Plotting the Self: Repurposing our stories as the mythos of second phase individuation

Individuation is both the crowning idea of C. G. Jung's analytic psychology and directs how we read stories in the nascent field of mythological studies from a depth psychological perspective. This project considers individuation from a unique angle: its narrative form. It seeks the plot or mythos of individuation in an Aristotelian sense. What it finds is a mythic repurposing of the stories of one's life in the activity of telling the story of the self's becoming a Self to suggest that narrative and individuation are inextricably linked. It also finds a specific genre typology that correlates narratively with the theory's dynamic in spiritual autobiography.;This dissertation juxtaposes the symptomatic strategies of Jungian interpretation to narrative theory for a kind of seeing capable of identifying plot structure. After introducing a narrative approach, the project re-examines Jungian individuation theory and its typical use of narrative in the work of Edward Edinger. The discussion contrasts Edinger's plotting of individuation for archetypal patterns found in the biblical narrative analogues of Adam and Eve, Job, and the Christ narrative, with an examination of these stories within their biblical narrative form.;What we discover is a way of story telling that utilizes the past, tradition, and a relationship to heritage in the creation of an identity deeply formed in and by narrative. This kind of story telling iterates in the mything of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. It also evidences in spiritual autobiography which retells the story of the self towards an end of an integrated Self. The form double plots, manifesting repetitive, recursive, and cyclical patterns A narrative approach elucidates the plot of individuation's theory characterized by two separate phases with distinct goals that are nonetheless inter-related in a cyclical dynamic. Individuation's narrative is a story that can only be told when it reaches its goal of the Self. It belongs explicitly to individuation's second phase. The goal of the Self finds meaning only in the telling of the story of how the self became a Self. In this way the stories of our lives myth themselves into the story of the Self.