I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Thursday Thinker, I share a smart idea or theory.
enantiodromia: the tendency of things to change into their opposites, especially as a supposed governing principle of natural cycles and of psychological development.
From Oxford Languages via Google Search
Jung borrowed the term enantiodromia from the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus. He used it to describe what happens when a conscious attitude is carried too far. He thought this would inevitably generate its opposite in the unconsciousness, which then eventually breaks through, sometimes suddenly, dramatically, or destructively.
Jung suggested that in early to mid-adulthood, we develop social personas — masks — that allow us to adapt to and successfully participate in adult life. A persona is a role we fulfill for example, in a career (serving as a doctor or a heavy equipment operator), in a family (acting as a mother or father or aunt), socially (acting as a proper friend would, or as a member of a community).
However, he saw the risk that people can become so identified with their persona that they lose the ability to flexibly respond to situations in any ways other than what that persona allows for. This reminds me of Sartre’s idea of bad faith, which he illustrates with the idea of a waiter who so fully immerses himself in that role that he becomes almost a caricature of how such a server should act.
Taking the use of personas too far lays the groundwork for enantiodromia at midlife, where a person feels the need to lay down their masks and roles and instead emerge as someone who is fully themselves and authentic. This is the opposite of living by persona.
A persona is essentially outward-facing and socially constructed, and in its most dysfunctional embodiment makes a person shallow and conformist. When someone no longer feels that they exist separate from how they show up in the world in standard roles and expected ways, they’ve lost their ability to cultivate a sublime, beautiful self that transcends societal roles and expectations.
Jungian therapy seeks to tear down the persona or personas that a person is relying upon so that their individuality may emerge — this is the process of individuation. It can be difficult, throwing a person off balance as they let go of who they thought they were and how they thought they should act.
It is akin to the meeting of the Other in which you need to drop your concepts and labels and simplifications of who you think the are. It is a dropping of the veil of fantasy to allow yourself to encounter the real, the real version of yourself. It is a kind of ego destruction in which you find at the end something luminous, who you can be without the demands of culture.