Jung and the Meaning of Life

Paper Summary:

This paper introduces Carl Gustav Jung's view of the meaning of life according to the person achieving individuation, awareness of the spirit and its relationship to others, whether in the collective unconscious, or simply an understanding of one's own spiritual nature. The paper shows that the problems of modernity for Jung to produce a sense of Meaninglessness had to do with Western man's loss of connection to the divine, as encouraged by industrialism, science, secularism, and ways of living that 'cut off' human beings from their natural, rather magical condition.

From the Paper:

"For Carl Gustav Jung, the meaning of life was very much a case of what the individual could learn about the self in relation to a spiritual or psychic mass phenomenon in the collective unconscious. The person who becomes aware of her or his soul in relation to Humanity, from there, will have no difficulty in knowing how to live life, and problems to do with meaning, or the lack of meaning, will disappear. The journey of discovery that is involved, Jung referred to as a process of individuation."

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