DiscussionIndividuation means ‘a person becoming himself, whole, indivisible and distinct from
other or collective’ (Samuels et al. 1986). It is archetypal, inevitable, and happens
when Self has cultural freedom and ego has a persona, capable of meeting its
age-appropriate responsibilities. Jung defines individuation as individual, rather than
collective, psychology.
Levelling down to the collective stunts an individual, a society of such
individuals is not healthy. Social cohesion and collective values exist only when
an individual has sense of their own value, and therefore, of their value to, and
the value of, society. Individuation involves opposition to the collective, not
antagonistically, but due to different orientation.
(Jung 1971d)Fordham (1976:36–40) saw individuation as ‘differentiation of the individual
personality.’ Primary identity, the experience of fusion between an infant and mother,
yields to experience of part objects (like the breast or penis) then whole objects (like
mother or father). Individuation presupposes, includes, and depends on collective
relationships. This is why it cannot happen if parts of the psyche, objects in the psyche,
can’t enter relationships. Yukio’s complex was an eternally repeating scene of abuse,
a karmic trap. The part trapped could be called ‘autistic’—the boy crying alone.
I understand ‘autistic’ to mean a part of the Self is encapsulated, unable to
participate in what Hillman (1983:26) calls ‘soul making’. The hallmark of soul
making is imagination: not ‘what would I be if?’ rather a ‘releasing of events from
their literal understanding into a mythical appreciation’. This requires imagining our
own personal myths over and over again until envy, an experience of twoness, and
an ‘I do not have that, I wish to become it’ opens us to a change in our personality.
As it does, we learn to live with our own ‘twoness’, with being both a Self and an ego.
Yukio learnt to re-imagine good boyhood experiences as well as bad ones, and
future experiences. Using a chair and the couch, he could move—and become ‘the
boy with the new face’, who is envied by ‘the boy nobody wants’. He could sit in
different places, talk as, to and between these ‘subpersonalities’ (Redfearn 1985:88–
100). This technique comes from Psychosynthesis, a humanistic therapy originating
with the Italian psychiatrist Dr Roberto Assagioli (1975), who worked with Jung at
the Burgholzli Hospital in Zurich.
Now, autistic parts of the psyche can’t re-imagine, or put value to percepts.
(Fordham 1976:36–40; Tustin 1981:35–43; Hobson 1993). Autistic people
profoundly lack imagination, can’t see how their acts affect others, or do so in highly
specified ways; complexes have us, we don’t have them. Yukio’s sado-masochistic
complex counteracted deep inner emptiness. In it, as his first three dreams showed,
shame-filled sexual fantasies recurred excluding other forms of relating. This
prevented individuation. There was profound turning inwards of psychic and sexual
energy. Using one theory, this complex arose from a fundamental failure in the
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