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Carl Jung is one of the founders of psychoanalysis, together with Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler. He is also credited as the founder of analytical psychology. If classical psychoanalysis focuses on the patient’s past, as early experiences are very important in personality development, analytical psychology includes focus on the present, mythology, folklore, and cultural experiences in understanding human consciousness.
Although his work does not reflect a systematic philosophy, his contribution to the realm of philosophy is significant and often referred to as “Jungian philosophy”. He wrote many books including “Psychology of the Unconscious”, “Man and His Symbols”, “The Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious”, “Modern Man In Search of a Soul”, “The Psychology of the Transference”, “Memories, Drams, Thoughts”, and “The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious. ” Jung is also considered to be the founder of the psychology of adult development and aging.
Contrary to the opinion of other psychologists who believed that the most important psychological events in an individual’s life take place only within the first two decades of life, Jung was of the opinion that major psychological changes can take place during the second half of life as well. He compared the human life span with the trajectory of the sun across the sky. The morning resembles our childhood, the noon with our most vigorous years and sunset with the end of our life.
Other times, Jung considered that life has 4 stages: The Athlete, The Warrior, The Statement and The Spirit. These stages of life have to do with our level of maturity that we have achieved. The first stage, The Athlete, is the most immature one, while The Spirit Stage is the most desirable, bringing us closer to the meaning of our life.
However, we cannot get to the Spirit Stage until we have passed - or at least understood - the first three. Even if these four stages do not coincide with the chronological stages of our lives, someone who develops naturally from a psychological point of view and is able to reach the highest levels of maturity, would naturally follow this 4-stage roadmap chronologically. Becoming psychologically mature does not happen overnight, it is a long process which takes place over a lifetime, and you need to go through these 4 stages.
To help you navigate them smoothly and avoid the pitfalls in the way of becoming psychologically mature, in this video we will talk about the 4 stages of life in detail and how you can make the most of them in order to reach the highest levels of maturity according to the philosophy of Carl Jung. The Athlete Stage Jung said: “It is a remarkable fact that a life lived entirely from the ego is dull not only for the person himself, but for all concerned. ” The Athlete Stage is the stage of the ego.
In psychoanalysis, ego is the part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and it gives the sense of personal identity. However, when the ego is too strong, we are too self-absorbed, more narcissistic, and, overall, the least mature. At this stage, we are obsessed with our physical appearance, we are less empathetic towards other people.
This stage often coincides with our teenage years or early 20s, although there are many people who live at this stage their entire life. According to Jung, our ego develops progressively in childhood, first as “islands of consciousness”, then more strongly at puberty. Jung considered that children live mostly in an unconscious state, existing in what he called a participation mystique, a state in which their unconscious is united with the unconscious of their parents.
However, from time to time, a sort of awareness comes to life in children and Jung called these temporary moments islands of consciousness. In Jung’s view, puberty marks the moment when our consciousness separates from the ones of our parents, we become more independent both physically and psychologically. Thus, the Athlete Stage is predominant during the teenage years, when we go through fundamental changes.
We form ourselves as individuals, we struggle to have an identity and it is normal to become more self-aware, and a bit more egocentric in our desire to create our identity. Adolescence is one of the most difficult periods of our lives, for many the most difficult. What can make it more difficult than usual is when our ego is not developed enough.
Although being less egocentric in adulthood is a desired quality in people, in adolescence, we need to develop a sufficiently strong ego which will be able to cope with the challenges of adulthood later in life. We need to have a strong sense of identity, but without being too self absorbed in it. For example, as teenagers it’s common not to feel comfortable in one’s own skin; when we think we are too short compared to other people, too fat or too skinny, or that our face is full of acne and we are too ashamed to leave the house.
Or we feel too shy to approach someone of the opposite sex because we don’t have enough confidence in ourselves. Even more so, in these teenage years, our peers tend to take every chance to make fun of us, multiplying our suffering. Thus, a weak ego, incapable of fighting back, can cause many problems for us at this stage.
To prevent such problems, we need to learn to feel good with ourselves and one of the best ways is by learning to accept our body and the changes it goes through in this period. One way of doing that is by practicing sports, yoga, dance, jogging, anything that makes us accept our body more. When we perform physical activity, hormones are released, making us feel a sense of euphoria.
The popular opinion is that endorphins are those hormones; however, the latest research indicates it is about endocannabinoids, biochemical substances similar to cannabis but naturally produced by the body. Once arrived in the brain, these hormones reduce anxiety and induce in us a sense of calmness, which is necessary to maintain a good level of self confidence. Thus, sports are important and we need to embrace the athlete in ourselves and learn to feel good with our body not only in adolescence, but throughout our entire life.
However, we should also not jump to the other extreme. We need to take the good part from this stage, but not to get stuck in egocentrism too much. If we remain at this stage for more than we should, we would become too self absorbed, concerned only with our looks, with how other people perceive us, we will tend to bully others who have less confidence and we will show that we lack any empathy towards others.
We need to feel good in our own skin, but not to the point we think we are the center of the universe. Self confidence must be in just the right amount in order to be able to move on to the next stage of maturity. 2.
The Warrior Stage To quote Jung: “You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do. ” The Warrior Stage is the stage of our life when we are developing ourselves, when we are trying to build a career, to improve our financial situation, to make a name for ourselves. We are able to take more responsibility, we are more goal oriented, we have an idea of where we want to end up with our career and we strive to develop our skills to reach our goals.
If we follow the normal course of life, this stage usually coincides with early adulthood. At this stage, we understand what it means to struggle to achieve our goals, we are open to shaping ourselves to become better people. This stage pits the developed ego against the demands of life, which Jung stated can harshly put an end to the dream of childhood.
There are times when the transition from a student to a professional takes place smoothly, but there are also times when people have difficulty facing life’s challenges. Often it is because we have exaggerated expectations, we underestimate the difficulties ahead of us, we are too optimistic and act without thinking or we have a negative attitude and don’t take enough action. According to Jung, a major aspect which can make us pull back and prevent us from passing through this stage easily is clinging to the earlier stage of childhood.
Jung considered that sometimes something in us wishes to remain a child, to be unconscious, to have no responsibility, to focus only on our own ego and to ignore or reject everything strange, challenging or that we cannot control. Research by psychologists shows that many people still behave like children in their adult lives. In other words, they are children trapped inside adult bodies.
We all have seen adults who avoid taking responsibility in life or living off of money inherited from their family, instead of making the effort to earn their own money through their own work. To pass this stage, we need to develop the courage to break away from childish behavior and to develop a high dose of realism, to know what we want to achieve in life, to know what skills we need to develop, to pick battles which we can fight and not to cut corners just to advance faster in life, while all the while losing our moral integrity. For example, consider that you have just graduated from university with a degree in music and a dream of becoming a great opera singer or rockstar.
However, you suddenly find yourself in the position where you can neither convince a record label to sign you, nor get work as a performer. Eventually, you realize that you have overestimated your skills and pushed yourself into this career just because of a childhood dream. Because you focused on this dream for so long, it is now difficult for you now to change your career, but there are still ways to get out of this situation.
You might get a part time job to give you an income while you further develop your musical skill, try to land a job in the music industry or start creating and putting out your own music for yourself. At the warrior stage, it is important to not give up as the journey to success and happiness is much harder and longer when you keep having to restart from the beginning. There is nothing wrong in following a childhood dream even if you didn’t have the necessary resources from the start.
The most important thing is to not feel entitled to the things we want to achieve. It’s not enough to feel that we really want something. To accomplish our dreams takes hard work and dedication and the Warrior stage is the time of our life when we need to do the most amount of action to develop our skills and to secure our professional and financial future.
The Warrior Stage does not only address our professional life, but our personal life as well. This is the period of life when we try to find the right partner, we sometimes go from one relationship to another, struggling to understand what kind of person would match best with us and how we should improve ourselves in order to be a good fit for the type of partner we want to be with. The more we work on ourselves to be a good partner and the more we know what kind of partner to look for, the more smoothly we can navigate this stage.
But, if we don’t work on ourselves to be a good partner for the other and we come into relationships with very high expectations, this stage can be very difficult to pass. The secret is to continuously work on ourselves, have realistic expectations, and to not expect to receive the love and respect that we personally don’t put in. The warrior stage is an important step in reaching maturity and involves perhaps the highest amount of work.
When navigated successfully, it can give us significant rewards on many levels. If we take Jung’s comparison of human life with the passing of the sun across the sky, the conclusion of this stage is roughly noon, when our mental and physical capabilities reach their maximum point. 3.
The Statement Stage In the words of Jung: “Where love rules, there is no will to power. ” The Statement Stage is the stage where we become more empathic, we orient ourselves more towards others. The beginning of the third stage coincides with the beginning of the second half of our life.
Jung described this moment also as the time when the sun is up in the sky, at noon, when it shines at its brightest. If the first half of life involves a lot of struggling to advance our career, to accomplish our personal goals, the second half of life should focus more on familial relations, on what legacy we leave behind and on spiritual aspirations. This stage coincides with the period of our life when we typically start to build a family, when we begin to work to make a better life for our children, rather than thinking about ourselves as individuals.
Overall, we take other people’s needs more into consideration. It is a stage oriented more towards love than towards personal power. During this stage, a slow change can be seen in our character, some characteristics disappear and other, old characteristics from childhood can reappear.
Even changes with respect to gender identity can take place. Men now develop more feminine traits and women develop more masculine traits, both in our psychology, and our physiognomy. Such a change can be dramatic, taking the shape of the so-called “mid-life crisis” for many of us.
The more we are self absorbed in our personal goals, to strive to advance our career and ignore our relationships with other people, the more intense our mid life crisis will likely be. Or, there are many cases in which people remain stuck in the warrior stage for the rest of their life because they do not understand the importance of cultivating meaningful relationships with other people or the importance of building a family or building a legacy that can last after your death. It is important to understand at this stage that, if you have a successful career that you take a lot of pride in, but as a result you don’t have close friends or family and you haven’t built a family, if you die tomorrow, sure, some colleagues may be saddened at the news of your death, but soon after you will be replaced at your workplace and your memory will fade away to nothing.
If you really wish to leave your mark on this world, to leave a legacy behind you, your opportunities will be severely limited if you are solely focused on yourself and your career trajectory. It would be wonderful if we could all revolutionize our industries or make world-changing discoveries, and some people will, however for the rest of us there are other options. You could choose to build a family, raising well-behaved and educated children which will take the torch from you and spread your light.
Or if children aren’t for you, you could be a mentor for the new generations in your field. Even just taking the proceeds of your success and donating to worthy causes and charities can have a huge and lasting positive impact on other people’s lives. Our life is limited and it is not rewarding to focus only on your limited existence here on Earth.
We need to expand our vision and to strive to leave a legacy behind us - our unique statement. 4. The Spirit Stage In our final quote from Jung for this video, he says: “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
” At the Spirit Stage, after we have built our careers and we know what kind of legacy we will leave behind, we start to focus on ourselves again. At this stage, we realize that we are more than the material things we gained in life, we are more than a spouse, a parent, a friend, that our spirit transcends this life. This stage coincides with the late stages of life, when we should focus on what is waiting for us beyond life.
If we go back to the analogy of the sun passing across the sky, this Spirit Stage represents the sunset of our life. Jung had lived a long life, dying at 85 years old. He could see that even if we are old with several health problems and even if our mental capacity is not so great anymore, there are still many opportunities which can come with old age.
Jung was one of the first thinkers who could see the beneficial aspects of old age, considering that nature would not have permitted people to live so long if there was no benefit to old age. Thus, old age is not only an extension of our life, but it has a significance all its own. Jung often advised his patients to look forward to death while connecting to their religion or spiritual beliefs.
This is very important especially for people who didn’t accomplish much over the course of their lives. When looking back, they may well feel deep, painful remorse. In fact, Jung said that it is fatal for these people to look back and that it is better for people in general to see it as the transformational phase before becoming a Spirit.
From a psychological point of view, the significance of the Spirit Stage is the returning to the collective unconscious, to our real Self. Old age is a return to ourselves, not a return to our ego, but to our real Self, or, in other words, to our Spirit. The secret to navigating this stage smoothly is to acknowledge that all the roles you played in life were temporary; that you can not keep your children forever close to you, that your spouse and friends are all mortals and you will lose them one day, that you are more than this body you have and that there is a mysterious connection between us which is the collective unconscious to which we will return after death.
Being conscious of these realities is the highest sign of maturity. By contrast, if you reach old age and you cling on to your worldly roles in life, being stubborn to work hard until you die or demanding your children, family and friends to be always beside you, you will lose the opportunity to take advantage of this stage, to connect with your real Self or your Spirit. Through this connection with your real Self, you get access to life’s mysteries, you can understand what the meaning of life is for you, and this connection reflects the completion of the process of individuation, the integration of all of the different parts of your psyche.
That is why reaching this stage of maturity is so important. At this stage, you become able to detach from the physical world in order to access a greater reality from which we are all part of. As we mentioned at the beginning this video is brought to you by Morning Brew.
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