifelong expansion of consciousness, as well as the development of an increasingly differentiated personality.
Individuation involves the growth of a unique human being through a deepening of awareness.
While individuation is a process that occurs naturally over
the course of life, it can be enormously facilitated through Jungian therapy. From a Jungian perspective, psychological maladies
result from inhibited individuation. To the extent that we are unconscious and undeveloped, we are limited in our ability
to respond productively, creatively, and adaptively to life. In fact, it was Jung’s feeling that the greater the split
between the conscious and unconscious mind, the greater the likelihood of neurotic, or in some cases, psychotic disorders.
For Jung, psychological symptoms frequently signal the fact that our psyche is fragmented, unbalanced, and ill-adapted to
reality. Jungian therapy helps us wake up to the unconscious dynamics creating our suffering.
The Self as Regulating
Center
A unique
aspect of Jungian therapy is the understanding that guidance for what we need to integrate to function fully comes from within
ourselves. Jungian psychology proposes that there is a source of symbolic wisdom within each person’s psyche--a regulating
center that Jung calls the Self--that contains knowledge beyond what we know consciously.
Jung felt that the Self is constantly sending us messages,
but due to their symbolic nature, we fail to appreciate their meaning. Jung and his followers developed methods of dream interpretation,
creative expression, and creative imagination to help understand and integrate unconscious material. In Jungian therapy, symptom
relief often accompanies the integration of these contents.
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| Carl Jung, Founder of Analytical Psychology |