Psychization names the process by which instinctual, somatic, or outer-world stimuli are taken up into and modified by the psyche, thereby acquiring psychological form, meaning, and symbolic valence. The term enters depth-psychological discourse primarily through Jung, who employs it in two distinct but related registers. In the first, most technical sense, psychization designates the interference that psychic processes exert upon raw instinctual discharge: the reflex arc is ‘bent back’ (reflexio), and the impulse, instead of being blindly acted out, is drawn into psychic elaboration, generating reflection, symbol, and the specifically human instinct Jung calls the creative drive. In the second, more phenomenological register—developed with equal force by Erich Neumann—psychization describes what primitive consciousness performs upon the external world: objects are experienced as saturated with inner, psychic content, such that the boundary between inside and outside dissolves into symbolic participation. Hillman inherits both valences, reading psychization as the condition of possibility for genuine creativity: every instinct, including the creative one, must be subject to psychic modification before it becomes humanly significant. The term therefore anchors a central depth-psychological claim—that the specifically human emerges precisely at the threshold where biology is taken into soul.
In reality there is a ‘psychization’ of the object: everything outside us is experienced symbolically, as though saturated with a content which we co-ordinate with the psyche as something psychic or spiritual.
Neumann defines psychization as the primitive mind’s attribution of inner psychic content to outer material objects, producing symbolic experience rather than literal perception.
, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis
Reflexio means ‘bending back’ and, used psychologically, would denote the fact that the reflex which carries the stimulus over into its instinctive discharge is interfered with by psychization.
Jung identifies psychization as the mechanism by which the straightforward instinctual reflex is interrupted and redirected inward, making reflection and symbolic processing possible.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960thesis
If we accept the hypothesis of a creative instinct, then this instinct, too, must be subject to psychization. Like other drives, it can be modified by the psyche and be subject to interrelation and contamination with sexuality, say, or activity.
Hillman extends Jung’s framework by arguing that the creative instinct, like all drives, necessarily undergoes psychization and is thereby susceptible to psychological modification and cross-contamination.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972thesis
We might say that they suffered, as we are suffering, disturbances in the psychization of the creative drive.
Hillman reframes the general neurosis of modern life as a disturbance in the psychization of the creative instinct, linking cultural pathology to the failure of this transformative process.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972thesis
The so-called creative genius may have a more direct and uncomplicated relation to his instinct; he may have special constitutional talents which facilitate psychization.
Hillman argues that what distinguishes creative individuals is not a separate psychology but a constitutional facility for psychization, making the process more accessible rather than qualitatively different.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972supporting
There is, firstly, the unconscious ‘psychization’ of the body and the consequent symbolic significance of its various parts and regions; secondly, a preponderance of metabolic symbolism.
Neumann identifies an archaic, unconscious psychization of the body itself within the uroboric phase, where somatic processes acquire inherent symbolic meaning prior to differentiated ego consciousness.
, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019supporting
These three factors are understood primarily as physiological data, but they are also psychological inasmuch as, like the instincts, they are subject to psychization.
Jung extends psychization beyond instincts proper to encompass physiological determinants such as sex, age, and hereditary disposition, all of which acquire psychological superstructures through the same process.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960supporting
introjection, 127, 204, 336, 350–51, 353, 358, 388, 415; and exteriorization, 272–73; and psychization, 338–40
Neumann’s index couples psychization directly with introjection, indicating that the volume treats the two as systematically related operations in the development of consciousness.
, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019supporting
psychization, 115
The index of Jung’s Structure and Dynamics locates psychization at a single page reference, confirming its status as a defined technical term within that volume.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960aside
the immediate determining factor is not the ectopsychic instinct but the structure resulting from the interaction of instinct and the psychic situation of the moment. The determining factor would thus be a modified instinct.
Jung articulates the conceptual ground for psychization by distinguishing the raw ectopsychic instinct from the modified instinct that results from its encounter with the psychic situation—precisely what psychization produces.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960supporting