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Individuation: Why Bother?

hartley_eight_bells_folly

Individuation: Why Bother?

Mark & Carol The Editors, June 3, 2013

Marsden Hartley, Eight Bells FollyIndividuation (which, within the conceptual framework of the type model, is essentially synonymous with ‘type development’) is usually unpleasant, and a positive outcome is far from guaranteed. So why do so many regard it as the psychic purpose of human existence? Why do we do it? What drives us to it? What has been your experience?

In this issue of Personality Type in Depth, Byron Almen uses a movie as illustration of just how traumatic and painful psychic growth can be, and of how an individual can be pulled inexorably into that journey ‘in spite of themselves.’ Are we all really doomed to undergo such trauma? If so, why? What is so unacceptable about remaining as we are?

Marlowe Embree’s article hints at some possible social consequences of type limitations. What social, political, and personal consequences do you see?


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Marsden Hartley, “Eight Bells Folly” (1933)


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Mark & Carol The Editors

Mark & Carol The Editors

Editors Carol Shumate, Ph.D., ENFP, and Mark Hunziker, INTJ, founded Personality Type in Depth as a forum to bridge psychological type and depth psychology. Both editors are themselves writers and they work together virtually, from North Carolina and Vermont respectively. Shumate's career has been in journalism, publishing, and higher education, while Hunziker's has been primarily in organization development consulting. Shumate's current project is a book on the Trickster archetype in leadership, and Hunziker's is about depth typology, a term he has coined for the interface of the two fields.

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