On Life’s Journey

C.G. Jung wrote in The Development of Personality, “In every adult there lurks a child—an eternal child, something that is always becoming, is never completed, and calls for unceasing care, attention and education. That is the part of the human personality that wants to develop and become whole.”
In this reflection on life’s journey, Daniel A. Lindley applies the insights gleaned from many years of study of literature and psychoanalysis to show how we are “always becoming” and always obligated to care for that archetypal child. Drawing upon psychological truths expressed by Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Eliot and others, Lindley illuminates the process of individuation through personal experience, art and archetype. From birth to old age, he demonstrates, even in our separateness we share an archetypal ground. Thus, at any point in our lives, “the path we walk is not unknown; it has purpose and direction. We are living out stories that existed long before we did, and will be there long after we are gone.”