individuation

 In analytical psychology, reality is ordered by a paradoxical movement of archetypal polarities. Individuation is the process by which these polarities are integrated. In this process, the ego, the center of awareness, differentiates from the Self -the center of wholeness- and reintegrates with the Self over the course of the life history. Jung maintains that it is in mid-life that we are mature enough to take on the arduous task of integrating the negative and contrasexual opposites of the personality.