#individuation process

“É compreensível o nosso desejo de clareza inequívoca, porém esqueceríamos então que as coisas anímicas são processos vivenciais, isto é, transformações, as quais nunca devem ser designadas de uma forma unívoca se não quisermos transformar o que se move, vivo, em algo estático. O mitologema definido-indefinido e o símbolo ofuscante expressam o processo anímico de forma muito precisa, perfeita e, portanto, infinitamente mais clara do que o conceito nítido. Esta penumbra só pode ser compreendida mediante uma empatia inofensiva e nunca mediante o expediente rude da clareza.”

Carl Jung, Ensaio sobre Paracelso, in “Estudos Alquímicos”

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“One certainly has an understandable desire for unambiguous clarity, but we are apt to forget that matters of the soul are processes of experience, that is, transformations which should not be unequivocally designated if one does not want to petrify their living movement into something static. The protean mythologem and the shimmering symbol express the process of the soul far more trenchantly and, in the end, far more clearly than the clearest concept; for the symbol not only conveys a visualisation of the process but – and this is perhaps just as important – it also brings a re-experiencing of it, of that twilight which we can learn to understand only through inoffensive empathy, and never through the great pull of clarity.”

(C. Jung 1942, Jung’s essay on Paracelsus, in Sonu Shamdasani, After Liber Novus, Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2012, 57, 364–377)