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The Lonely Path

© Bonnie McCarson

People in general don’t like to be lonely. In our modern society “lonely” is a word that carries the connotation of something being wrong. If a person is lonely, we may tend to think something needs to be done to fix the situation. A thesaurus might list as synonyms for lonely such words as “outcast,” “friendless,” “forsaken,” “forlorn,” and other words implying an individual is somehow a pariah and is sad because of being alone. But other definitions of the word “lonely” simply mean alone or solitary. So, is it always bad to be lonely? In psychological sense, maybe everyone needs some aloneness, perhaps even some loneliness.

In a Jungian psychology the individuation process is about becoming more aware and being more fully the person you truly are and were meant to be. Nobody else can do that for you. You alone have to do it if it is going to happen. To be sure, other people can be helpful, instrumental along the way, but it is still the individual that must go through the sometimes lonely process. I believe one of the great dangers of our modern way of life is that we have become such “pack animals” that we do not value aloneness; in fact, we too often treat it as negative. We stay busy and on the go with other people constantly, or if alone, turn on the TV, radio, or dial up the Internet. Yet, in our lives of being bombarded with connection to other people, how connected are we to ourselves? Do we need to balance our lives with some solitary time in order to find out?

Jungians regard myths and fairy tales as containing archetypal motifs. Think about some of the heroes and heroines of such literature. The hero on a quest doesn’t go out with an army or a group of friends, unless like Beowulf or Odysseus he is an epic hero who embodies the characteristics of his culture and thus represents the collective to a degree. Myths and fairy tales show us more generally the lonely hero (or heroine) enduring some unhappy plight or setting out alone, perhaps befriended by animals, which represent instincts, to overcome obstacles. The hero may experience the supernatural and generally suffers. While parts of the quest or journey are difficult, the end result is often a marriage. The marriage in Jungian thought represents a union of opposites within the individual - integration, wholeness. But no such marriage is possible until some lonely trials and tribulations are endured, during or toward the end of which the potential spouse comes into the picture. The spouse in Jung’s terms would be the anima for a male or animus for a female. While these counterparts always exist, we may be forever estranged from them if we go through our lives on a surface level always in our social personae.

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