Individuation: What Is It, And How To Achieve It!

Individuation (Jung) of the personality is the major goal in life. Samuels defines individuation as follows: "A person is becoming himself, whole, indivisible and distinct from other people or collective psychology, though also in relation to these. The person becomes conscious in what respects he or she is a unique human being and at the same time no more than a common man or a woman."

This is what Anne Singer Harris refers to as the Jungian paradox in her book "Living with Paradox: An Introduction to Jungian Psychology". The central paradox is that we are unique but common, distinct but related. "It is if we must find a hole in a jigsaw puzzle, into which we are the only piece that fits."

Individuation is a search that never ends, but the process of searching may produce what Jung called one's true personality. He said: "Personality is the supreme realization of the innate idiosyncrasy of a living being. It is an act of high courage flung in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence coupled with the greatest possible freedom for self-determination."

Carl Jung used the term Individuation to describe the process of reaching your potential and becoming an integrated, mature person. When you get in touch your unique ability and personal path in life, then you make it a priority to stay on your path and work as much as possible developing and focusing your unique ability, an interesting cycle starts. You become more mature on a continual basis, and you begin the process of learning similar thing over and over again but getting different lessons from them. As you progress, develop and integrate different aspects of your personality, you literally evolve. The more evolve and integrated you become the more individuated... and the more you can both see your infinite connection with others at the same time as your individual differences and unique combination of gifts. The power comes from being able to see both and hold in your mind... to embrace the paradox and allow it to give you energy.

We are always struggling against feeling like a common person. Humans don't like to be average -we don't like to feel average, and we don't like to accept average. But most of the times we gravitate toward the average out of scarcity and fear of not wanting to stand out from the society, because standing out puts a lot of pressure. In this second paradox, I see the common challenge when it comes to achieving individuation, and the solution for that is achieving social freedom.