2.2 Impasse in development

Beyond the intricacies of difficult family relations, the individual is additionally confronted with going through each stage of life in good stead. At each stage, the risk looms that development comes to a stuttering halt. The risk that the individual clings to their current circumstances and shirks from the responsibility nature demands. Broadly speaking, Jung distinguishes between the first and second half of life which each have their distinct themes.

The first half of life

Before delving into the intricacies of this major chapter of one’s life, it seems best to sketch out how Jung conceptualizes life by way of one of his charming analogies.

Jung likens the first part of life to the ascent of the sun in its daily cycle. ‘In the morning it arises from the nocturnal sea of unconsciousness and looks upon the wide, bright world which lies before it in an expanse that steadily widens the higher it climbs in the firmament. In this extension of its field of action caused by its own rising, the sun will discover its significance; it will see the attainment of the greatest possible height-the widest possible dissemination of its blessings-as its goal. In this conviction the sun pursues its unforeseen course to the zenith; unforeseen, because its career is unique and individual, and its culminating point could not be calculated in advance’ [1]. 

Already, one is getting a sense of how the task of the ascent is contextualized. This allegory of nature provides the reader with a vivid intuition: The child and young adult's life is marked by a necessary expansion, an overcoming of the tight shell into which it is born. Just as the bird hatches from its egg and gradually stretches its wings, so the youth must progressively stretch itself out into the world.

The young child finds by default in a state of dependence, first and foremost on the parents. As the young child grows older though its own capacities start growing and continually experiences the world beyond the protective territory of the parents. In this vital transition, a key development must eventually occur as Jung emphasizes: The transference of the parental imago. What is such a parental imago? Jung explains ‘Behind every individual father there stands the primordial image of the Father, and behind the fleeting personal mother the magical figure of the Magna Mater. These archetypes of the collective psyche, whose power is magnified in immortal works of art and in the fiery tenets of religion, are the dominants that rule the preconscious soul of the child. In childhood this potent energy is bound up with the personal parents which often assumes monstrous proportions’ [2].

In this context, the introduction into school marks an important step, as it is the first encounter of the child with the world outside the sphere of the parents. ‘School com­rades take the place of brothers and sisters; the teacher, if a man, acts as a substitute for the father, and, if a woman, for the mother’ [2]. This presents a prelude, albeit in miniature form, of what will gradually happen in adolescence. The activating force of the parental imago isn’t rigidly fixed to one person but gets periodically transferred to other guiding adult figures.

Usually around the onset of puberty, the real deal happens. The comforting illusion of the all-powerful guiding figure, usually still associated with the parents, cracks. Over time the adolescent realizes that the parents have limitations, just as any other adult. The disruptive effect of this is not to be underestimated as Jung stresses: The withdrawal of prior projections onto the parents means ‘a considerable afflux of en­ergy to the unconscious, which soon makes itself felt in the in­creasingly strong coloration of the conscious mind by un­conscious contents. The ego, which was formerly dissolved in relationships to the personal environ­ment, may now be dissolved in the contents of the collective unconscious’ [3]. This is not without its dangers. In fact, Jung points out that this mechanism, while necessary in adolescence, shares similarities with the onset of schizophrenia. There too contents from the collective unconscious appear, albeit smoothering rather than colouring ego-consciousness.

For this reason, it is of vital importance that the parental imago is transferred. Historically, this vital task was taken up by religion. Within their intricate and highly sophisticated mythology important symbols are provided that set in motion ‘a healthful, compensatory operation’. Struggling against the dangerous trend towards disintegration, the individual is ‘miracolously’ assisted by this operation that amounts to ‘a process of centering’ [3]. Out of this gradually ‘a new centre of personality’ arises that is superordinate to the former ego. While transferences to singular people such as a teacher or mentor can be an important stepping-stone for the maturing individual, in the long run a higher level must be attained. Eventually, the imago must be detached from the parental figure and oneself must assimilate the parental complex. In other words, oneself must become a father or mother, attaining authority, responsibility and independence [4]. 

Religion had a vital function in this regard too. Jung gives the example of how in the Middle Ages the image of the family was transferred to ‘Mother Church’. Thereby the congregation was able to transition relatively smoothly transition into the next level of development without risking psychic injury. Jung highlights the necessity of relating in this way to a wider community. ‘To remain a permanent member of the family has very undesirable psychic consequences and is for that reason rendered impossible even in primitive society by the initiation ceremonies. Man needs a wider com­munity than the family, in whose leading-strings he will be stunted both spiritually and morally’ [5].

And so, Jung concludes that thus, for a young person, ‘it is almost a sin and certainly a danger to be too much occupied with himself’ [1]. Further he elaborates ‘Proper recognition and appreciation of normal instincts leads the young person into life and entangles him with fate, thus involv­ing him in life's necessities and the consequent sacrifices and efforts through which his character is developed and his expe­rience matured’. [4] This phase of life is mainly dictated by biological ends, meaning the channeling of instincts towards socially-valued goals. It is characterized by a certain striving towards concrete ends and making one’s mark in the world. The maturing individual is thereby crucified between a ‘panic fear of life’ and simultaneously harbouring an ‘intense desire for life’ [6]. If the latter ultimately prevails the individual enters adulthood and becomes socially adapted. However, if one succumbs to the ‘fear of life’, neurosis eventually results. Freud referred to this fear as ‘infantile resistance’ which amounts to a clinging to the childhood paradise and a resultant shrinking back from social adaptation. The neurotic does not want to let go of childhood and most often remains codependent on the parents. Jung hereby agrees with Freud that psychologically speaking this amounts to little else than ‘an incest-relationship that is inimical to life’ [7].

Here we arrive at the first of two main types of neurotics: The socially unadapted. Due to a certain ‘weakness’, either congenital or acquired, this type struggles to grow into a social role and contribute effectively to society. Consequently, they find themselves in conflict with society as well as ‘collective man’ (the superego in Freudian terms). Jung comments ‘It is highly important for a young person who is still unadapted and has as yet achieved nothing, to shape the conscious ego as effectively as possible--that is, to educate the will’ [1]. Here he notably concedes to Freud and admits that individuation, the process Jung regards as the central task of life, would be premature. And so, Jung adds: ‘Unless he is positively a genius he even may not believe in anything active within himself that is not identical with his will. He must feel himself a man of will, and he may safely depreciate everything else within himself or suppose it subject to his will-for without this illusion he can scarcely bring about a social adaptation’ [1].

Jung noticed in his own experience that the ‘collective unconscious’ only rarely enters into practical work with children. In fact, it may even be a danger to them because the task of the child is primarily in severing the ties with the ‘primordial unconsciousness’. Only in this way can a coherent ego-consciousness develop, ‘which is what they need more than anything else’ [5]. The will of the ego presents a vital tool for the child in order to expand itself out into the world, beyond the safe domain of the parents. If the maturing individual manages this successfully and assumes a useful social role, an important step has been made. The persona has been established and gives the personality some firm ground to stand upon.

As the shrewd reader foresees, the story however does not end here. A warning against complacency, ‘The serious problems in life, however, are never fully solved. If ever they should appear to be so it is a sure sign that some­ thing has been lost. The meaning and purpose of a problem seem to lie not in its solution but in our working at it inces­santly. This alone preserves us from stultification and petrifac­tion’ [5].

The second half of life

Enter the second half of life. The sun has effortfully strived for its zenith, but now a new movement begins. ‘At the stroke of noon the descent begins. And the descent means the reversal of all the ideals and values that were cherished in the morning. The sun falls into contradiction with itself. It is as though it should draw in its rays, instead of emitting them’ [1]. This transition however is far from smooth and is often resisted by the individual with all their might. The latter is strengthened by a core belief that is inculcated into us by modern society: ‘The nearer we approach to the middle of life, and the better we have succeeded in entrenching ourselves in our personal attitudes and social positions, the more it appears as if we had discovered the right course and the right ideals and principles of behaviour’ [8].

The ideals are henceforth regarded as eternally valid and one starts practicing the apparent virtue of unchangeably clinging to them. What is however overlooked is that ‘the social goal is attained only at the cost of a diminution of personality’. The mask of the persona has etched itself onto one’s face and it becomes increasingly difficult to get it off again. ‘Many—far too many- aspects of life which should also have been experienced lie in the lumber-room among dusty memories; but sometimes, too, they are glowing coals under grey ashes’ [8].

Modern secular society chronically lacks any education for this uniquely terrifying stage. Yes, in the first half of life, the individual is assisted by school, university and training in developing their will and adapting to a social role. Upon its completion one exclaims with relief ‘Finally, I am educated!’. But learning is life-long. Out of the mere ‘biological’ adaptation of the first half of life, a new ‘cultural’ adaptation must grow. An adaptation that in many aspects is diametrically opposed to the former. And yet, how is this to happen? ‘There is an almost total lack of guidance for this extraordinarily important transition from the biological to the cultural attitude’ [4].

In former times, religion played an indispensable part in this transition with its rich tapestry of symbols that aided in the process. The modern secularist, on the other hand, lacks these symbols and hence can grope only in the dark. Shrinking away from this formidable task, they are often only too willing to remain unconscious. He or she frequently only becomes conscious when the new movement forcibly intrudes into the field of vision by way of a significant event, for instance the death of a parent.

So far this ‘movement’ was only spoken to in rather abstract terms. Is it possible to pin it down though? Jung gives his best shot, by contrasting it to the first half of life. As explicated, the first half designates a general expansion into life, an entangling with fate. ‘Achievement, usefulness and so forth are the ideals that seem to point the way out of the confusions of the problematical state. They are the lodestars that guide us in the adventure of broadening and consolidating our physical existence; they help us to strike our roots in the world’ [8]. But ‘life’s afternoon’ is not anymore an ascent but rather a descent. Such a movement demands ‘simplification, limitation and intensification – in other words, individual culture’. The diminishing powers of the aging organism allow the individual to ‘subordinate his instincts to cultural goals’ [4]. ‘Money-making, social existence, family and posterity are nothing but plain nature-not culture. Culture lies beyond the purpose of nature’ [1]. And so, a certain reversal of values sets in, an ‘enantiodromia’ as Jung so brilliantly describes it.

One such reversal could be along the masculine-feminine spectrum. Jung observed in his time that men who are involved in modern business life often have a nervous breakdown in their forties, interestingly being most common in America. ‘If one examines the victims one finds that what has broken down is the masculine style of life which held the field up to now, and that what is left over is an effeminate man’ [4]. Accordingly, a similar inversion happens to women in the business world: They develop ‘an uncom­monly masculine tough-mindedness which thrusts the feelings and the heart aside’ [4]. Jung likely speaks as much from personal as professional experience here: ‘Very often these changes are accompanied by all sorts of catastrophes in marriage, for it is not hard to imagine what will happen when the husband discovers his tender feelings and the wife her sharpness of mind.’

Speaking like an alchemist, Jung elaborates further: ‘We might compare masculinity and femininity with their psychic components to a particular store of substances of which, in the first half of life, unequal use is made. A man consumes his large supply of masculine substance and has left over only the smaller amount of feminine substance, which he must now put to use. It is the other way round with a woman; she allows her unused supply of masculinity to become active’. [1] And so, a fundamental shift occurs in which each person is tasked with coming to terms with one’s opposite nature. Masculine-feminine, introverted-extroverted, conscientous-careless are all polarities which need to be reconciled in the second half of life. Just as it is a danger for the young person to be too preoccupied with themselves, the ageing person is tasked with giving serious attention to themselves, in all their multiplicity.

In this context, the person in the second half of life no longer needs to educate their will, but must learn to ‘experience his own inner being’. One pathway towards this is to ‘differentiate particular aptitudes in which the socially effective individual discovers his true self’ [4]. Creative activity, which is unrelated to any social role and thereby an end in itself. ‘Fully aware as he is of the social unimportance of his creative activity, he looks upon it as a way of working out his own development and thus benefiting himself’ [1]. Furthermore, even though it is not the aim of such creative activity, it will even serve to further sophisticate the person’s social existence in indirect ways. ‘For an inwardly sound and self-confident person will be more adequate to his social tasks than one who is not on good terms with his unconscious’ [1].

But here is the catch: Neither nature nor society seems to value this widening of consciousness much. The former could not care less about culture while the latter rewards achievement far more than personality. Personality is something that is largely celebrated and prized posthumously.

And so, who can blame the ones that stray from their instinctual path? Those who decide to live their second half of life as a mere extension of the first. Those who will not let go of youth because too much life was left unlived. All that regretful hesitancy and cowardice that kept one from throwing oneself into life, of trusting fate. ‘Of course, if these persons had filled up the beaker of life earlier and emptied it to the lees, they would feel quite differently about everything now; they would have kept nothing back, everything that wanted to catch fire would have been consumed, and the quiet of old age would be very welcome to them. But we must not forget that only a very few people are artists in life; that the art of life is the most distinguished and rarest of all the arts. Who ever succeeded in draining the whole cup with grace?’ [4]. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

And so, hereby we arrive at the second type of neurotic. While previously we heard about the socially unadapted individualists, the second type is its inverse: Socially adapted ‘collective’ people with an underdeveloped individuality. ‘Psychotherapists are familiar with the collectively adapted person who has every­thing and does everything that could reasonably be required as a guarantee of health, but yet is ill’ [9]. Despite their proven aptitude for collective adaptation, they cannot or will not rest content with it. To them, it is often a great puzzle as to why they cannot just lead a ‘normal’ life. ‘The reason for their neurosis seems to lie in their having something above the average, an overplus for which there is no adequate outlet’ [9].

This ‘above average’ is in turn related to some discord they harbour with the canon of generally accepted views and ideas. Unconsciously they are critical of it and their inner being ferociously resists total adherence to them. It would be a grave error to try to normalize such a person and bring him down to the collective level. For then their individuality just gets stamped out even more. That vital germ which they need most of all. This is by definition something absolutely unique, unpredictable and uninterpretable. As a result, ‘the therapist must abandon all his preconceptions and techniques and confine himself to a purely dialectical procedure, adopting the attitude that shuns all methods’ [9].

For the patient's conscious attitude stubbornly strives to find some solution to their problem by means of collective ‘generalized’ rules, protocols and principles. But all in vain: What they need most is to learn how to listen to their own inner being, their own individuality.  What makes this so difficult for them though is that they see collective adaptation, the task of youth, as the main goal of life. But the zenith has been reached, and the descent begun. And yet it will not be acknowledged. In this attitude, they share a striking similarity with the socially unadapted neurotic who shrinks away from life. The refusal to live is the same as the refusal to accept its ending. In fact, in Jung’s experience the people who most feared life as a youth often just as much fear death in old age. In their fear, they cling to their established conscious attitude instead of subjecting it to criticism and alteration. They cling to the their old consciousness instead of ‘shattering it in the tension of opposites and building up a state of wider and higher consciousness’, Jung muses [8].

What results is a general stultification and petrification of the life-energy within them. They remain ‘fixed like nostalgic pillars of salt, with vivid recollections of youth but no living relation to the present’ [6]. ‘To the psychotherapist an old man who cannot bid farewell to life appears as feeble and sickly as a young man who is unable to embrace it. And as a matter of fact, in many cases it is a question of the self-same childish covetousness, of the same fear, the same obstinacy and wilfulness, in the one as in the other’ [1].

But we must remember that white implies black and life implies death. ‘From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life. We are so convinced that death is simply the end of a process that it does not ordi­narily occur to us to conceive of death as a goal and a fulfilment, as we do without hesitation the aims and purposes of youthful life in its ascendance’ [6]. It seems so strange to the modern person to think about death as something meant to be. Rather it is an unfortunate circumstance that we are all too eager to leave out of the conversation. But Jung questions this standpoint: ‘We grant goal and purpose to the ascent of life, why not to the descent? The birth of a human being is pregnant with meaning, why not death? For twenty years and more the growing man is being prepared for the complete unfolding of his individual nature, why should not the older man prepare himself twenty years and more for his death?’ [6]. Life in this way is like a projectile fired into the sky. At some point, it reaches its zenith upon which it descends to the ground once more. Now, is the aim of the projectile to reach its highest point or to reach the furthest? We might as well flip the script and consider the projectile’s ascent only as a means of reaching the target on the ground once more. The person in the second half of life benefits far more from this latter worldview according to Jung.

The importance of this distinction is not be underestimated. For at a certain point, the aging person will be confronted with the categorical question of death. ‘To this end he ought to have a myth about death, for reason shows him nothing but the dark pit into which he is descending. Myth, however, can conjure up other images for him, helpful and enriching pictures of life in the land of the dead. If he believes in them, or greets them with some measure of credence, he is being just as right or just as wrong as someone who does not believe in them. But while the man who despairs marches towards nothingness, the one who has placed his faith in the archetype follows the tracks of life and lives right into his death. Both, to be sure, remain in uncertainty, but the one lives against his instincts, the other with them’ [10].

And so, Jung asserts ‘As a physician I am convinced that it is hygienic, if I may use the word, to discover in death a goal towards which one can strive; and that shrinking away from it is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose’ [1]. Hence it is unsurprising that all religions, mythologies and cultures address the issue of life after death. Naturally, this has not and may never be either verified or disproven just as we may never know what lies beyond the event horizon of a black hole. Irrespective of its objective truth, Jung however highlights that from a practical standpoint belief in a life hereafter appears to make for a healthier psyche. Because such a belief establishes a reference point outside our own lives, we gain perspective and realize our relation to infinity. This way the various stoppages of life can be prevented and the individual is far more capable of riding the wave of life without having resistances knock the surfboard from under their feet. As Jung pinpoints so succinctly ‘The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it’.

References

1.        Jung, C. G. (1933). Modern man in search of a soul. (W. S. Dell & C. F. Baynes, Trans.). Harcourt, Brace & World. [Chapter 5: Stages of Life]

2.        Jung, C. G. (1954). The development of personality. The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans., Vol. 17). Princeton University Press. [Chapter 3: Child development and education]

3.        Jung, C. G. (1954) The practice of psychotherapy: Essays on the psychology of the transference and other subjects. The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans., Vol. 16). Princeton University Press.  [Chapter 8: Psychotherapy today]

4.        Jung, C. G. (1954). The structure and dynamics of the psyche. The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull (Trans.), Vol. 8). Princeton University Press. [Chapter 1: On psychic energy]

5.        Jung, C. G. (1954). The development of personality. The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans., Vol. 17). Princeton University Press. [Chapter 4: Analytical psychology and education]

6.        Jung, C. G. (1954). The structure and dynamics of the psyche. The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull (Trans.), Vol. 8). Princeton University Press. [Chapter 17: The soul and death]

7.        Jung, C. G. (1954) The practice of psychotherapy: Essays on the psychology of the transference and other subjects. The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans., Vol. 16). Princeton University Press.  [Chapter 4: The aims of psychotherapy]

8.        Jung, C. G. (1954). The structure and dynamics of the psyche. The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull (Trans.), Vol. 8). Princeton University Press. [Chapter 16: Stages of life]

9.        Jung, C. G. (1954) The practice of psychotherapy: Essays on the psychology of the transference and other subjects. The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans., Vol. 16). Princeton University Press.  [Chapter 1: Principles of practical psychotherapy]

10.  Jung, C. G. (1961). Memories, dreams, reflections (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). Pantheon Books. [Chapter 11: On life after death; Page 267]