Reknowned Jungian analyst and commentator Murray Stein wrote Where East meets West: in the house of individuation published in The Journal of Analytical Psychology¹ in 2017. One of his goal was to describe the late stages of the individuation process. The abstract to his article mentions this:
In late stage Jungian analysis and individuation and in what Erich Neumann calls ‘centroversion’, the personal and the impersonal aspects of the personality accumulate around the ego-self axis to form a composite identity. In this complex structure the ego does not vanish but is joined to the impersonal archetypal levels of the psyche and identity thus becomes at once individual and archetypal. This is the third stage of conjunction as described by Jung in Mysterium Coniunctionis. (P.67)
For the layman, Stein seems to know his subject. He presents the final stage of individuation as a complicated affair where the identity becomes somewhat archetypal. He wraps it in such an unbelievable description that we are forced to understand that no one, apart from Jung, has reached this level of development. The problem with this portrayal is that it is a construct based on no reliable facts and observations. Nor is it a description based on Stein's experience of the late stage of the individuation process. It is a pure elaboration built to impress the gullible Jungians. In the following paragraphs, we will show that Murray Stein missed the essential meaning of the experience of wholeness.
The first thing we observe in the meticulous reading of his paper is that Stein has no idea what conjunction of opposites are. Yet, it is at the very heart of Jungian psychology. In Mysterium Conjunctionis, Jung wrote:
“Experience shows that the union of antagonistic elements is an irrational occurrence which can fairly be described as ‘mystical,’ provided that one means by this an occurrence that cannot be reduced to anything else or regarded as in some way unauthentic.” (CW 14, par. 515)
Mystical or transcendent experiences are extremely numinous symbols of conjunction of opposites that enter consciousness for a short moment. On December 21st, 1913, Jung had his first transcendent experience. In The Red Book, he titled the section where he recalled his experience as MYSTERIUM, a clear indicator of the importance of that experience to him. He described his transcendent experience as becoming the deus leontocephalus or Aion god and seeing himself in the posture of the crucified Christ. The symbol at the core of this experience is the conjunction of the opposites me-God or me-universe. As it has been mentioned in other blogposts, the first conjunction of opposites is always a symbol of the conjunction of the opposites particle v. whole. Jung linked this symbol to an experience of the Self. To him, the Self contains all opposites and always manifests itself as a conjunction of opposites. The experience of the Self is the experience of wholeness. It is also a signpost of the consciously performed individuation process.
That transcendent experience changed Jung's whole worldview and his psychology. He never stopped, after that, searching for the meaning and the cause of that experience. This is why he turned to the study of Gnosticism and eventually to alchemy. In 1916, he wrote the essay The Transcendent Function and he could not resolve to publish it because of the harm it could cause to his career. It was eventually published in 1958 when some students found it. His hypothesis was that transcendent experiences could be linked to the technique of active imagination. His explanation would later change.
Because of his misunderstanding of these important observations, Murray Stein cannot proceed to a rigorous analysis of Jung's individuation process. He writes:
There is an experience of wholeness that is shared across cultures, East and West. Individuation, as it advances, moves toward a place of possible convergence. Jung first became aware of this when he studied the Taoist-alchemical treatise, The Secret of the Golden Flower, sent to him in translation by his friend, Richard Wilhelm:
I devoured the manuscript at once, for the text gave me undreamed-of confirmation of my ideas about the mandala and the circumambulation of the center…. I became aware of an affinity; I could establish ties with something and someone. In remembrance of this coincidence, this ‘synchronicity’, I wrote underneath the picture which had made so Chinese an impression upon me: ‘In 1928, when I was painting this picture, showing the golden, well-fortified castle, Richard Wilhelm in Frankfurt sent me the thousand-year-old Chinese text on the yellow castle, the germ of the immortal body’. (Jung 1961, p. 197)
One can assume that Jung was here approaching the third stage of individuation as described by him years later in his interpretation of Dorn’s three stages: the union of consciousness with unus mundus. At this time in his life (1928, age 53), he was touching the collective unconscious and the self, which is predictably accompanied by synchronicities.
(...) He arrived at a culmination of inner development in 1928 when he painted the Chinese-style mandala mentioned above and shortly thereafter received the translation of the Chinese alchemy treatise from Richard Wilhelm. (P. 76-77)
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| The conjunction of spirit and body |
There are many mistakes in this short quote.
First, Jung did not become aware of the convergence of opposites from his reading of The Secret of the Golden Flower. He already knew that following his first transcendent experience and his study of Gnosticism.
Second, Jung found in Wilhelm's book the description of the second conjunction of opposites spirit-body that he lived on June 1917. The mandala, as an illustration of the Self, is also a depiction of a transcendent symbol of conjunction of opposites. See Carl Jung's Second Mystical Experience on ACADEMIA.ORG
Third, it is not logical to assume that Jung was approaching the third conjunction because he was experimenting synchronicities. This is magical thinking, a sadly regular occurrence from Jungian commentators. If Jung was on the road to achieve the third conjunction, he never succeeded. In Mysterium Conjunctionis (1955), Jung wrote that the third transcendent experience was impossible because consciousness could not absorb totally the unconscious.
Fourth, Jung did not arrive at the culmination of his inner development in 1928. The painting of the chinese mandala and the reception of the chinese treatise are not proofs of a summit in his individuation. If synchronicities are signs of advanced inner development, everyone is therefore at this stage. It is circular logic where Stein want to prove that Jung was a kind of demi-god who reached the apex of inner development. This is again a construction to impress those who are not able to use simple logic and are still lost in their projections.
Murray Stein's analysis of the late stages of the individuation process is by no means scientific. It is full of unreliable assertions that have no foundation in practical observations. It feeds the gullible followers of Jungian psychology with made-up stories in order to confort them that Jung was an extraordinary character. This ressemble sectarian indoctrination, yet the article has been peer-reviewed as we should expect from a scientific review. That shows how low the peer-review system has become in Analytical psychology.
Conclusion
Two direct conclusions must be drawn from what we have seen. First, science is of no value in Jungian psychology when prominent commentators share their unfounded views. In the field of Jungian publishing, the name of the author is more important than the substance. If you are known, you can write and publish the most silliest things and the Jungians will applaude. Therefore, Jungian reviews have long exchanged the scientific rules for the sake of pleasing their readers.
Second, there is an important problem in the field of Analytical psychology. How is it possible that no analyst or serious follower has been able to reach Jung's second transcendent experience? How is it possible that Murray Stein does not understand the Jungian conjunction of opposites? If those "scholars" and "scientists" have followed the Jungian techniques of active imagination, integration of the shadow and projections, integration of the collective unconscious and the development of the undifferentiated cognitive functions as we might expect, why is there no one who can share their personal experiences of the late stages of the individuation process?
There are only two logical answers to these questions. First, those "scientists" never really dived in the Jungian individuation process as if it were only for the sick clients and second, if they did, those techniques did not produced the expected results. In both cases, the prominent Jungian commentators contine to write about the individuation process without any practical knowledge of it or, worse, knowing that it does not produce valuable outcomes.
If Jungian or Analytical psychology were a science, these observations would be the chief preoccupation of the prominent commentators. Unfortunately, as you have seen, Jungians are no longer scientists but daydreamers and Murray Stein, a contributor to this debacle.
¹Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2017, 62, 1, 67–87