The depth-psychology corpus approaches ‘Progress’ with sustained ambivalence, refusing the Enlightenment’s confident linear narrative and probing instead the psychological conditions under which genuine forward movement becomes possible — or impossible. Several distinct positions emerge. The Taoist I Ching tradition, through Liu I-ming and the Wilhelm-Baynes rendering, frames progress as inherently gradual (chien), requiring patience, correct inner alignment, and the willingness to stop: ‘gradual progress means going slowly, not rushing.’ This stands in pointed contrast to Western teleological models, where progress is measured against time and accumulation. Jung and his school complicate the picture further by insisting that what appears as regression — the backward pull of libido into unconscious contents — is a precondition, not an obstacle, to authentic forward movement. Hillman extends this by arguing that history itself is a psychological phenomenon circling in the soul rather than advancing along an external axis. Epictetus offers a Stoic diagnostic: progress in outward skill and progress in governance of the self are categorically distinct, and confusing them guarantees failure in both. Hillman’s reading of Enlightenment as a recurring archetypal phenomenon, forever shadowed and never complete, places the idea of progress under the sign of the soul’s inherent incompleteness. Across these traditions, the corpus consistently warns that premature or coercive forward movement — symbolised by the goat entangled in the hedge — produces its own arrests.
This is gradual progress in which strength and flexibility merge.
Liu I-ming defines authentic progress as the slow integration of strength and receptivity, culminating in spiritual completion rather than external conquest.
, The Taoist I Ching, 1986thesis
Gradual progress means going slowly, not rushing. As for the qualities of the hexagram, above is wind , entering, and below is mountain , still: Staying in the proper place and slowly entering, therefore it is called gradual progress.
The Taoist I Ching establishes ‘gradual progress’ as a structured hexagram principle requiring stillness below and gentle penetration above, thereby defining progress as orderly, patient, and internally grounded.
, The Taoist I Ching, 1986thesis
At the end of gradual progress, strength and flexibility are completely digested; having climbed from low to high, and gradually progressed to where no further progression is possible, the spiritual embryo is completely developed.
Progress in Taoist alchemy terminates not in endless advance but in the completion and rest of the ‘spiritual embryo,’ implying that progress has a natural ceiling beyond which further movement becomes inappropriate.
, The Taoist I Ching, 1986thesis
having climbed from low to high, and gradually progressed to where no further progression is possible, the spiritual embryo is completely developed.
The Cleary rendering reinforces that genuine progress culminates in a state of fullness and rest, explicitly rejecting the notion of indefinite forward movement.
, The Taoist I Ching, 1986supporting
in what respect was the progress greater then? For in that in which it has now been more cultivated, in that also the progress will now be found. At present it has been cultivated for the purpose of resolving syllogisms, and progress is made. But in former times it was cultivated for the purpose of maintaining the governing faculty in a condition conformable to nature.
Epictetus diagnoses the confusion of intellectual progress (syllogistic refinement) with moral progress (governance of the ruling faculty), arguing that conflating these distinct registers guarantees failure in both.
, Discourses, 108thesis
regression leads to the necessity of adapting to the inner world of the psyche.
Jung argues that what appears as backward movement — regression — is a prerequisite for psychological progress, since it compels the conscious mind to engage the inner world it has been evading.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960thesis
In the Ladder, humans must make progress. The triad defines the trajectory—three points a path—of progress toward divine and heavenly existence.
Within the Christian ascetic tradition represented by Climacus and Evagrius, progress is a structured, triadic spiritual trajectory moving from fundamental through practical to contemplative virtues.
, Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus, 2003supporting
Soul is necessarily shadowed, its enlightenment never accomplished.
Hillman subverts progressive Enlightenment models by asserting that the soul’s shadowed nature ensures that illumination — and by extension progress — is always incomplete and recurrent.
, Alchemical Psychology, 2010supporting
Progress depends on it, evolution requires it, measurements, without which we would have no physical sciences, are based on it.
Hillman identifies time-bound linear progress as a distinctly Western conceptual habit that depth psychology must interrogate by offering non-chronological models of soul development.
, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996supporting
Protagoras’s story of human progress over tuche. What techne does he teach, and how does it make progress with our problems?
Nussbaum situates the philosophical hope for progress in the ancient antithesis between techne and tuche, framing progress as the aspiration of rational art to overcome the contingency of fortune.
, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986supporting
If we can let go of fear, doubt, and distrust, progress will be made.
Anthony reads the I Ching’s ‘Keeping Still’ hexagram as a psychological teaching: progress requires not striving but the release of obstructing emotional patterns.
, A Guide to the I Ching, 1988supporting
The irreversible linear character of time and its cyclical aspect.
Von Franz frames the tension between linear and cyclical models of time as foundational to any depth-psychological account of progress, noting that most pre-modern cultures privileged the cycle over the arrow.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014supporting
When people’s motivation reaches a threshold of readiness, the balance tips and they begin thinking and talking more about when and how to change and less about whether and why.
Miller applies a clinical model of progress to therapeutic change, describing readiness as a tipping-point phenomenon rather than a steady linear advance.
, Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change, Third Edition, 2013aside
The pervasive and persisting expectation that history will end once and for all in a new heaven and new earth is unique to Judeo-Christian civilization, and it has had a powerful and irremissive effect in forming secular as well as religious thinking.
Abrams traces the secular ideology of progress to its Judeo-Christian apocalyptic roots, suggesting that millennial expectation is the theological engine driving Western progressive imagination.
, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature, 1971aside