The Lonely Path

Isabella Gardner in her poem “The Minotaur” captures in several lines something of the lonely path of the individual on the path to him or her self.

Each man alone/must thread his path, unreel his own/ life spool and fumble to the lair./ Each man must journey naked there…

Being naked implies in a psychological sense moving forward without the persona that we usually present to the world. Gardner continues a few lines further on with “he who goes his armor shed/and walks with all that once he fled…” (Allen 158). Indeed, the way of individuation may challenge us to drop the resistance to the unknown we face by allowing ourselves to become open to some of the contents of previously unconscious realm.

Jung, in writing on the development of the personality, says that it cannot be trained or educated into a person. Achieving it is “the supreme realization of the innate idiosyncrasy of a living being.” It is no wonder then that he describes it as “an act of high courage flung in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual…” (Storr 195). That sum total of who each of us is as an individual can be drowned out and lost in the pack mentality of the collective. But what is life if we have not ourselves?

References and Suggestions for Further Reading:

Allen, John Alexander, Ed., Hero’s Way: Contemporary Poems in the Mythic Tradition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971

Storr, Anthony, The Essential Jung. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983

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