Dawkins and Jung seem to be describing the same thing; IMO they are. And, again, IMO they are both correct. It is interesting to listen to people natter about Jung, and speak of change and individuation, while conforming to collective standards. The old psychological adage certainly applies here: "Listen to what they say, but look to see what they, in fact, do." Is it possible to achieve, or even work toward, individuation while mired in the collective, or is it mere rhetoric? One of Shakespearianperian tales, "Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
As I've mentioned a few times previously, I also feel that Jungian individuation is often a sham. It seems to more closely resemble an indoctrination process to me. On the other hand, I think that individuation itself is instinctually driven (albeit, not powerfully enough to automate it unconsciously . . . perhaps in part because there is no available environment which can directly imprint upon the individuation instinct, no institutional models, no naturally occurring conditions; therefore it is more likely that individuation is an attempt of the human organism to adapt to a modified environment, a retooling of other instincts in the general interest of achieving fitness).
There is a great deal of concentration on the numen in Jungian thinking, and I suspect that this is the stumbling block we Jungians face. Numinousness is not enough. Faced with it alone, we still don't really come to an understanding of things. The obsession with numinousness only totemizes the experience of the unconscious. Jungians have a problem with seeing this numinous beacon in the distance and immediately falling to their knees to worship it (i.e., it is feared as much as admired, but ultimately treated as toxic, like any god of old). They don't pursue the beacon.
They should. Pursuing the beacon, trying to reach and understand it, that will lead to individuation. The distant worship of the numinous totem only breeds conformity and inflation (when worship is mistaken for knowledge of the thing).
I think one of the signs that Jungian individuation is not all its inflated "propaganda" makes it seem to be is that there is no counseling or support group/literature for "individuants". Instead, there is the romantic fantasy notion that after one has so many years of Jungian analysis (and demonstrates a "progression" . . . or indoctrination), they can be "released" happily into the modern world and live in it in a perfectly adaptive way. They have "arrived". That is lunacy. In an individuation that is actually progressing, the problems of adaptation hardly cease after the individual moves into a healthy and functional relationship with the Self. Rather, a whole new set of problems emerges . . . and although the individual might have a stronger foundation because of the inner Work done, s/he will, I think, find that there are no real answers to the problems of being an individuant living in the world.
That is, individuation (
real individuation) means (most of all) a conscious separation from our tribal affiliations. This is eventually followed up by a conscious attempt to reconnect to groups and affiliations, but without the veil of "participation mystique". In other words, the individuant seeks reconnection, because connection (or Eros) is instinctually driven and a necessary part of being human. But s/he must now (having become conscious of his/her affiliations and aware of the realities of difference between self and Other) facilitate participation without the full sense of "mystique" and it's transference fantasy of the unity of multiple others. We do not feel the same things, think the same things, believe the same things . . . and we don't have to in order to participate, even to participate intimately. The individuant doesn't believe in the fantasy of sameness, but valuates Otherness. Or, in other words, individuation is a matter of replacing the limited and less adaptive Eros medium of affiliation with the new, highly plastic and adaptable medium of the individuated and conscious ego.
Mystical participation is a transference phenomenon, a shared fantasy that is, I believe, conducted by the sociality instinct. In tribes, we are more fit and survivable than we are alone "in the wild". The sociality instinct compels us toward conformity ("imitation"), because conformity is the best recipe for making tribes survivable in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness. But as we no longer live in such an environment, conformity (especially the conformity of large masses) continuously shows its dark and dysfunctional side. I think this is made all the worse by the fact that our modern societies lack effective institutions for initiation into adulthood and its component sense of social responsibility. We don't have institutions that treat and respect the "soul", in other words. We only have institutions of indoctrination, each of which indoctrinates members only into its tribe. But there is no institution for helping instill a wider sense of responsibility to fellow individuals.
There is only individuation, the individual process . . . and it has not, in my opinion, been formally and functionally understood and studied yet. Jungians have staked a claim to "individuation", but they have also helped ossify and totemize it, concealing its fantasy images from non-members (i.e., those not willing to speak the Jungian language and participate in the Jungian tribe's belief systems) like a dragon hoarding the gold it can never spend. And this is why "heroes" slay dragons. Culture heroes, that is. They return the hoarded gold to the people who can use it as functional libido to live through.
Another suspicious aspect of Jungianism's relationship to individuation is the fact that it rarely if ever reflects on the possibility that it has misunderstood and badly mismanaged the "preservation of the individuation journey". Most of the time, Jungians assume that they are the rightful keepers of the "eternal flame" of individuation. There is hardly ever any concern about the validity of this claim or any attempt to investigate knowledge beyond the assumed Jungian omniscience (especially where science is concerned). Or, when the sciences or other philosophical systems are tapped, they are mostly made over to conform to the pre-established Jungian beliefs and unquestioned righteousness.
The only notable, common deviation from this pattern in modern Jungiana is the unusual marriage many Jungians have made with object relations theories. To a much smaller extent, a few Jungians have embraced postmodernist philosophical ideas (Giegerich, Hillman, and a few others). Although I think it's a healthy thing for Jungians to try to learn from another psychotherapeutic theory (object relations), I worry that the appropriation of object relations concepts and language has come as a result of a serious lack in Jungian theory. And, more importantly, Jungians have turned to object relations theories to supplement Jungian theory instead of doing the grunt work of revising and developing Jungian theory (which has always had a paucity of theory regarding child and early ego development).
My concern is that this appropriation demonstrates an inability to think theoretically, a kind of wound of "heroic" self-confidence that's required to innovate. And even though object-relations is a post-Freudian psychology, it is certainly much more "Freudian" than Jungian psychology is. So, to put Jungianism on the couch (where I think it seriously needs to go), we have to ask of it why it has retreated back toward its "father". Has the prodigal son come back home? Has he failed to find his own answers away from the father? I don't think this is a fantasy that Jung himself would have desired for his psychology.
I don't mean to say that object relations theory is wrong or bad . . . but I worry that the relationship Jungianism has with it is dysfunctional. I admittedly know very little about object relations, and (as is often the case with me), my negative reaction is to its language. I find it overly-pathologizing and overly-apt to reduce all psychological experience and development to infant and early childhood paradigms. The thing that appealed most to me about Jung's writing and thinking when I first got interested in them was Jung's hesitance to pathologize many psychological phenomena that Freudians and other schools of psychology saw as "abnormal" . . . and also his desire to open up the development of the psyche to a legitimately "adult life". Jung's general deviation from the investigation of child psychology is certainly rooted in his reaction to Freud and a desire to differentiate himself from Freud's reductively infantile psychology.
I have made my best effort to continue in this Jungian trend of seeing psychic "normality" as a very broad and diverse spectrum of phenomena and supporting the notion that adult individuals can partake in an adult psychology and psychic development that is not reducible to and entirely explicable by childhood psychology. I have been seeing psychological development in individuals as a matter of interactions between self (as well as Self) and environment. And we live in and evolve in numerous different environments. To name a few basic ones: the infant's environment in close proximity to the mother, the parental environment of early childhood (in which the father's participation is also important), the early-through-adolescent peer environment/s, the adult/socially responsible environment, the parenting environment, and perhaps the environment of "mortality" and physical decline.
In each environment, we have to build and revise ego adaptively in order to function. And at least through late adolescence/early adulthood, we know that the brain is continuing to grow and "rewire" itself. I think that the assumption (based in psychoanalysis and its descendants) that the entire scope of human psychology is infantile is presumptuous and perhaps distinctly unscientific. Yes, many adults exhibit infantile attitudes and behaviors, but this may not be merely "the way it is". This could have a great deal to do with our social structure in the modern world being in distinct conflict with the instinctual sociality of homo sapiens that evolved in and for the tribal environment of evolutionary adaptedness. In any case, I think we should try to evaluate the functionality of human behavior less on cultural grounds and more on evolutionary/biological grounds. Too much of our cultures is arbitrary. It is slippery trying to apply wrong and right, good and bad based on any one culture's standards . . . especially the instinct-dissociated standards of modern, industrialized cultures.
Individuation is a matter of adult (post-adolescent) psychology. I think we should exercise caution when applying infant and child paradigms to adult psychology. At the same time, we should recognize that such things as libido, desire, self-defense, a "sense of self" (confidence and security and dignity, or cohesion), pleasure-seeking/pain-avoiding, appreciation of comfort and reduction of anxiety, etc. are not unique to infants and small children, but are common traits of animals, young and old. What infants and small children add to this is extreme helplessness and vulnerability (making the prolonged parenting role in humans all the more important). But helplessness is not unique to children, of course . . . nor should feelings of helplessness be considered infantile, I think. It takes no imagination to recognize that the adult environment of modern society is constantly facing us with our own impotence on various levels, and often forcing us to feel like children (e.g., when we are treated like children by those who have more power than us, usually in workplace environments).
Jung's ideas opened many doors for me psychologically because they didn't dismiss or shame many supposedly "abnormal" psychological states and experiences. Looking at these things without unnecessary shame helped me tremendously to investigate (rather than repress and fear) them . . . and these investigations are what led to all of the transformations in my self and life that I now consider to be the root of my identity and sense of being.
So, I'm concerned that a return to more-Freudian terminology and perspectives like those coming from object-relation theories, will and has been allowing shame and undue pathologization to creep back into Jungian thinking. If "pathologizing" is too severe a term for much of object-relations terminology, perhaps "dehumanizing" is more accurate. But the result of shaming is very much the same. The psychological definitions of "abnormal" are exaggerated, and "normal" psychology is too rigidly and minimally defined. It is a resurgence of superego thinking that is being foreshadowed here, and this will help breed conformity and lack of innovative adaptation (as is often the case with these tribalistic, specialized language systems in academia).
This kind of enforced conformity was a notorious aspect of Freud's original dogmas. I stand with Jung in opposing that kind of conforming trend that seeks to make a psychology into a belief system instead of an adaptive, scientific investigation of psychic phenomena. Of course, object-relations is nowhere near as dogmatic (as far as I know) as Freudian psychoanalysis . . . but I will happily remain rather sensitive to this potential.
What concerns me more is that the interest many Jungians have in object-relations theories derives from an acquired taste for dogmas. Without intending to cast any genuine criticisms of object-relations theories, they seem every bit as unscientific and untestable/unfalsifiable as Jungian theories do (understanding that both systems are primarily therapeutic and practical, not theoretical). That is, both psychologies are metaphorical language systems . . . and neither seems terribly interested in refining the accuracy of the metaphors they use to talk about the psyche. Dogmatic languages run away with themselves. We fall in love with our paradigms and lose touch with the things they are meant to describe. When this happens, all philosophies become belief systems, systems of belief in a certain language or dialect.
I would personally rather see Jungians trying to better understand the concepts and terms they already have (unconscious, Self, individuation, archetype, shadow, anima/animus, etc.) rather than acquiring more abstract, metaphorical jargon that means to describe just as unknown things. The short list of Jungian terms in parentheses above is a small example of a core set of terms, all of which (in my opinion) are inadequately understood and under-investigated by Jungians. What I see is an ossified religion grown up around these and similar Jungian terms that taboos any further development and investigation of the phenomena they are meant to describe.
Regardless of whether my intuitive quibbles with object-relations thinking and terminology hold any water, I think it is perfectly valid to ask of Jungians why they have moved away from the mysteries left right at their doorstep to participate in mysteries advertised many miles away. I see in this a failure to understand and appreciate the wealth the dragon of Jungianism wallows upon. If we are too ashamed or incapable of utilizing this Jungian "prima materia", how can we manage to functionally utilize this other quasi-exotic metaphorical system?
Is, for instance, the Jungian interest in object-relations helping Jungians understand Jung's original ideas any better (even if that better understanding leads to revision or rejection of Jung's ideas on logical grounds), or is object-relations a distraction from Jung's (too challenging?) ideas? I have tried to use some language from evolutionary biology and a little from neuroscience to help clarify and reconstruct Jungian terms in a viable fashion. But my intention is to make sense and use out of Jung's thinking. I'm not trying to steer away from Jung's ideas in favor of a new "biologism". What I'm trying to add to Jungian concepts is an elucidation of the potentials inherent to those concepts as Jung (complexly and ambiguously) proposed them. I'm just trying to hold a lens up to his diffuse light to try to focus it, and the lens I'm using is modern biology. I'm am intentionally trying to avoid a new language as much as possible.
I see the potential extinction of Jungian psychology in the Jungian interest in object-relations theory. Jungian psychology could eventually be replaced by a Jungianesque object-relations school . . . and although perhaps such a school could generate functional therapists, there would still be a failure, in this event, to understand and develop (make adequate use of) Jung's original ideas.
I continue to see value in Jung's ideas. They need to stay viable and modern and take account of new data, but they aren't ready for absolute retirement or replacement. The path of Jungian thinking has not been completed, and to think it has is hubris. There is still more potential in Jung's ideas, but it can only be tapped if Jungian thinking stays adaptable and open to the constant influx of relative data. That is, Jungian psychology needs to be a living, adaptive system in order to remain fit, to survive.
I think that is still possible . . . but we have become our own worst enemies. If we continue to see the obstacles we face as Jungians as outside ourselves, we will "die out". But if we realize and accept that we ourselves (as Jungians) must change, must "evolve" and adapt, then I think we stand not only to survive, but to innovate and contribute to psychology even beyond our tribe.