Metamorphosis

Childhood (a first caterpillar stage) culminates in a metamorphosis during adolescence… This is a second caterpillar stage. It culminates in the midlife metamorphosis, which gives birth to the true self.

Stein articulates a schema of two (or three) major metamorphoses in the lifespan — adolescence and midlife — each marking a structural discontinuity in psychic identity analogous to the caterpillar-to-butterfly transformation.

Stein, Murray, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998thesis

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While the moltings are lesser metamorphoses, in themselves they also constitute crises. During each molting, the larva is left vulnerable until a new protective coat grows around it.

Stein uses the biology of larval molting to argue that metamorphosis is a graduated series of increasingly radical crises, each involving a period of dangerous vulnerability before new psychic structure is established.

Stein, Murray, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998thesis

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What is at stake in metamorphosis is therefore wholly this: either, the soul having succeeded in separating itself, the man of light effects conjunction with his guide of light… or else the soul succumbs to its darkness.

Corbin defines metamorphosis within Sufi mysticism as a binary spiritual outcome — the soul either achieves luminous conjunction with its celestial witness or remains bound to its demonic shadow.

Corbin, Henry, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 1971thesis

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the divinization, too, that was the meaning of his metamorphosis (identification with Artemis), would have remained incomplete, even unreal. Now Artemis truly transmitted herself to him, he is her embodiment and no longer an existing being vis-à-vis her.

Giegerich argues that Actaeon’s mythic metamorphosis is only completed through dismemberment, establishing that genuine soul-transformation requires the dissolution of the personal ontological standpoint, not merely identification with a divine image.

Giegerich, Wolfgang, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020thesis

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the pupa has been described as ‘a complete introvert.’ There is almost no exchange of substances with the environment and only minimal respiration by diffusion through the spiracles.

Stein maps the pupal stage onto the psychological concept of liminality, arguing that radical introversion and cessation of exchange with the environment characterize the transformative midpoint of metamorphosis.

Stein, Murray, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998thesis

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Piktor, whose name suggests both imagemaker and victor, receives a new name and discovers ‘the truth of eternal metamorphosis, because he had been changed from a half to a whole.’

Miller draws on Hesse’s Piktor narrative to frame metamorphosis as the psyche’s alchemical movement from incompleteness to wholeness, mediated by imaginative-poetic consciousness.

Miller, David L., Achelous and the Butterfly: Toward an Archetypal Psychology of Humor, 1973thesis

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To pass from one form of love to another implies the metamorphosis of the subject, of the ‘ashiq. This is what the entire doctrine of Ruzbehan and that of Najm Kobra are intended to indicate.

Corbin locates metamorphosis in Sufi mystical doctrine as a transformation of the loving subject itself, not merely of the object of love, dissolving apparent paradoxes of ecstatic devotion.

Corbin, Henry, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 1971thesis

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Transformation of the larva into the mushy disintegrated pupa does not always occur immediately after entering into the cocoon. The larva can live intact inside the cocoon in a state of profound introversion for weeks or months.

Stein details the biological mechanism of diapause — suspended transformation — as an analog for the psyche’s capacity to hold the tension of dissolution without immediate resolution.

Stein, Murray, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998supporting

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The change that now transforms the caterpillar into a pupa is of far greater magnitude than any other molts it has undergone previously. This is the big one. Entirely new structur—

Stein distinguishes the major metamorphic crisis — pupation — from lesser moltings, arguing that midlife transformation is qualitatively discontinuous with earlier developmental changes.

Stein, Murray, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998supporting

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the final emergence of the adult is lightning fast. It may take only fifteen minutes… At the end there is the emergence of the new form, a butterfly, which, in the dream, after drying out and trying its wings, becomes the dreamer-as-human again.

Stein correlates the sudden, brief final emergence of the butterfly with the dream-process of transformation, suggesting that the culminating moment of metamorphosis is rapid relative to the prolonged period of interior restructuring.

Stein, Murray, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998supporting

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I would like to draw attention to some surprising and instructive points of contact between his life as a whole and that of Jung, to begin establishing a platform upon which to build the argument… analogy of the butterfly’s metamorphosis as a model to help understand what was going on in Rilke’s deeply introverted personality.

Stein applies the metamorphosis model to Rilke’s creative and psychological development, using Jung’s life as a comparative theoretical scaffold for understanding midlife transformation.

Stein, Murray, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998supporting

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there are two major metamorphoses in the life cycle: the first in adolescence, when we become fully sexual; the second in adulthood, when the self unfolds fully.

Stein cites Jung’s own caterpillar-butterfly metaphor to confirm a two-stage model of metamorphosis across the lifespan, grounding his schema in Jungian precedent.

Stein, Murray, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998supporting

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we find that Picasso, like Rembrandt, achieved a full metamorphosis, but the kind of imago he became is very different from that which Rembrandt embodied.

Stein extends the metamorphosis framework to the study of artists’ lives, arguing that imago formation — the self’s full emergence — constitutes genuine metamorphosis whose outcome is uniquely shaped by historical-cultural context.

Stein, Murray, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998supporting

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the Steps portray a psychological journey which includes the metamorphosis of both humans and gods alike, representative of each of us individually as we embark upon a similar quest that Jung took, to discover a myth of expanding consciousness for ourselves.

Peterson identifies metamorphosis as a structural element of the Twelve Steps’ mythopoetic psychology, positioning it as a contemporary vehicle for the individuation journey Jung traced in ancient myth.

Peterson, Cody, The Shadow of a Figure of Light, 2024supporting

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The stag-metamorphosis recalls the ‘untouchable’ precinct on Mount Lykaion: all who entered were forthwith regarded as stags to be hunted and killed.

Burkert situates stag-metamorphosis in Greek sacrificial ritual as a mythic mechanism by which transgression of sacred boundaries transforms the human into hunted prey, linking metamorphosis to archaic notions of pollution and death.

Burkert, Walter, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, 1972supporting

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He changes the mundane and inert into the transcendent and spiritual. A window is not only a window after the poet has named it with intensity… He has induced a transformation from profane to sacred, from object to symbol.

Stein treats Rilke’s poetic practice as a mode of symbolic metamorphosis — the transformation of profane objects into sacred symbols — analogous to the inner metamorphosis of the self.

Stein, Murray, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998aside

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Death consists of the miracle of transformation into a new form of existence. Death is for me the gate to a new birth, and the breaking-through of the transcendental realm into our empirical existence.

Edinger cites Frey’s account of death as total psychic metamorphosis — dissolution of ego-body and simultaneous birth of a new mode of being — as an instance of the greater sublimatio.

Edinger, Edward F., Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy, 1985aside

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