Returning occupies a structurally foundational position across the depth-psychology corpus, appearing not as simple repetition but as the dynamic ground of renewal, restoration, and cyclical selfhood. The I Ching tradition, represented by Liu I-ming, Ritsema and Karcher, Huang, and Cleary, treats Returning (Hexagram 24, Fu) as the pivotal cosmological moment when yang re-emerges from yin exhaustion — a movement that must be neither forced nor missed, but recognized and gathered at the precise instant of its appearance. Here Returning is ontological: the recovery of primordial nature from its occlusion by acquired conditioning. Clarissa Pinkola Estés translates this cosmological rhythm into depth-psychological terms, theorizing Returning as the indispensable feminine cycle of soul-replenishment — the periodic retreat to soul-home that restores instinctual vitality depleted by life in the outer world. For Estés, this cycle is not optional but constitutive of psychic health, as reflexive to women’s nature as respiration. James Hillman introduces the dimension of temporal longing, connecting Returning to the mythic archetype of Eternal Return: figures from the personal past reappear in old age not as mere nostalgia but as psyche’s insistence on unfinished essences. These three positions — cosmological, instinctual-ecological, and archetypal-temporal — form the major axes of the corpus. The operative tension runs between Returning as disciplined receptivity (one must prepare and wait) and Returning as urgent necessity (delay is pathology).
This great cycle of going and returning, going and returning, is reflexive within the instinctual nature of women and is innate to all women for all their lives
Estés frames returning as a biologically and psychically innate rhythmic cycle — not a chosen act but an instinctual necessity — through which women replenish their psychic reserves depleted by life in the outer world.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017thesis
it is not to be forcibly sought before the proper time, and should not be missed once the time has come. Only then can one find the real.
Liu I-ming establishes that Returning to original nature requires precise timing — neither premature effort nor inattention — and that the living potential enabling return appears briefly and must be seized.
, The Taoist I Ching, 1986thesis
Returning not far, the human mentality does not arise, the mind of Tao is always present, and there is naturally no regret. If you can be careful in the beginning, it naturally turns out well.
Cleary and Liu Yiming articulate that early, uncorrupted return — before the human ego-mind has displaced the Tao-mind — is the most auspicious form, requiring vigilance at inception rather than remediation later.
, The Taoist I Ching, 1986thesis
Why do they return? What do they call you toward by coming back at this too-late hour? In fact, what is ‘return,’ which plays such a part in last years?
Hillman situates Returning within the psychology of aging, arguing that figures from the past re-emerge in later life not as mere nostalgia but as expressions of the myth of Eternal Return calling the soul toward unfinished beauty.
, The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life, 1999thesis
RETURNING: Spring, YUAN: source, origin, head; great, excellent; arise, begin, generating power; first stage of the Time Cycle.
Ritsema and Karcher’s technical gloss reveals that Returning in the I Ching is semantically fused with originary creative power and the beginning of a new temporal cycle, not mere repetition.
, I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, 1994thesis
Home is where a thought or feeling can be sustained instead of being interrupted or torn away from us because something else is demanding our time and attention.
Estés defines the destination of Returning — the soul-home — as an internal condition of sustained attention and wholeness, not merely a physical location, accessible through intentional solitude.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting
When we are overdue for home, our eyes have nothing to sparkle for, our bones are weary, it is as though our nerve sheaths are unwrapped, and we can no longer focus on who or what we are about.
Estés describes the somatic and psychic symptomatology of delayed Returning — loss of vitality, perceptual dulling, directionlessness — as diagnostic markers indicating the urgency of soul-home return.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting
Returning to the energy germinating within prepares and opens a new field of activity… Actively returning to the starting point is contrasted with the quiet receptivity of field.
Ritsema and Karcher distinguish Returning as an active, yang-germinating movement that initiates new cycles, explicitly contrasting it with passive receptivity and situating it at the threshold of creative emergence.
, I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, 1994supporting
going home does not necessarily cost money. It costs time. It costs a strong act of will to say ‘I am going’ and mean it.
Estés insists that Returning demands intentional volitional commitment — not material resources — and must be accorded the same priority as genuine crisis, or it will perpetually be deferred.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting
How often is it needed? Far more often if you are a ‘sensitive’ and are very active in the outer world. Less so if you have thick skin and are not so ‘out there.’
Estés relativizes the frequency of required Returning to individual constitution and the intensity of one’s engagement with outer life, making it a variable but universally necessary rhythm.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting
9.1a/b Returning originating-from tao.
This hexagram annotation explicitly equates Returning with originating from the Tao, grounding the movement of return in cosmological source rather than mere cyclical repetition.
, I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, 1994supporting
To live this way is a cycle in itself, one meant to go on, go on, go on.
Estés frames the cycle of soulful expression and Returning as self-perpetuating and endless, an ongoing vocation rather than a remedial intervention.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting
The return to the wildish state periodically is what replenishes her psychic reserves for her projects, family, relationships, and creative life in the topside world.
Estés theorizes periodic Returning to the wildish state as the primary mechanism of psychic replenishment, the energic basis making sustained outer-world engagement possible.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting
It is not the literal return to alchemy that is necessary but a restoration of the alchemical mode of imagining.
Hillman differentiates literal Returning from restorative re-animation of a mode of perception, implicitly theorizing return as imaginative repossession rather than historical recovery.
, Alchemical Psychology, 2010aside
the primary missing resource, that of feeling safe, must be addressed, often by returning to practicing the regulatory actions and somatic resources described in previous chapters.
Ogden employs Returning in a clinical-somatic register as the therapeutic practice of revisiting foundational regulatory resources when trauma impedes new learning.
, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015aside