Ask Lemmy

Do you perhaps mean self-individuation? That's what jung talks about the most. As I understood it, it's the process of facing up to who you really are and coming to terms with that. Jung's theory of the self proposes that our conscious self is only part of what's going on in our brains, and there's all these instinctual, repressed or just ignored parts of us that influence our decisions and reactions. The process of individuation is exploring, confronting and integrating all those parts, so that we understand and better manage their influence on us.

The idea is that while we grow up parents, teachers, other kids or adults, all teach us (intentionally or not) what is good and what is unacceptable for us to be. Some traits are not right for us, but still acceptable to society, and they often become part of our projection onto romantic figures, because we want to have those traits indirectly through them. So if you've been told to bottle up your feelings, and never express emotions you might be attracted to a parter who is kind and intuitive and emotionally aware. Or if you've been taught to always follow the rules and behave, you might find a wild, freespirit type strongly appealing.

Other traits are perceived very negatively, and so we don't consciously identify with or want them. But they're still there inside of us, and Jung argues these still influence us, however hard we try to suppress them. As is seen in how people project their negative traits onto other groups, and then punish those others rather than face the reality that those traits are inside all of us. This is called projection, and I sure you can probably think of some examples in contemporary life...

The process of individuation is learning to spot these traits in our subconscious, and bring them into conciousness and figure out how to integrate them into ourselves. By doing this we become deeper and more rounded individuals, gaining skills and qualities that we'd previously denied ourselves because "feelings are for girls" or "standing up for yourself is too aggressive and gross, and I hate violence so I'm not going to argue with this person instead I'll just go home and be passive-aggressive to my family".