---
slug: samuels-individuation-19600e17
title: "Samuels on Individuation"
author: "Andrew Samuels"
work: "Jung and the Post-Jungians"
section: ""
year: "1985"
tradition: jungian-core
themes:
  - individuation
fragment: |
  The essence of individuation is the achievement of a personal blend between the collective and universal on the one hand, and, on the other, the unique and individual. It is a process, not a state; save for the possibility of regarding death as an ultimate goal, individuation is never completed and remains an ideal concept. The form the individuation process takes, its style and the regularity or fitfulness of it, depends on the individual. Nevertheless, certain images express the kernel of the individuation process; for example, a journey, death and rebirth, and symbols of initiation. Jung found parallels in alchemy. Base elements (the instincts, the ego) are transformed into gold (the self).
lead_in: ""
reflection: |
  Samuels is careful here, and the carefulness matters. Individuation is a process, not a state — meaning it has no arrival point, no condition in which the work is finished and you can set it down. That precision quietly dismantles one of the more common uses the concept gets put to: individuation as the name for a journey toward wholeness, toward a self that is finally integrated, finally at rest. The alchemical parallel Samuels inherits from Jung is almost too vivid in this regard — base elements transmuted into gold. Gold does not continue to transmute. It sits there, finished, gleaming.
  
  What Jung actually found in alchemy, when you follow the *opus* closely, is less a metallurgy of achievement than a sustained engagement with the prima materia that keeps returning to its unresolved state. The gold is a symbol, not a destination. The individuation process mirrors that: the "blend" between collective and individual is never a settled ratio but something renegotiated at each threshold. What the passage discloses, almost in spite of its tidiness, is that the soul does not graduate. The form individuation takes — regular, fitful, recognizable, utterly strange — is already its substance, not a path toward some other substance waiting at the end.
reflection_v0_3: |
  The alchemical metaphor earns more scrutiny than it usually gets. Base elements transformed into gold sounds like a story of improvement — dross becoming precious — but alchemy was never simply about upgrading materials. The alchemist expected to be changed alongside the substance; the vas, the vessel, had to hold both. Samuels inherits this complication when he frames individuation as a "personal blend" rather than a triumph of the higher over the lower. The ego is not discarded on the way to the self; it is one of the base elements, present throughout, altered in proportion. What holds the tension in Samuels's account is that word "blend" — not resolution, not synthesis, but something more like a seasoning, where nothing disappears entirely. The journey images he lists all carry the same structure: you do not return from them as someone who has left the old self behind, but as someone who has finally met it.
parent_id: Samuels_1985_Jung_and_the_Post-Jungians__par0081
source: oracle-v3-retrieve
generated: 2026-04-17
regenerated: 2026-04-18
prompt_version: v2.7
status: draft
---

Samuels writes:

> The essence of individuation is the achievement of a personal blend between the collective and universal on the one hand, and, on the other, the unique and individual. It is a process, not a state; save for the possibility of regarding death as an ultimate goal, individuation is never completed and remains an ideal concept. The form the individuation process takes, its style and the regularity or fitfulness of it, depends on the individual. Nevertheless, certain images express the kernel of the individuation process; for example, a journey, death and rebirth, and symbols of initiation. Jung found parallels in alchemy. Base elements (the instincts, the ego) are transformed into gold (the self).

— Andrew Samuels

Samuels is careful here, and the carefulness matters. Individuation is a process, not a state — meaning it has no arrival point, no condition in which the work is finished and you can set it down. That precision quietly dismantles one of the more common uses the concept gets put to: individuation as the name for a journey toward wholeness, toward a self that is finally integrated, finally at rest. The alchemical parallel Samuels inherits from Jung is almost too vivid in this regard — base elements transmuted into gold. Gold does not continue to transmute. It sits there, finished, gleaming.

What Jung actually found in alchemy, when you follow the *opus* closely, is less a metallurgy of achievement than a sustained engagement with the prima materia that keeps returning to its unresolved state. The gold is a symbol, not a destination. The individuation process mirrors that: the "blend" between collective and individual is never a settled ratio but something renegotiated at each threshold. What the passage discloses, almost in spite of its tidiness, is that the soul does not graduate. The form individuation takes — regular, fitful, recognizable, utterly strange — is already its substance, not a path toward some other substance waiting at the end.

---

Andrew Samuels · *Jung and the Post-Jungians* · 1985