Individuation means being yourself, becoming yourself. Nowadays one always uses the cheap word “self-realisation,” [or, more recently, “your most authentic self”]. But what one really means is ego-realization.
Jung means something quite different. He means the realization of one’s own predestined development. That does not always suit the ego; for this is rather what one intrinsically and intuitively feels could or should be.
We are neurotic when we are not what God meant us to be. Basically, that’s what individuation is all about: a soulful living out of one’s intended destiny.
– Von Franz, “The Geography of the Soul,” interview in In Touch, Summer 1993, p. 12.
