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INDIVIDUATION
C. G. Jung defined individuation︎, the therapeutic goal of analytical psychology belonging to the second half of life, as the process by which a person becomes a psychological individual, a separate indivisible unity or whole, recognizing his innermost uniqueness, and he identified this process with becoming one’s own self or self-realization, which he distinguished from “ego-centeredness” and individualism. The self, the totality of personality and archetype of order, is superordinate to the ego, embracing consciousness and the unconscious; as the center and circumference of the whole psyche, the self is our life’s goal, the most complete expression of individuality︎.
The aim of individuation︎, equated with the extension of consciousness and the development of personality, is to divest the self of its false wrappings of the persona, the mask the personality uses to confront the world, and the suggestive power of numinous unconscious contents.