What does the Individuation Process have to do with the Earth?
(Below are several extracts from my thesis Resonance and Reciprocity:Ego-Self-Earth Axis. Please do not copy without author’s permission.)
“If human conduct were governed by reason alone, what science has taught us about the great ecological patterns, cycles of the planet might be enough to reform our bad environmental habits.”
Theodore Rozak (1992)
When Jung discusses individuation he emphasizes that the task of the individual is to differentiate her or his own values from the expectations of family and from “collective” ideas of the culture. Those personal values exist in the psyche as unknown, unlived aspects of the personality because they have been rejected by “collective” values. The work of the individuation process is to have them participate in consciousness life and add to the richness of the personality. In this process, the person gets a sense of feeling more fully themselves, more authentic. In the passage where he describes this “coming-to-be of the self” (the individuation process) Jung writes that:
the self comprises infinitely more than a mere ego, as the symbolism has shown from old. It is as much one’s self, and all other selves, as the ego. Individuation does not shut one out from the world, but gathers the world to oneself.
But what have we been assuming is “the world” to which Jung refers? Is it only the human, social world which we gather to ourselves as we individuate?
In industrialized society, the sense of self is assumed to exist “inside” the confines of the individual person. Further, the only beings that are assumed to have this subjectivity are humans; other beings, lacking this subjectivity, become an “other-than-human” and therefore, beings of lesser value. Moreover, any view which does understand nonhuman beings as possessing an individual self charged with spirit, soul and intelligence is dismissively accused of “animism” or of “anthropomorphizing” the “outer” world. Animism is defined by Freud as “nothing but the projection of primitive man’s emotional impulses.”2
The socialization process in industrial society promotes an understanding of the “self” which locates it in an “inner” and “mental” place, strictly autonomous from the body and the surrounding sensuous environment. Historically, as objective science becomes interested in the mental life of the individual it does so in the old spirit of colonialism. A detached observer (a medical professional) lands on a foreign shore (the patient) and scrutinizes the terrain (the inner life the “subject”) with similar techniques of reductionism and categorization. Within the frame of this model, the possibility that a person’s condition may be a healthy response to a sick society is out of the question since mental illness is assumed to be a completely “inner” problem. There is no room for critique of the pathology of the society.
A therapy focusing strictly on the individual, as James Hillman suggests, “places itself outside the planetary dilemma.” Part and parcel of this approach is a strong cultural expectation which requires us to be “rugged individualists”, possessing the power to shape not only our own bodily experience but our own emotional reactions.
But what about the great value placed on the process of introversion– the hallmark of the Jungian methodology. When it becomes a way of life (rather than a method of inner relationality) introversion can be an abdication, a withdrawal from society. Introversion as a prolonged retreat from the “outer” world is a sort of crutch. In this case, introversion, which is one possible attitude towards life becomes a way of escaping normal conflicts of life necessary to growth. In the best case scenario, the rare value and knowledge gained through Jungian introverted approaches can tune our hearts to hear the hitherto undefined otherness within the psyche. Qualities of sensitivity and imagination are vital if we are to shift the priorities automatically attributed to intellect and rationality so valued by the ideology of our industrialized society.
Introversion, then, is an important attitude which marks the beginning of an attunement to soul requirements. The individuation process (learning to work with the unconscious with the goal of establishing a healthy relationship between one’s ego and unconscious parts) requires much more. If we are to look for a new approach to our environmental crisis and we aim to restore an ecological balance, introversion may to be considered the foundational piece (rather than the final resting place) for the continuing challenges of relationality with the other souls and intelligences in humanity and the sensual, natural world.
In terms of wider industrialized society, our disconnection from the natural world, the privileging of subjectivity to humans, our focus upon individuality and subsequent retreat into interiority, all result in the sacrifice of the tremendous source which enriches and sustains human life. It is not just the relativization of our ego to our unconscious which renews us. Renewal comes when our ego learns to relate to our unconscious and in turn, remembers and rekindles the most important relationship with the natural world. Just as the ego is dependent on the self for sustenance, so we, in our total mind/body/spirit/soul totally dependent on the Earth. Without a biosphere there is neither ego nor consciousness nor unconscious — unless we plan to live in hermetically sealed structures.
It is one thing to recognize the problems resulting from our isolation and dissociation from the natural world; it is quite another to attempt restoration of that relationship. Human relationality with the Earth has long been absent from the agenda of industrialized cultures and the sense of belonging and kinship which may have existed has been replaced with empty but immediately gratifying substitutes. Not only have we become used to our isolated existence but we can hardly remember or even imagine our capacity to feel kinship with the beings in Nature’s matrix. And the ideology which drives our culture denigrates any recognition of the subjectivities in Nature as irrationalistic animism. So is it even possible to awaken our relationship with Nature? How would we begin such a project?
Any cultural structures, such as myth or ritual, which may have facilitated our reconnection with the rest of the world have been rendered obsolete by the predominant ideology of industry and science.
Sean Kane (1994), cultural studies professor at Trent University, has an important insight into our spiritual relationship with the Earth. Kane asserts that the myths themselves do not exist in human culture. Rather, Kane argues, stories are embodied in the land where they are “waiting to be overheard by humans who will listen for them.” With the proper modes of passage, such as myth and stories, the gap between humans and nature may be redefined as a boundary which, Kane suggests, one traverses by means of reciprocal exchange.
Located at specific places on the Earth, stories and myth used to articulate our resonances with and love of those places. Many contemporary myths as they are expressed in film rarely tell of us of how we belong to a place. More often they are concerned with themes expressing versions our social, romantic, familial relations with each other. The background environment against which these stories unfold depict us in suburban settings (which could be anywhere); or in the bleak, smoldering wreckage of a futuristic urban scape; or, in a technologized, fantasy world; or we sometimes see ourselves retrospectively in a nostalgic gaze into a sensual, pastoral life from the barely remembered past. With our main focus on human relationship, we have very few myths and stories that speak of our powerful need to live in kinship with whatever sensuous, irrational nature which may still exist. We have many stories which play back to us our dramas of the consumption and destruction of whatever we desire– or what gets in the way of our progress. But these kinds of stories can hardly instruct or inspire us to rekindle our relationship with the environment. We may conclude therefore that this is a pressing need in industrialized society which challenges the gifts of storytellers, musicians, poets, writers, dramatists and filmmakers– that is, to translate and articulate our loss and grief as well as our desire for relationship with the beings of the Earth. We need to have our feelings explained and placed in a meaningful context within our culture.
[On the page 'recommended readings' is a short report (August,2009) from the American Psychological Association task force which looked at the psychological factors explaining the slow reaction to global warming.]
