Individuation and Inner Support
Individuation is not a single discovery or an intellectual insight, but a long and often difficult path toward inner authority—the ability to rely on oneself from within. In the first half of life, personality is shaped largely through adaptation to the external world. You learn to fit into social structures, meet expectations, occupy roles, and perform functions that allow you to survive, build a career, start a family, and find your place in society.
Carl Jung called this adaptive form of identity the persona—an essential psychological mask. It is vital; without it, a person would be overwhelmed by chaos and unable to interact effectively with others. But difficulties arise when the persona ceases to be an instrument and becomes the only form of existence. When a mask hardens, it gradually becomes an internal prison.
A person begins to identify exclusively with a role, status, or image that was once appropriate but no longer reflects their inner reality. Many people reach midlife—and sometimes even old age—still living according to scripts and expectations formed decades earlier. They continue to perform roles that once gave life structure and meaning, but over time these roles begin to feel empty, mechanical, and devoid of inner resonance.
This does not happen because the person has lost their way, but because the psyche naturally demands a new orientation and a deeper level of meaning.
Individuation begins when authority is gradually transferred from the external world to the internal. It is the realization that meaning cannot be endlessly borrowed from social roles, institutions, achievements, or the approval of others. True meaning must arise from an internal dialogue between the conscious self and the deeper, often unconscious layers of the psyche.
This process is rarely comfortable. Old beliefs lose their power. Goals that once inspired no longer evoke emotion. A sense of emptiness, confusion, loss of direction, or even depression may appear. Jung saw such experiences not as signs of illness, but as symptoms of psychological maturation—signals that something essential within the person is yearning to be heard and integrated.
It is crucial to understand that individuation is not withdrawal from the world. It is not isolation, but inner coherence. This path requires recognizing repressed aspects of the personality, accepting internal contradictions, and acknowledging that a person is never a fully completed project.
The reward for this path is the development of inner support—the ability to stand within oneself without needing constant external confirmation of one’s value. In old age, such support becomes indispensable. Without it, aging is experienced as a chain of losses and gradual devaluation. With it, aging becomes a process of purification and crystallization—a shedding of the unimportant and a clarifying of what truly holds meaning.
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