In this final episode of our series on Jungian alchemy, we explore coniunctio, the union of opposites that gives rise to new wholeness.
There are many ways in which we might encounter coniunctio in outer life. We might fall in love, form a partnership, or undertake transformative work with a psychotherapist. In some meaningful, mysterious way, two become one, giving us incremental tastes of transformation.
At the psychological level, work with one’s shadow represents the first stage of coniunctio. When we recognize and reclaim aspects of ourselves that have been split off or rejected, we begin to heal inner division and move toward wholeness.
We also discuss the sacred union, the second layer of coniunctio, in which we strive to achieve an inner marriage, creating new vitality, creativity, and psychic spaciousness.
Ultimately, coniunctio parallels Jung’s concept of individuation, the lifelong process of becoming whole by integrating the hidden, conflicting, and unrealized dimensions of the self and achieving a relationship with the greater Self.
In this episode we cover:
Coniunctio and Alchemical Symbolism
Jung discovered that images in medieval alchemical texts offered a symbolic map of the unconscious. These treatises and illustrations mirrored essential processes of psychological transformation unfolding in the psyche.
Alchemical concepts such as solutio, coagulatio, and calcinatio resonate at an instinctual level because they reflect life experiences: dissolution, consolidation, conflict, pressure and change. The same is true of coniunctio. Fundamental human experiences such as love, longing and sexual union make the image of sacred connection deeply resonant in the psyche.
The emergence of a unifying “third” is a central aspect of coniunctio in alchemy and in psychological life. We may find ourselves trapped between two opposing attitudes or desires, creating unbearable tension. Then, perhaps through a dream or an unexpected insight, a new image appears that transcends the conflict and creates a new possibility.
Shadow Work: The First Coniunctio
There are three layers of coniunctio. Taken together, they allow us to become the fullest possible version of ourselves—all that we are innately meant to be.
The first coniunctio, Jung tells us, is the union of conscious and unconscious content. In practical terms, this is the work of engaging personal shadow. One cannot move to deeper aspects of resolving psychic opposites and achieving alignment without first engaging in shadow work.
Shadow work asks us to work with people or situations we find aversive or even intolerable while also creating a negative fascination—we feel “hooked.” We bring that feeling close and come to recognize that what we reject is an exiled aspect of ourselves. Contents of our shadow are most often traits, values, wishes and feelings we learned to repress early in life as the price of earning family approval and social inclusion.
There may also be a “golden shadow,” the positive qualities we admire in others that are undeveloped in us. A friend’s creativity or confidence may point to our own unrealized dimensions that are waiting to be reclaimed.
Work with our shadows is therefore a kind of homecoming. By recovering rejected or neglected aspects of ourselves, we restore psychic energy that has long been trapped in repression or projection. This first layer of coniunctio—becoming whole–can bring renewed vitality and energy into our lives (for more on shadow work, see our episode on Personal Shadow Work: Where is Your Dark Twin Hiding?).
Sacred Marriage: The Second Coniunctio
The second layer of coniunctio is the union of masculine and feminine psychic principles within. While this categorization has been widely debated, the underlying idea remains powerful: each of us contains unrealized qualities of our inner opposite that seek expression and integration. The sacred marriage symbolizes inner union.
In the outer world, we often fall in love with someone who has qualities strikingly different from our own. Perhaps a highly rational person falls in love with someone who is poetic, or a cautious individual becomes captivated by an adventurer. What fascinates us about the beloved is often related to traits that are waiting for us to claim and integrate.
The enduring power of love stories, wedding rituals and the happily-ever-afters of fairy tales speaks to the deep, universal yearning for union. Countless songs, novels and films revolve around the hope that two can become one. While this longing may express itself outwardly as the desire for partnership, it also reflects a deeper longing for inner wholeness: the sacred marriage within the psyche.
Sexual union is an especially powerful metaphor for coniunctio. It is our most immediate and embodied experience of joining with another, and it carries with it the possibility of creating new life. Images of erotic union in dreams may symbolize not only desire, but psyche’s longing for integration, transformation and the birth of a new realization of consciousness and sense of Selfhood (for more on this, see our episode Desirous Dreams: Our Private Erotic Encounters).
The Spiritualization of the Individual: The Third Coniunctio
Jung spent less time explaining the third layer of coniunctio, the realization of our connection with a supraordinate guiding power and spiritual reality. At this stage, the Self—the mysterious, guiding center of the psyche that fuels individuation–emerges as the organizing principle. The ego is now aware that it belongs to a profoundly and dynamically incarnated “Other” alive in the personality. This third stage of coniunctio, in which the ego finds itself subordinate to the Greater, is a transformative experience more known than worded.
Coniunctio and Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy, particularly depth-oriented psychotherapy, offers the possibility of coniunctio: a transformation of the psyche capable of reshaping every facet of a person’s life.
This deep form of change, this “new thing,” is quite different from the symptom relief that often dominates the cultural conversation about therapy. Although the reduction of anxiety and distress is necessary and important, depth psychotherapy is also concerned with something larger: the gradual emergence of a more whole and integrated personality.
Pornography and the Search for Wholeness
People who are addicted to pornography are caught in a spiraling search for new experiences of arousal. Exploring the nature of what they’re obsessively searching for can sometimes be a way to break pornography’s ritualistic spell.
The porn-addicted psyche is reaching toward coniunctio, an experience of union and integration, but becomes trapped in a repetitive substitute that can never fully deliver what is being sought(for more on this, see our episode on Pornography: Technology, Consumerism and Soul).
Jung’s Concept of a Unified Consciousness
Jung was interested in ongoing, deep dialogue between conscious and unconscious, without the sharp demarcation between the two that most of us experience. This held the possibility of the Self incarnating in the personality in a lived, perceptible, and more peaceful way. Rather than being governed by ego alone, the individual might live from a deeper source of meaning, vitality and inner coherence.
Forfeiting Coniunctio: Refusing the Call
It is hard to embrace the goal and begin the journey by having the courage to face ourselves. Coniunctio, a symbol of wholeness and the goal of individuation, can feel like a distant, airy construct rather than a living, embodied reality. Jung described one way to avoid coniunctio as the regressive restoration of the persona: we slip back into our old, familiar sense of self instead of meeting the challenges inherent in growth and transformation. Joseph Campbell, in his work on the hero’s journey, describes this as “refusal of the call” (The Hero with a Thousand Faces).
In the face of life’s challenges and changes – and the feelings of angst, sadness, confusion, and anger that accompany them — we may revert to familiar, defensive coping patterns and forgo the challenges of growth. For years afterward we may experience a feeling that something that should have happened, did not—a missed opportunity. Jungian analyst and author James Hollis advises, when making important decisions, that the crucial question is whether our choice will make our life larger or smaller, not whether it will make us happy.
The Coniunctio and Individuation
The coniunctio is the alchemical parallel of what Jung elsewhere termed individuation: it . Like deals with the coming together of parts that have been split off or which never emerged.
In her book, Alchemy, Jung’s close collaborator Marie-Louise Von Franz writes:
“If through fighting and meeting the unconscious one has suffered long enough, a kind of objective personality is established; a nucleus forms in the person which is at peace, quiet even in the midst of the greatest life storms, intensely alive but without action and without participation in the conflict. That peace of mind often comes to people when they have suffered long enough; one day something breaks and the face acquires a quiet expression, for something has been born which remains in the centre, outside or beyond the conflict, which does not go on any more as it did.
Naturally, two minutes later it begins again, for the conflict has not been solved, but the experience of that one thing just quietly beyond the conflict remains, and from then on the process becomes different. People no longer search, they know the thing exists, they have experienced it for a moment. Thereafter the opus has a goal, that of finding this moment again and slowly being able to keep it, so that it becomes something constant”.
Ultimately, coniunctio results in an enlargement of psychic space and expansion of interiority. Rather than identifying with just one dominant position, the individual feels large enough to contain a multiplicity of options without collapsing into defensiveness or certainty.
Signs of moving toward coniunctio and individuation might include humility, decreased defensive reactivity, a more permeable access to symbolic experience and reduced hypervigilance in the physical world.
Working toward coniunctio invites us to ask what parts of ourselves have not been claimed. What might expand you? For example, if you’ve always been factual and rational in life, you could choose to cultivate curiosity about spirituality. If you’re a woman identified with prototypically feminine ways of being in the world, one of your life tasks might be to develop assertiveness.
Here is the Dream We Analyze
My ex-wife and I are at a restaurant on the top floor of a tall building in the city. It is evening and I can see the skyline of the city lit up in the distance. Many people are in the restaurant eating dinner at their tables. My ex-wife and I are now in the water pond in the center of the restaurant, fully clothed. It is large enough for us to lie down in, with her on top of me. The pond has lily pads and other water plants floating on the surface of the water, which is comfortably warm. I feel my erection growing harder. Now our clothes are off and my ex-wife’s naked body is pressed against mine as we float in the water. All around us, people are still eating their dinners. They don’t seem to notice my ex-wife and me naked in the water pond. My ex-wife takes hold of my penis and guides it inside her. She lets out a soft moan of pleasure as she does so. A few moments later, she is gone and I am floating naked alone in the water pond, still with an erection, as the people in the restaurant continue eating their meals.
Resources Discussed In This Episode
- Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces
- Edward Edinger, Ego and Archetype.
- C.A. Meier, Personality: The Individuation Process in the Light of C.G. Jung’s Typology
- Marie-Louise Von Franz, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology
Related Episodes
Listen to the others in our series of episodes on alchemy:
