Completion occupies a remarkable range of registers within the depth-psychology corpus: cosmological, linguistic, clinical, and symbolic. In the I Ching tradition — mediated principally through Wilhelm/Baynes and Ritsema/Karcher — Completion appears as a paired dialectic: hexagram 63 (Chi Chi, After Completion) and hexagram 64 (Wei Chi, Before Completion) together articulate the paradox that achieved order is simultaneously the threshold of renewed disorder. This is among the richest structural tensions in the canon: the only hexagram in which all lines stand in their proper places is also the one most obviously unstable, poised on the edge of dissolution. In the Homeric-linguistic tradition, explored by Autenrieth and Benveniste, completion belongs to a cluster of Greek and Indo-European roots — telos, krainein, anuein — that embed the concept within divine sanction, sovereign authorization, and cosmic fulfillment rather than mere human accomplishment. Zhuangzi’s Taoist corpus complicates the idea further, treating completeness and impairment as mutually constitutive rather than opposed. The depth-psychological dimension proper — individuation as a movement toward wholeness — is adumbrated in Spiegelman’s reading of the Oxherding Pictures, where circular return to ordinary life on a richer level of consciousness figures completion not as terminus but as enriched re-entry. The clinical literature (Levine, Payne, Heller) reframes completion as the discharge of arrested biological sequences, returning the traumatized organism to the interrupted arc of its own self-protective response. Across these traditions, Completion is consistently relational, paradoxical, and processual rather than final.
AFTER COMPLETION means making firm. This hexagram is the only one in which all the lines stand in their proper places. It is the hexagram of transition from T’ai, PEACE (11) to P’i, STANDSTILL (12).
Wilhelm identifies After Completion as the sole hexagram of perfect structural order, but simultaneously as the hinge into stagnation — completion as unstable equilibrium rather than resolved endpoint.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950thesis
AFTER COMPLETION means making firm. This hexagram is the only one in which all the lines stand in their proper places. It is the hexagram of transition from T’ai, PEACE (11) to P’i, STANDSTILL (12).
The Wilhelm/Baynes text establishes the paradox central to this term: perfect completion contains within itself the seed of disorder, making the concept structurally dynamic rather than terminal.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950thesis
BEFORE COMPLETION. Success. For the yielding attains the middle. Things cannot exhaust themselves. Hence there follows, at the end, the hexagram of BEFORE COMPLETION.
The companion hexagram to After Completion posits that incompleteness is itself the generative principle, ensuring that things cannot exhaust themselves — completion and its absence form a continuous cycle.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950thesis
BEFORE COMPLETION is the exhaustion of the masculine. This hexagram is at once the inverse and the opposite of the preceding one.
Before Completion is defined through its structural inversion of After Completion, affirming that the two states of completion are dialectically inseparable and mutually defining.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950thesis
re’Xos, eoc: end in the sense of completion, sum, consummation, fulfilment; perfect ‘state’ of affairs; TiXoc Oavdroio, periphrasis for Bavaroq (the idea concretely expressed).
The Homeric lexicon grounds completion in the Greek telos — not mere ending but consummation, perfect state, and fulfillment — extending the concept into death itself as ultimate completion.
, Homeric Dictionarythesis
Their dividedness is their completeness; their completeness is their impairment. No thing is either complete or impaired, but all are made into one again.
Zhuangzi deconstructs the opposition between completion and impairment, arguing that completeness and incompleteness are perspectival rather than ontological, and that the Way dissolves both categories.
, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, 2013thesis
The process referred to by the verb always has a god as its agent or a royal personage or some supernatural power. And this process consists in a ‘sanction’ and in an act of approval, which alone makes a measure capable of execution.
Benveniste’s analysis of the Greek verb krainein reveals that completion in the archaic Indo-European sense is not human accomplishment but divine authorization — a sanction that enables a wish or action to reach fulfillment.
, Indo European Language and Society, 1973supporting
It is not fated that Moira should accomplish (krānai) these things in this way; The curse of his father Kronos will be accomplished then entirely.
Benveniste demonstrates that completion in Greek tragedy is governed by Moira and divine decree, embedding the concept within fate and cosmic order rather than individual agency.
, Indo European Language and Society, 1973supporting
With this last picture, the development of the ego reverts to ordinary life depicted in the first picture but on a richer level of consciousness. Psychologically speaking, the circle symbolizes the temenos, the magic circle, or the protective function of the Self.
Spiegelman’s Jungian reading of the Oxherding Pictures presents psychic completion as circular return — the Self completed not at a terminus but through a renewed, enriched engagement with ordinary life.
, Buddhism and Jungian Psychology, 1985supporting
But now can you let yourself do what you couldn’t do then; give yourself all the time you need… that’s—
In somatic trauma therapy, completion refers to the belated fulfillment of an interrupted defensive action — the body is guided to complete what trauma prevented, restoring the disrupted biological arc.
, Somatic experiencing: using interoception and proprioception as core elements of trauma therapy, 2015supporting
Activity, energeia, is the coming-forth of that good condition from its state of concealment or mere potentiality; it is its flourishing or blooming. Without that the good condition is seriously incomplete.
Nussbaum’s Aristotelian analysis equates completion with actualization — energeia as the emergence of latent virtue into lived activity — arguing that a potential good not enacted remains seriously incomplete.
, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986supporting
avw, complete; pass. vtip avvaai, ‘draws to a close’; bring to an end, accomplish.
The Homeric lexicon records multiple terms for completion as accomplished action and temporal closure, establishing the semantic field within which depth-psychological uses of the term operate.
, Homeric Dictionarysupporting
By evening he had completed the First Elegy. This he transcribed and immediately sent to Princess Marie… Intuitively realizing that the process of incubation and birthing would be long and hard.
Stein’s account of Rilke’s creative process illustrates completion as partial and iterative — the First Elegy completed in one evening, the full sequence requiring years — modeling individuation’s non-linear character.
, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998aside