Teaching Individuation – towards a pedagogy of personality growth

The field of education is something of a hybrid, continually incorporating insights from other disciplines such as psychology. Given educations emphasis on learning, the behavioural and cognitive psychologies have naturally dominated to date. In comparison the psychodynamic or depth psychological approaches have had limited impact in the education field. There are many reasons why this is so, and I am not arguing for a reversal of this score, however I do think the ground has been broken for a deeper influence in the future. There are hundreds of papers and around a dozen books that have sought to extend Jung’s original writings into the field of education. Jung himself offered considerable advice to guide educators as they navigate the peculiarities of our profession (see Volume 17 of Jung’s collected works). In the years since many academics have extended Jung’s archetypal notion into the classroom and leadership practices. Prevalent in the literature is elaboration of the archetypes of the persona, shadow and even the so-called teacher archetype which is said to be the source and driver of a teacher’s patterned response to their pupils. More recently Jung’s individuation idea has become a key focus in the field of transformative education. It is the pedagogy (and andragogy) of this idea that I wish to focus upon in this presentation. To sketch where education may be a supporting and intervening factor in the life-long development of one’s personality. 

Dr Robert Matthews is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education teaching classroom management and neuroscience application in education. Previously a senior years physics and mathematics teacher and curriculum writer for the Australian Science and Mathematics School. He is the current president of the CG Jung Society of SA, has a PhD in theoretical physics and is a Swiss trained Jungian analyst.  

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