ABSTRACT

What is the best way to understand the narratives of self-identity at the beginning of the 21st century? This interdisciplinary collection brings together perspectives from analytical psychology, sociology, psychiatry, psychosocial studies, and psychoanalysis to consider questions about individuation and freedom in our unhinged world.

The contributors discuss the meaning of, and need for, individuation in individualized and liquid societies. The book begins with a comparison of three approaches: C.G. Jung’s individuation, Ulrich Beck’s individualization, and Zygmunt Bauman’s liquidity. This sets the tone for further consideration of topics including guilt, social media, global nomads, and surveillance. Theoretical reflections are enhanced by clinical material, and the book emphasizes the connections between sociology and psychoanalysis, offering significant insights into the importance of psychosocial approaches.

This timely work will be of great interest to academics and scholars of psychosocial studies, Jungian studies, sociology, and politics.

chapter |14 pages

Introduction

Absolute Freedom is ‘Freedom After Freedom'

chapter Chapter 1|15 pages

Dreaming Your Future. Dreaming Your Freedom

chapter Chapter 2|10 pages

In Defense of the Freedoms of the Self

chapter Chapter 3|17 pages

The Paradox of Metaphor

chapter Chapter 4|16 pages

The Fall of the Berlin Wall

Complex Theory and the Numinous in the Development of History (a neo-Jungian Approach)

chapter Chapter 5|19 pages

The Impossibility of Freedom

From Psychoanalytical Conceptions to Political Objections

chapter Chapter 7|22 pages

Mysterium Dissociationis

The Masculine in Crisis Towards New Forms of Thought and Relationship

chapter Chapter 8|21 pages

False Start

A neo-Jungian Critique of Self-Help

chapter Chapter 9|14 pages

Natality, Individuation and Generative Social Action

From Amor Mundi to Social Generativity

chapter Chapter 10|18 pages

‘Roots in a Pot'

The Identity Conundrum in Global Nomads

chapter Chapter 11|12 pages

The Necessity of Guilt

A Freeing Movement of the Soul Towards Individuation

chapter Chapter 12|20 pages

Floating and Taking Root

Individuation in Contemporary Traumatic Conditions

chapter Chapter 13|7 pages

Paranoia, Politics and the Tyranny of the Identical

Is there Civilization in the Transitions we are Crossing?

chapter Chapter 14|19 pages

The Applicability of Analytical Psychology in China

How a Western Psychological Lens Might be Adapted in the East