The term ‘stage’ occupies a structural and developmental role throughout the depth-psychology corpus, functioning simultaneously as a descriptive unit of psychic process, a normative marker of progress, and a philosophical problem. Jung himself organized analytic work into four successive stages—confession, elucidation, education, and transformation—each linked to a different therapeutic lineage and culminating in individuation. Parallel to this clinical schema, Jung mapped four stages of the Eros cult (Eve, Helen, Mary, Sophia), offering a developmental typology of the anima. Post-Jungian writers such as Edinger ground the concept in alchemical operations, where stages of the opus—nigredo, albedo, rubedo—correspond to stages of psychic transformation. Neumann employs stage-thinking to chart the evolution of consciousness from matriarchal to patriarchal to individuated modes. In the addiction and recovery literature, stage-models proliferate: Schoen articulates five stages of addiction development; Morrison maps six dream-stages of recovery; Fowler and Peck supply faith-development stages that Mathieu applies to spiritual bypass. The concept is not without tension: Dogen’s Zen critique, mediated through Cooper, challenges any linear staging of enlightenment, insisting that practice and realization are non-sequential. This polarity—stage as necessary developmental scaffold versus stage as reductive linearization of organic psychic life—defines the central argumentative divide the corpus presents.
The fourth stage is that of transformation. It is in this stage that Jung’s stress on the involvement of the analyst becomes most pertinent… it is, therefore, the stage of analysis most concerned with individuation.
Samuels maps Jung’s four-stage model of analytic treatment, identifying transformation as the culminating stage most directly linked to individuation and the analyst’s own participation.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis
Four stages were known even in the late classical period: Hawwah (Eve), Helen (of Troy), the Virgin Mary, and Sophia… we are dealing with the heterosexual Eros- or anima-figure in four stages, and consequently with four stages of the Eros cult.
Jung articulates a four-stage developmental typology of the anima, moving from purely biological to spiritual and sophianic forms of relatedness.
, The Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and Other Subjects, 1954thesis
Schoen (2020) delineated five stages of the development of an addiction: (1) ‘the ego/persona identification alignment with the false self,’ (2) ‘the development of the personal shadow,’ (3) ‘the introduction of the potentially addictive behavior,’
Dennett summarizes Schoen’s five-stage archetypal model of addiction development, grounded in Jungian concepts of ego, persona, and shadow.
, Individuation in Addiction Recovery: An Archetypal Astrological Perspective, 2025thesis
In sharp contrast to the ‘stages’ approach… Dogen asserts an insistent critique of any practice that entails or elaborates a linear progression of stages… ‘Not accompanied by the ten thousand things, what stages could there be?’
Cooper presents Dogen’s subitist critique of stage-models as antithetical to authentic practice, insisting that enlightenment and practice are non-dual and resist sequential linearization.
, Zen Insight, Psychoanalytic Action: Two Arrows Meeting, 2019thesis
He presents a general theoretical view of certain types of dreams appearing at six progressive stages of recovery, which he believes can be tracked and assessed. He gives these six stages literary and mythological titles.
Schoen reports Morrison’s system of six mythologically titled dream-stages mapped onto progressive phases of addiction recovery, demonstrating depth-psychological staging of the healing process.
, The War of the Gods in Addiction: C.G. Jung, Alcoholics Anonymous and Archetypal Evil, 2020thesis
Another aspect of Stage 1 is the development of self-awareness and imagination. One begins to draw on personal experiences, as well as stories about religion and God, to create a comprehensive image of the world.
Mathieu applies Fowler’s faith-development stage model to spiritual bypass in recovery, showing how Stage 1 faith functions psychologically as early ego-building through imaginative and religious narrative.
, Recovering Spirituality: Achieving Emotional Sobriety in Your Spiritual Practice, 2011supporting
Stage 6 is simply called universalizing. Fowler describes this stage as involving a ‘disciplined, activist incarnation—a making real and tangible—of the imperatives of absolute love and justice.’
Mathieu describes Fowler’s universalizing Stage 6 as the apex of faith development, noting that even at this advanced stage spiritual bypass remains possible.
, Recovering Spirituality: Achieving Emotional Sobriety in Your Spiritual Practice, 2011supporting
Individuals in Peck’s Stage II have very clear boundaries, a sense of right and wrong, and knowledge of what to believe and what not to believe… people in Stage II often feel threatened if anyone questions their faith.
Mathieu shows how Peck’s formal-institutional Stage II corresponds to a rigid, externally located faith structure that renders individuals susceptible to spiritual bypass.
, Recovering Spirituality: Achieving Emotional Sobriety in Your Spiritual Practice, 2011supporting
Jung believed this fourth stage to be an extremely dangerous state of affairs for the obvious reason that an inflated ego is unable to adapt very well to the environment and so is liable to make catastrophic errors in judgment.
Stein identifies Jung’s fourth stage of ego-development—radical inflation and the loss of any authority beyond the ego—as culturally pervasive and psychologically dangerous.
, Jung’s Map of the Soul: An Introduction, 1998supporting
The treatment thus fits what has been described as first-stage therapy for each of the disorders. Experts within the PTSD and substance abuse fields have independently described an extremely similar first stage of treatment.
Najavits grounds Seeking Safety within a cross-diagnostic first-stage treatment paradigm, establishing safety as the foundational phase preceding deeper trauma work.
, Seeking Safety: A Treatment Manual for PTSD and Substance Abuse, 2002supporting
The opus magnum had two aims: the rescue of the human soul and the salvation of the cosmos…. Right at the beginning you meet the ‘dragon,’ the chthonic spirit… and this encounter produces suffering.
Edinger, citing Jung, frames the alchemical opus as a staged dramatic process whose initial encounter with the nigredo constitutes the archetypal first stage of psychic transformation.
, Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy, 1985supporting
The mystic enters the first valley, following an itinerary the successive stages of which are marked by the visualization of colored lights, leading him to the seventh valley, the valley of ‘black light.’
Corbin describes the Iranian Sufi mystical itinerary as a sequence of photismic stages, each marked by specific colored lights, constituting a depth-phenomenology of spiritual ascent.
, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 1971supporting
Sublimatio and coagulatio are thus repeated alternately, again and again. Psychologically, circulatio is the repeated circuit of all aspects of one’s being, which gradually generates awareness of a transpersonal center.
Edinger describes circulatio as a non-linear, recursive alternation between alchemical stages, complicating any strictly sequential reading of the opus.
, Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy, 1985supporting
Scoring employs explicit staging criteria to assign each interview judgment to a specific level of moral development.
Damasio references Kohlberg’s moral development staging criteria as an empirical instrument, illustrating how stage-models function operationally in neuropsychological research.
, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, 1994aside
The body plan is formed during the course of early development and arises at the so-called phylotypic stage, the earliest stage at which the distinguishing features of the body plan are present.
Thompson employs the biological concept of the phylotypic stage to discuss developmental conservation across evolutionary lineages, offering a life-science analog to psychic stage-thinking.
, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, 2007aside