This paper examines Carl Gustav Jung's theory of personality development, with particular focus on the concept of individuation and the transcendent function. After briefly introducing depth psychology's emphasis on the unconscious, the paper surveys two foundational Jungian structures — the collective unconscious and the archetypes (including the shadow, persona, anima/animus, and self) — before analyzing how the transcendent function mediates the tension between conscious and unconscious opposites. The paper argues that this synthetic, symbol-mediated process is the core mechanism of psychical growth in Jung's framework, culminating in the integration of the whole self.
Any engagement with depth psychology must reckon with the effects of the unconscious on personality. While many personality theories dismiss this concept due to its nebulous nature, Jung and others insist that it is valid. Depth psychology begins from the notion that underlying all conscious activity of the psyche is the great and mysterious ocean of the unconscious. It holds that what is irrational or hidden below the surface of the psyche should take priority, since it is as important a force in human personality as the rational or conscious. Psychologists like Freud and Jung asserted that what a person is not self-aware of matters just as much as what he or she is aware of.
This emphasis reverses the usual focus on reason and surface awareness — personal freedom, rational thought, and self-determination — which dominate other traditions of personality theory. As a result, depth psychologists often focus on dreams, symbols, and archetypes that other traditions ignore. They attend to what is unknown, those images below the perceptible, rather than what is known and measurable. For Jung in particular, the key mission of personality is to explore and integrate the unconscious with consciousness in order to understand a deeper meaning of one's individual existence.
After a brief overview of two of Jung's concepts — the collective unconscious and the archetypes — this paper focuses on what he calls "the transcendent process" (Jung, 1960). This process is seen as crucial to Jung's dynamic view of personality development. Miller (2004) writes, "Jung eventually came to believe that one cannot individuate, that is, cannot become the person he or she is truly meant to be, without conversing with and coming to terms with the unconscious" (p. 3). In other words, the psyche seeks to bridge the gap between its two often contradictory aspects. The central argument is that this is one of Jung's major ways of conceptualizing personality development. The process of transcendence, although it relies on a form of dualism that does not conform to modern criticisms of dualism, is at the root of Jungian concepts of psychical growth.
Because it presumes the existence of unconscious forces in personality, and because the unconscious is nearly inaccessible to empirical study outside of individual case studies in a therapeutic context, the Jungian theory of personality is difficult to prove on a scientific basis. Most of Jung's view is based on clinical evidence and scholarly reflection rather than empirical research. Nonetheless, it remains instructive to examine his understanding of human personality development, given the wide influence his views have had (see Schultz and Schultz, 2008, chapter 2).
Freud thought the unconscious was the repository of repressed events, thoughts, and feelings — the place where unbearable things go when consciousness cannot painlessly assimilate them into the ego. Jung's view of the unconscious was more expansive. He accepted Freud's theory as describing the personal unconscious, but added to it the collective unconscious and archetypes, which he conceived as innate, positive, and guiding forms rather than retrograde remnants. They push forward toward purpose, even while remaining unconscious. Miller (2004) summarizes this departure from Freud:
"One of the most significant departures of Jungian psychology from other approaches is its rejection of the notion that psychological manifestations can be reduced exclusively to the effects of events of early life, the so-called reductive view. Rather, the Jungian, synthetic view is that in addition to the push of early life experiences, psychological existence is also influenced by the pull of unconscious, purposive elements of the psyche that guide us forward." (p. 12)
In addition to consciousness (thinking, feeling, sensing, intuiting) and the personal unconscious (repressed ideas, memories, complexes), Jung believed in a collective unconscious full of archetypes. These two structures of personality cannot be conceived separately. They are evolutionary concepts Jung used to break free of strict environmental determinism.
Formed by evolution, the collective unconscious is the storage reservoir of the impersonal rather than the personal. It is the psychic domain that transmits primordial information inherited from ancestors. Hall and Nordby (1973) write, "The mind, through its physical counterpart, the brain, has inherited characteristics that determine the ways in which a person will react to life's experiences and even determine what type of experiences he will have" (p. 39). The best way to think of it is as an unlearned predisposition — for example, an untaught fear of the dark or the instinct to flee danger, passed down through generations of evolution.
The actual contents of the collective unconscious are the archetypes. Jung (1959) said, "The necessary and needful reaction from the collective unconscious expresses itself in archetypally formed ideas" (p. 21). As the word suggests, archetypes are models for behavior — potentials for action and typical motifs. Jung wrote (1959):
"There are as many archetypes as there are typical situations in life. Endless repetition has engraved these experiences into our psychic constitution, not in the forms of images filled with content, but at first only as forms without content, representing merely the possibility of a certain type of perception and action." (p. 48)
An archetype, then, has no personal content until it is filled out with the material of experience. Examples of archetypes include birth, death, the hero, the trickster, the mother, and natural elements like water, trees, fire, and the moon. Archetypes can even combine with one another to produce personality differences. The most influential in shaping human action and personality are arguably the shadow, the persona, the anima/animus, and the self.
What are these main archetypes? Jung said, "The meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one's own shadow" (1959, p. 21). The shadow is the archetype representing the darker, unknowable aspects of a person (see Johnson, 1991). It is where the animalistic nature resides. By contrast, the persona is the façade a person presents publicly in order to maintain a favorable impression with others. It is the figurative mask one wears when conforming to a group setting. R. A. Johnson (1991) says, "The persona is what we would like to be and how we wish to be seen by the world" (p. 3).
Another archetype is dual: the anima/animus. These are the inward faces of a person and represent the inherited feminine and masculine sides, which are projected onto the opposite sex. Jung wrote, "Every man carries within him the eternal image of the woman, not the image of this or that particular woman, but a definite feminine image" (quoted in Hall and Nordby, 1973, p. 47).
Finally, the self is described by Hall and Nordby: "The self is the archetype of order, organization, and unification; it draws to itself and harmonizes all the archetypes and their manifestations in complexes and consciousness" (p. 51). It is the archetype of unity and wholeness, and it serves as the ultimate goal of personality development in Jung's framework.
"Transcendent function as path to individuation"
"How symbols reconcile psychic opposites"
This understanding of the goal of personality is important because it points toward a way for the self to mature. Maturity is more complex than just giving oneself a meaning; it is not mere self-help rationalization. A human must self-regulate and individuate through a complex and continuous process of assimilating the unconscious with the conscious. Jung provided a way to conceptualize this process and termed it the transcendent function. Understood correctly, it means that life is a constant process of synthesizing two psychical forces — the rational and the irrational — into a greater whole, which is the self archetype.
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