Introduction

Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), through his investigations gathered in a vast work of more than 30 volumes, leads us to a dive into the human soul; and this allowed radical challenges to emerge in thinking about life and even the issue of education; as ^{Stein (2006}, p. 11) notes, Jung "[...] spent a lifetime exploring the inner space and describing in his writings what he discovered there.

Jung's discoveries, made through observation and analysis of empirical material from the psychiatric clinic and his own experience, opened for him a world behind the rationality and logic that organize our everyday life, for "[...] rational truths are not the last word; there are also irrational truths" (^{Jung, 2013a}, p. 101), and "[...] reason, however, is surrounded on all sides by the irrational, by that which does not agree with it. This irrationality is also a psychic function, the collective unconscious, while reason is essentially connected with the conscious" (^{Jung, 2014a}, p. 83).

The rational endeavor to know and control the world brought great material and technical progress, but entailed, at the same time, the repression of aspects of life that were not allowed to be adjusted. In this context, when confronted with the frequent manifestations of irrational phenomena, Jung, a rigorous and practical scientist, opens his research to them and discovers that, in the name of health and full human development, the integration of shadowy and illogical facets must be made possible.

By allowing himself to be led by the object of his investigation, Jung opened himself up to a greater amplitude than that to which science was accustomed, especially as it became increasingly linked to the investigation of the external world and its objectivity. This amplitude included the realm of irrationality, of the shadow, of an unconscious that goes beyond the individuality and reaches the whole of humanity.

Although historically we have made great efforts to eliminate irrationality, it is still present, and precisely because we are also irrational. And in the last centuries we have ended up identifying ourselves with rationality, but this does not mean that we have eliminated the irrational. We have only hidden it from us, perhaps for reasons of morality, social respectability, or obedience to a practically hegemonic rationality. However, "[...] we have a part with the gods and the demons, with the saints and the villains" (^{Jung, 2014}a, p. 106), that is, "[...] each one has in himself something of the criminal, the genius and the saint" (^{Jung, 2015}, p. 36). If we accentuate only the luminous side, the shadows will try to appear indirectly, usually projected outward. That is why it is important to reconcile the shadow and the light, the masculine and the feminine, the inside and the outside, enhancing integral and not unilateral human development. It is also about taking seriously the unconscious, of a non-rational nature, to integrate it into the process of living; to reconcile with the antagonistic forces that exist within us, and to enable cooperation between consciousness and the 'irrational' unconscious forces. The rapprochement and cooperation between the opposing tendencies that live in the human being result in the expansion of consciousness, self-knowledge, and a fuller existence.

By approaching the so-called irrational universe, Jung opens the precedents for accusations of obscurantism and of being distant from the specific work of science, since for science, reality must be rational or rationalizable, and everything that does not fit within the limits of representational language remains on the margin, waiting for the occasion to enter and opportunely fit into this environment. Jung, however, accepts and brings this material into his research and gives it a relevant importance.

He is concerned with human expressions and phenomena that normally refuse clarity and evidence, such as dreams and mythology. Therefore, during his investigations, the author somehow upsets our image of reality and the world, proposing, for example, that the unconscious is the original place of consciousness, that is, consciousness and the self-derive from this primary place. We were originally unconscious, merged into a primordial unity that he sometimes calls the 'soul of the world' and more often calls the 'collective unconscious'. We come from a connection to the whole, which gradually becomes a separate unit, which we call the "I", the center of consciousness. Every human being would initially be part of a whole, which is the psyche (^{Jung, 2013}f), and from this whole, islands of rationality, small selves, and collective and historical reasons would unfold. The consciousness is, therefore, an epiphenomenon of this first and original condition.

The whole, the soul of the world and the collective unconscious do not obey the logic and language of the rationally and naturally represented world, because they have their own language, called by Jung symbolic. Symbols "[...] conceal and reveal, hide and manifest, contain reminiscences and anticipation" (^{Kast, 2019}, p. 25). This language and logic in which dreamlike, mythical, or irrational phenomena manifest themselves do not allow for objectivity and univocity. They function within distinct logical horizons. This symbolic language cannot be simply translated into the concepts that serve to present us with the rationalized world. They are two languages that move in different ambits and are not easily interchangeable. Hence the difficulty in understanding dreams when we want to translate them within the framework of what is known by consciousness. That is why dreams, for Jung (2013f), are not disguises, but constitute a language of their own that our conscious life cannot access or simply translate.

One can imagine the reaction of serious people of his time and still today. Such an overemphasis on spiritual matters that flirt with the irrational can bring back the chaos that we have taken so long to suppress (repress) or at least minimize. To the eyes of many of his colleagues, his investigations may have seemed like pure delirium or, at the very least, a lack of common sense. However, ^{Jung himself (2013}f, p. 209) insists that "[...] the physician and the researcher must, free of any formula, let living reality act upon them in all its lawless richness [...]", which means "[...] to proceed, as far as possible, free of prejudice. We must as it were let the material speak for itself" (^{Jung, 2013b}, p. 69). By this, Jung lets objects speak, does not prune or reduce them to previous expectations; he lets himself be guided by the object of his investigation and resists driving the object within the boundaries acceptable to the science of his time. His ideas come from observing and listening to the reality presented daily in the clinic by his patients and found in self-observation. For this reason, it is research conducted along the lines of the practice of science: it observes the facts and avoids the intrusion of prejudices. There is in it a willingness and openness to the phenomena that present themselves, but which often refuse previous framings.

We can say that Jung presented material that has become polemical and that, precisely because of this, challenges our understandings and our therapeutic and pedagogical practices. The question of being right or wrong is not always the most important, but rather the fact that it produces tensions within the here and now of the consolidated and available world of daily life; that it puts us back in motion, makes us have to take up again problems that were supposedly elucidated, theories that had been sedimented and became natural. We do not want to propose Jung and his thought as a new truth, but to follow some of his ideas and allow them to challenge our current views and set them in motion.

After these remarks about the author, we will now turn to and talk about a specific aspect within his vast work. It is the question of education in the face of the dilemma of the individual and the collective, one of the binomials around which our explanations of the nature of human being and duty and, therefore, of human formation and development, revolve. Although he was not explicitly concerned with pedagogical processes, we have, in the whole work of this researcher of the human soul, a vast material and important questions concerning human development. His ideas have a strong potential to help us better understand our education, its limits, problems, and possibilities. The comprehensive 'space' that he conquered through his research and reflections provokes us and, it seems to us, instigates us to go beyond the almost naturalized discourses on education and to aspects that are generally disregarded. In the current context, it is important that we explicitly question the conflict or tension between the individual and the social, which underlies pedagogical discourses.

The human situation in the tension between individual and collective

What seems to be the ideal of human beings today? Around which image of the human being are educational efforts concentrated? The answer to the first question, in ^{Jung's (2013}a, p. 113) diagnosis, is that "[...] everyone believes and desires that the best and most ambitious thing is to achieve, as far as possible, an identity with a differentiated function, because this will bring the most obvious social advantages." Important are the social advantages, achieved and deserved when the individual identifies with a specific role or function within the group.

It is common and frequent that, in the discourse of parents and educators, the emphasis falls on the expectation of training for professional success. Education is expected to enable children to succeed in the world of work as adults. Rarely do parents and teachers express a desire for children to achieve maturity in all aspects of life. Even children learn early on that when asked what they want to be when they grow up, they should refer to some social function cherished by adults. What matters is the function that the human being performs, and that it brings him economic return and social recognition. The being of a human being is reduced, to a great extent, to what he does and what he gets out of it, that is, the function exercised within the collectivity.

This function does not represent individuality, but some aspect of the collectivity. Therefore, ^{Jung (2015}, p. 41) can also say that "[...] society, by automatically accentuating the collective qualities of its representative individuals, rewards mediocrity and anything that is willing to vegetate on an easy and irresponsible path." Our role models and heroes are those among us who are most successful in achieving the advantages gained by the exemplary performance of their function. It follows that "[...] it is inevitable that every individual element is put up against the wall. Such a process begins at school, continues at university, and is dominant in all state-run sectors" (^{Jung, 2015}, p. 41), but one could extend this influence to the beginnings of life, to before school.

We value and reward that human being that ^{Jung (2014}b, p. 17) calls the "[...] generic man [...]. This is precisely that human being who has achieved the best social adjustment, or who constantly strives for it. He is usually among the best students, the most well-behaved, who have the best grades, and who then achieve success in the financial field. And, from an early age, we are encouraged to follow the model of this generic man, called by ^{Nietzsche (2005}), 'herd man', and by ^{Heidegger (2012}), 'impersonal', 'improper', 'inauthentic', 'everyday', 'average'. ^{Jung (2013c}, p. 74) speaks of a "[...] collectively flattened culture."

When the organized society becomes the end of the human being and not the human being the end of society, the collective ideals and expectations take precedence over the individual. In general, the individual needs to suffocate his personal voice, his individuality, as a function of accommodation to the collective, in order to receive an identity linked to a social function that grants him recognition. In this case, personal identity is not grounded in the person, but in the mass. Thus, expectations can be created that the subject's behavior will be predictable. He will not tend to create problems for normal functioning or friction with the social machine.

Another observation of ^{Jung (2013}d, p. 335) is that "[...] modern consciousness has become almost irretrievably fragmented in the pursuit of these unilateral and exclusive ends. The consequence of this, however, is that individuals are educated to privilege only one quality, to the detriment of the others, and they themselves become mere instruments." If we are educated to perform a function and usually end up 'being' that function, we soon also become instruments. We are at the service of something other than ourselves. We serve to perform a role, and then we are that which we do. In identifying with a function, the globality of being is neglected. Identification with a part of oneself, with a fragment of existence, takes away from the person or disconnects him from other fundamental dimensions of his existence. This loss signifies an alienation from the global being.

Behold, in the end, the aim and purpose of individual existence is society, the collective. The individual is at the service of the functioning of the mass. The criteria for individual existence come from outside, from that which has become common and shared by all. And this works well, because the individual has already accepted to submit himself constantly to external evaluation and control. His criteria of well-being and happiness are shifted outward, to the feedback he receives from others.

We will have a subject that has no substratum in himself, that does not think, feel, live, desire, and choose based on his own experience and life, but who weighs everything based on what others recognize and value, therefore, the subject's criterion is an external measure. He himself is not the measure of himself. And this means, for ^{Jung (2014}b, p. 123), "[...] depriving the individual completely of his soul. We will have a subject who has developed his identity from the external world to a high degree but has not developed his inner world. His sustenance is in the hands of the other people with whom he lives and acts. Not living as an identity built from the synthesis between external and internal tensions, without the integration of personal lights and shadows, he is easily seduced by the movements of his time and social group. And, for ^{Jung (2014b}, p. 112), "[...] the mass invariably devours the individual who is not firmly grounded in himself, and in any case reduces him to an impotent particle." The institutionalized collectivity, which could be at the service of the development of each singular individual - for the latter alone is a real entity, whereas society is a concept for the grouping of various subjects - puts each singular human being at its service. The individual represses himself in the name of an ideal, a concept, or a theory.

This individual, as the subject of a differentiated social function, constitutes a 'persona'. The persona "[...] is a mere mask of the collective psyche, a mask that appears an individuality, seeking to convince others and itself that it is individual, when in reality it is but a role or performance through which the collective psyche speaks" (^{Jung, 2015}, p. 151). The persona can also be called the conformity archetype, as ^{Hall and Nordby (2014}) suggest. Its use seeks to ensure that the subject is viewed favorably and positively by others, and results from the quest for social acceptance. To be accepted, the person accepts and submits to the expectations and demands of the external environment, but for this to occur, it is also necessary that these expectations have already been internalized and have become individual aspiration, as ^{Stein (2006}) reminds us. Society's demands would not have so much power over the individual if the latter did not already have as a goal belonging to it.

We live, apparently, as individuals, but we represent roles and identify with them. And to the extent that one identifies with a role, an idea, a doctrine, or a theory, one becomes easily manipulated from the outside. Not having a center in himself, his center is found outside, in the role played and in other people's evaluation of his behavior. We are what we must be if we want to belong to that group, to that society. We adhere to one path among those available in our society. These alternative paths are the result of the Manichean dichotomy that usually prevails. We are either this or that. We are either of this 'ism' or that. We are either for or against. What is not allowed is that we are neither one nor the other. Finding your own voice and experience sounds deviant, sinful, and criminal. What is important for the collective, therefore, is that we identify with one of the social functions and with one of the visions of our time.

Jung proposes that one should investigate and seek to understand the persona to begin to dissolve this movement that consolidates only social identity. He writes that:

[...] in analyzing the persona, we dissolve the mask and discover that, appearing to be individual, it is actually collective [...] there is nothing 'real' about the persona. It is a compromise between the individual and society about what 'someone seems to be': name, title, function, and this or that. In a sense, such data are real; but in relation to the essential individuality of the person, they represent something secondary, only a compromise image in which others may have a greater share than the individual in question (^{Jung, 2015}, p. 151, emphasis added).

The unilateral development toward social masking, toward identification with a particular collectivity, is not a mistake or a moral evil to be eradicated. But in any case, it ends up being an obstacle to personal development when it excludes other human potentials. If one excels only in strengthening social identity, personal identity is underdeveloped. And ^{Jung (2013}b) perceives this one-sided development in his patients' illnesses and complaints. Many of the sufferings reported by patients had reasons linked to the priority given almost exclusively to social qualities, especially when these patients were in the second half of their lives, that is, when they reached their 40s or so.

Although the life of those who live sustained and nourished from the outside is the most desirable from a social and often also individual point of view - because it frees the individual from the weight of responsibility for his personal destiny, diluting himself in the impersonal, where everyone and also no one is found -, ^{Jung (2013}a, p. 113) warns that this "[...] will bring the greatest harm to the least developed aspects of man which sometimes constitute a large part of individuality [...] from this can only result uniformity, but no harmony. Stunted in his individuality, drowned in individualism as a collective ideal, we have a human being who is very competent in some things, but extremely incompetent in others that also concern him and are requirements for a more integral or full life.

Integration between individual and social

^{Jung (2013}c) notes that the human person

[...] can only correspond optimally to the external need if it is also adjusted to its own internal world, that is, if it is in harmony with itself. And conversely, it can only adjust to its own internal world and achieve harmony with itself if it is also adapted to the conditions of the environment (^{Jung, 2013}c, p. 52).

Human development has, therefore, two possible movements, which can be complementary or exclusive. According to the diagnosis presented, it seems that, under current conditions, the human being develops primarily according to external social expectations. Little space and priority is given to the inner potentialities, of the individual psyche, which are, in many cases, even depreciated. We may ask if it would be possible to promote development in both directions at the same time. Perhaps that would be a good purpose.

In his experience, ^{Jung (2013}d) notes that the challenge of global development, including individuality, manifests itself primarily from the second half of life, but does not deny the possibility that they can occur concomitantly. The fact that the inner world, the possibility of being oneself, has been relegated during initial formation is what provokes, by force of inner needs, its emergence in a critical period of life. If it had been cultivated throughout existence, it would probably not need to emerge emphatically at a specific moment.

In any case, following his findings, ^{Jung (2013}a) proposes that one should pay attention to the movement he calls regressive as it manifests itself, especially from the second half of life; and concludes that each of these moments of life has its specificity. One, prioritizes the improvement of relationships with the social world and the other, with oneself and with our belonging to the whole. What is important, however, are the different goals and challenges that emerge from each of these moments and that need, each of them, sufficient and careful attention. Not least because, in some way, they are interdependent and each one needs the other extreme to develop so that it too can reach a higher degree of maturity and not remain involuted or atrophied, that is,

The interdependence of the two kinds of adjustment means that it is not permissible for a person to neglect one of them without harming the other. Regrettably, modern life lends too much emphasis to external adjustment without understanding that such a thing cannot be achieved in the absence of internal adjustment. Both progression and regression are essential to good adjustment (^{Hall & Nordby, 2014}, p. 65).

There is a mutual action between the collective and the personal. If, for example, the inner or personal is neglected, it will try to manifest itself in the perception and external behaviors, as a way to compensate and balance the forces. In fact, this is one of the 'laws' that ^{Jung (2014}a) finds, which is the need for balance between forces, instincts or archetypes that carry contradictory tendencies. Whenever an essential aspect is neglected, it will be compensated for by its opposite. If the unconscious is devalued or suppressed, it will be compensated in some way by dreams and other mechanisms for balancing forces.

In dealing comprehensively and practically with and in the external world, we will, whether we are aware of it or not, be projecting our inner world onto it. And in the case of perceiving our conflicts or tensions in the external world, there are in them "[...] always and inevitably projections of the disharmony existing in the personality" (^{Hall & Nordby, 2014}, p. 108). Possibly it is easier and less painful to resolve our conflicts on the outside, adjusting the world to match a solution thought up by us. More painful and difficult is to face the internal disharmonies and enter dialogue with them, and with the outside world. Against our current expectations, we must, according to Jung, begin with facing the unintegrated and unresolved internal dilemmas. "It all begins with the individual" (^{Hall & Nordby, 2014}, p. 108).

One must begin with the internal representation of the external world, which is the only access we have to the world. And this means walking the path of self-knowledge, which leads, in turn, to self-realization. In this way, "[...] by making conscious what is unconscious, man can live in greater harmony with his own nature [...]" and the expansion of self-knowledge "[...] reveals such projections and the individual no longer feels compelled to seek victims for his criticism and contempt" (^{Hall & Nordby, 2014}, p. 44). Important is this psychoanalytic notion that we project our interiority onto the outside, which is all the stronger the less conscious we are of this projection.

To the extent that the interior begins to be recognized, accepted, and integrated, it stops projecting itself onto the exterior, favoring a more authentic and realistic relationship. The individual starts to separate and distinguish his own feelings, ideas, perceptions, and intuitions from what is actually happening in the external world; he recognizes that which is his own and that which is properly from the world around him. Without the development of the personal world, propitiated by the relationship with the external world, especially with other human beings, the perception of things becomes undifferentiated. It is not easy to distinguish what is projected onto objects from what corresponds to them as such. The necessity of the relationship with the world for the development of the personality, and vice versa, is already evident. Individuation is not possible in a social vacuum.

In ^{Jung's formulation (2013}c, p. 51), a person "[...] can only correspond ideally to external necessity if he is also adjusted to his own internal world, that is, if he is in harmony with himself [...]"; and continues: "[...] conversely, he can only adjust to his own internal world and achieve harmony with himself if he is also adapted to the conditions of the environment." Individuation, that is, the development toward the archetypal ideal of the Self-Self, is an exercise in integration, dialogue, intimacy, and cooperation between external forces and internal demands. ^{Jung (2013e}, p. 16) proposes "[...] that the global personality which really exists, but which cannot be grasped in its entirety, should be called the Self-Self."

Let's return to the notions of regression and progression, which have already appeared in one of Jung's quotes. They correspond to two directions: to oneself or to the external world. The word progression probably sounds like something positive, while regression can have a somewhat negative or derogatory charge. Jung, however, chooses these concepts to refer simply to the fact that we direct our effort to progress outward and inward. Thus,

[...] progression, as an uninterrupted process of adaptation to the conditions of the environment, is based on the vital need for adaptation. This necessity imposes the absolute orientation to the conditions of the environment and the repression of all tendencies and possibilities that are in the service of individuation (^{Jung, 2013}c, p. 51).

There is a natural need for the individual to adapt to the world in which he exists. His consciousness arises from and in this world. He learns to be human within a determined cultural configuration. He needs to feel that he belongs to a group. Belonging gives him a social identity. Only a human culture can offer each new human being this identity and belonging. Otherwise, each one would always have to start from the most primitive stages. Each individual repeats more or less the same stages of the development of civilization, so that he does not have to invent himself and civilization again. Integration into a society and the internalization of its world gives it a comprehensive openness, in which it knows about itself, about others, and about reality. Although this is not its origin, this is the origin of its consciousness, in which it can normally remain.

Regression, on the other hand, as an adaptation to the conditions of one's own inner world, is based on the vital need to meet the demands of individuation" (^{Jung, 2013}c, p. 51-52). This regressive movement represents the attitude that considers the need to listen also to the most individual and singular appeals and demands, initially and normally subsumed in the collectivity. Further on he completes:

[...] progression and the adaptation work resulting from it happen as a means to regression, that is, to the manifestation of the internal world in the external world, and this generates a new means to achieve a new kind of progression, which represents a better adaptation to the conditions of the environment (^{Jung, 2013}c, p. 52).

Note the insistence on the necessity of both impulses, since the development to a higher and higher degree of one depends on the participation of the other. This means that, even if our adaptation to the external world is taking place, the maturing and deepening of this relationship necessarily depends on the help offered by the development of the internal function. The relationship with the external world is not damaged in the regressive movement, but on the contrary, receives a new impulse from it, the same happening with personal development from the progression.

In the development of regressive movement, the confrontation offered by the world of objects and people is fundamental. Relationships with other people and with things are indispensable so that one can learn to distinguish the projections and undifferentiations that remain in force in the internal world. "The awareness of the self depends on the relationship with other people [...]" (^{Kast, 2019}, p. 66), that is, we reach the internal world in the encounter and in the understanding of the external world, in the attention to our projections on it. We encounter the internal in the external and the external in the internal. Hence, perhaps, strictly speaking we cannot separate the internal and the external world. There will therefore be mutual progressive maturation, in a dialog between the individual and the collectivity, between the demands of the external world and those of the internal world.

By prioritizing progression, which seems to be the case today, we atrophy the development of the whole, we hinder the process of self-knowledge and, therefore, we create a dualistic culture, that is, a culture of 'isms', where each and every person gives up on himself/herself in order to correspond to the available and socially accepted roles. The human being "[...] is, so to speak, sucked into the opinions and tendencies of the collective consciousness, and the result of this is the massified man, the eternal victim of any 'ism'" (^{Jung, 2013}d, p. 169, emphasis added). This amounts to identifying with some position between alternative opposites, however, "[...] the self only retains its independence if it does not identify with one of the opposites, but manages to maintain the middle ground between them" (^{Jung, 2013d}, p. 169). One does not have to be forcefully for or against something, as we have already written, but to develop the ability and openness to put the opposites in dialogue.

Development and individuation process

Education, as we know it, or what it has become insofar as it has become an instrument instituted to introduce each neophyte systematically and formally to the knowledge, behaviors, and ways of being of his or her group, at a given time and place, is characterized by producing programmable and, therefore, predictable phenomena. It succeeds in establishing prior goals that serve as a yardstick for measuring the effectiveness of teaching and learning. It is useful because it works and meets the formative demands that are entrusted to it by the collective. It has criteria, ideals, and evaluations that have some 'objectivity' and are prior to and external to the processes of personal development. This is not the case when it comes to the development of the singularity, because it cannot be controlled and predicted from the outside, with measures other than that development itself. It happens from a personal and even transpersonal core, without obeying previously established times and ideals. It creates from the exercise of existing. The Self-itself is the measure and the criterion of the self. It is not, therefore, a theory or a technique that decides for its direction and productivity.

This, however, is not possible with what ^{Jung (2013}b; ^2013e; ^2014b) called the process of individuation. In the formation of individuation, the measure is always singular and individual. The measure, the purpose, and the criterion of development cannot be given a priori and from the collective, since they result from the unpredictable, from a personal call and a personal response. This sounds quite strange in academic and professional language, but that is precisely what Jung found. In this case, "[...] we need to deal with something unpredictable, because we do not know how and in what direction the personality in formation will develop" (^{Jung, 2013b}, p. 183). It is not pedagogical projects and social goals that decide the direction of individual development. Its course is neither linear nor rectilinear, but much more like a spiral ascent, which always returns in a more integrated and higher (or deeper) way. It is the movement of integrating oneself with the whole of which one is part from the beginning, but from which one has disintegrated.

And we may ask what could possibly drive someone to go beyond the flattened and level surface of life in the mass, without his conscious will having chosen him and even being aware of what is happening? Isn't it better to be content with fulfilling the expectations that society offers us? No need of the collectivity as such can move the human being in this endeavor. Not even the will, because the will is always the will to something determined, and individuation does not obey a determined will. It has its own path, sometimes full of twists and turns, misfortunes, victories, and defeats.

The path to the Self implies, it seems, the destruction of the self, of the image consolidated in the persona. If the relationship with the external social world is better characterized as a construction, the itinerary to the Self, realized as individuation, is more like a deconstruction. It involves dismantling the constructed that resulted in consciousness and its center called 'I', to find again the primary impulses that were buried. And naturally we have a resistance to losing, dismantling, leaving behind what we have already achieved and identified with. We are more secure in the construction and uncertain in the deconstruction because it makes us lose our references and truths. It is common and normal that we expand more and more our possessions: knowledge, material goods, power, as ^{Fromm (2014}) emphasizes. Not common are the initiatives that privilege being and that require, for that, the courage to leave behind, abandon, die to what has been built so far, to prepare an opening and disposition for the unusual and the unpredictable.

Therefore, Jung might ask, "What, then, gives the last impulse in favor of something out of the ordinary?" (^{Jung, 2013b}, p. 187). And he himself answers:

This is what is called designation: it is an irrational factor, drawn by destiny, which urges one to emancipate oneself from the gregarious mass and its worn-out ways. True personality always supposes designation and believes in it, places in it pístis (trust) as in God [...] this designation acts as if it were a law of God, from which it is not possible to evade (^{Jung, 2013}b, p. 187).

This doesn't sound very comfortable to modern ears, because we are quite convinced that our reason is the great light that can encompass everything, although it needs a certain amount of time to realize its potential and purpose. And Jung is led by his research to a voice that designates the individual to be Self. Now, a voice does not come from the will of the subject of reason. It appears, then, that we are not masters in our own house and are somehow also commanded by something we cannot determine, that is, it is "[...] a process that seems irrational to us" (^{Jung, 2015}, p. 168).

The path to Self-Self is not rational, although not at all irrationals, for it can be understood a posteriori, retrospectively. We are, from the beginning, part of and belonging to a great whole, which includes light and shadow, conscious and unconscious, which cannot be absorbed by any rationality, and which always surpasses it. We do not have the much-dreamed autonomy and freedom, because we cannot account for the whole. Our destiny is part of a totality that can never be conceptually grasped. And this can cause panic, vertigo, because we lose the control, we imagine we have achieved with our knowledge and techniques.

One's own voice comes from the indeterminate. The voice of the collective, which brings comfort, is invaded by a mysterious voice, which calls and summons the person to "[...] obey his own law [...]" (^{Jung, 2013}b, p. 188), which is not the law that leads us to order within society. "Whoever has designation (Bestimmung) listens to the voice (Stimme) of his inner self, he is designated (bestimmt). [...] The primitive sense of the German word Bestimmung is that a voice (Stimme) addresses the person" (^{Jung, 2013b}, p. 188).

Usually, we are no longer open to hear this voice that has been silenced and buried, not out of personal or social guilt or responsibility, but because, as we accommodate and adjust to a certain culture, in order for it to make sense and logically sustain itself, we need to ignore the whole of which we have always already participated. In this case, "[...] the inner voice is replaced by the voice of the social group and its conventions; in place of the designation the needs of the collectivity appear" (^{Jung, 2013}b, 189). And one cannot deny the importance of the acquisition of a social identity, for this is the only way for the emergence of the self that can then continue to develop beyond this opening. Let's remember that Jung considers the symbol a language that manifests and hides. Being, therefore, inserted in a determined manifestation, it is possible, by the call of something that is "outside" the opening, to open to what is other and expand freedom.

It is easy to understand that the movement towards the Self is not based on some cultural goal, or on a technique of human development. The Self is something like an undifferentiated model that attracts the movement of human improvement. Society and its culture generate and consolidate the "I", which is a condition for the opening that allows the return to the "I-Self", now more and more differentiated. The consciousness of the I is a condition for the differentiation that has access to the Self, albeit in a symbolic way.

This inner voice is a call to a fuller, more intense, comprehensive life, lived from our own core and not from the lights of the collective to which we belong. It implies, obviously, not the denial or the suppression of belonging, but the achievement of an individual center from where relationships are lived, but now reorganized from another reference point. This has often been called enlightenment or awakening. It is as if the social, everyday man lived in sleep. The inner voice has the function of awakening the individual who sleeps a sleep lulled by the collective law and order, to allow him to be guided by a greater wisdom that, by making the unconscious more and more conscious, expands freedom and self-realization.

It is not us or our theories, techniques, and convictions that can lead us to the progressive development toward the Self. Only a voice from outside the cultural determinations can draw us or push us towards the center and integrate in it the contradictory forces acting in us and in the social environment, beyond Manichean dichotomies.

According to Verena Kast,

[...] the goal of the individuation process is to become, throughout life, more and more of who we really are, more and more authentic, more and more ourselves and in accord with ourselves. Thus, according to Jung, we will be healthy and feel our life as something that makes sense (^{Kast, 2019}, p. 52).

Jung is not alone in this claim. We can find, in different formulations, this challenge. Some authors, in different contexts and from their own theoretical horizons, launch this same challenge: to distinguish oneself from the herd, from the impersonal, from immersion in daily life, from collectivity, from superficiality, making it possible to develop congruence, authenticity, ownership, emancipation, enlightenment, awakening. It may be that each one of us has also been pestered by this voice calling for individuation; that it has insinuated itself at decisive and critical moments of our existence, but we prefer to potentiate the voice of normality, the paths consolidated and well grounded by the steps of the crowd, rather than risk the dangers of creating our own path by walking our own path.

It is understandable that human beings are "[...] suspicious and fearful about the possibilities hidden in the abysses of themselves [...] so it is almost a boldness that we speak out in favor of personality development" (^{Jung, 2013}b, p. 184). Immature, infantile, underdeveloped, and stuck in everyday life, we would not know how to deal with human beings who had conquered autonomy and freedom. We should be suspicious about whether we really want autonomous students who think and live from their own center. We want students who agree with our theories of autonomy and liberation, and therefore conform to a sometimes revolutionary, but collective ideal. If we look at tradition, often people who dared to be themselves were not tolerated by normality, not even by that normality of differences that group together in small collectives. We should ask whether our tolerance of differences also embraces the individuated subject.

Something fundamental in Jung's discussions is that he shows us the complexity of what he calls individuation, the path to the Self-Self. The pedagogical, sociological or psychological discourses that exalt the ideal of autonomy, freedom and emancipation are not enough. There are secrets in this trajectory. There are sufferings, losses, battles, deaths that, in general, we are not willing to face. We have already said that we usually don't have the courage to lose the self as we have built it, and with which we identify, in order to find ourselves again at a more developed level.

Our efforts are concentrated on making the world in our image and likeness, in the molds and parameters of our faiths, theories, projects, ideals, but not to allow ourselves to be led by the mysterious and wise voice that dwells within us. It is certainly important that we work in the world and strive to adjust it to our projects, as long as these projects are also the projects that are enhanced by listening to the voices that come from the depths and/or heights, that enter into dialogue with the totality that goes beyond our world, whose rationality is limited, that can only see what the light it itself has turned on allows it to see.

Final considerations - education and individuation

According to ^{Jung (2013}b, p. 163), one can "[...] quietly assert that collective education represents something undoubtedly useful and that for many individuals it is enough [...]," but the greater potential exists, and there are also many people who feel provoked to move forward. However, developing to reach a higher degree of maturity is not a simple thing. It is beyond our everyday concerns, our professional and technical occupations, our conventional and often convenient relationships.

It is to muddle through and move forward from light to dark, from the dominated world to the unknown and often frightening. Writes ^{Jung (2014}b, p. 27) that one is "[...] first faced with the necessity of plunging into a dark depth, which reveals itself as an indispensable condition for a higher ascent [...]," which implies courage and the capacity to surrender; a sufficient confidence that the soul can drive home. It presupposes a willingness to face rough seas, storms, cold, heat, loneliness, and abandonment. On the way home, we will be honed, purified, integrated to ultimately reach as far as possible, to an ascent.

If education, as a curriculum and a technique, cannot fulfill this demand of the soul, it can, to the extent that educators themselves develop and stop projecting their own self and its conflicts outwards, and therefore also onto the students, free the students to listen to their own voices, allowing their experiences and expressions not to be immediately and ruthlessly tuned to our truths. The perception arises that learning to live together, solidarity, and cooperation are indispensable conditions for life, but that personal perceptions, intuitions, dreams, and experiences must also be taken into account. Even the shadows will have their place and their energy will be integrated through dialog and will be a propeller of creativity and vitality in personal and collective existence.

We will then be on our way. Without reaching the end of the journey, but filling with meaning each step, even the wrong one; an uninterrupted movement of deepening and reconciliation with the various aspects of life, aspects that appear in everyday life as opposites, such as our masculine and feminine dimension, our shadow and our light, our interiority and exteriority, our uniqueness, and our belonging to a collective.

These are perhaps some reasons why school education as we know it is still restricted to developing aspects of the human being that can undergo planning and control. It must give up, perhaps rightly, the development of the subject in the direction of individuation, because this development does not coincide with the learning of universalizable behaviors. Ethics and aesthetics are timidly dealt with, but as exteriorities. The school and its agents are not able to deal with and accompany the unexpected and mysterious movements of the soul on its way to itself. We know how to accompany the subject in its social adjustment, but not on its way to the Self.

Human improvement, which was the concern of the great schools and masters of antiquity (and today), does not find easy acceptance in the institutions we create, since they respond to the collectivity. Moreover, they exclude and deny the shadowy dimensions of human existence, and even deal with a certain ease with the rationalized universe but are unprepared for the irrational and the soul.

We suffer from intransigence and fear of what is beyond our rational control. And the path of personal development requires a generous and courageous welcoming and listening to the voices that come from outside the boundaries of kind, intelligent and developed civilization. We don't know what to do with instincts, except to sublimate their energies in the direction of social agreements. We punish and hide the evil in our hearts. In this way we atrophy, in the view of Jung and of schools and thinkers whose experiences lie beyond the civilization of normality, our human existence.

We need to develop a growing confidence in the human being's capacity for self-development beyond what we live in common and what our institutions can accomplish. Our expectations, buoyed by the vision of the human being we inhabit, accommodate us to ideals of productivity and success. Not much beyond that. And if we do not experience in ourselves the potential for development that goes beyond the normal or normotic world, as ^{Weil, Leloup, and Crema (2014}) call it, we will not be in a position to let others be the otherness they are, and we will not be able to trust the potential that each of us carries within ourselves.

It is not a matter, according to what we said above, of creating pedagogical alternatives for individuation, but of preparing personal availability for that which can only happen by its own strength. And this means accepting that we, human beings, even with all the (sometimes contradictory) lights we have turned on with our civilization, do not have efficient mastery over most of the most important things in our lives. That individuation, development of the self, does not mean to become master of oneself and of things, but to reconcile and accept the belonging to a whole, to a situation that surpasses us, that contains our little self and gives it sustenance. In this encounter with the original and primary whole, and in the acceptance of this belonging, one finds oneself.

If the development potential of the human being is not exhausted in what the education we have can accomplish, that is, if we notice that the human being can advance much further in his development, and if the demand for this development is more strongly announced from the second half of life on, it is necessary to open the universe of pedagogical concerns beyond institutionalized limits, not renouncing the pedagogical institution, but opening it to processes and dispositions that can authorize human development beyond the collectivity. This development cannot be instituted, but can always be prepared, as ^{Heidegger (2006}) writes.

It is not an abandonment or denial of the collective dimension, essential to the human condition, but its enrichment with the rescue of individuality. It is not about the repression of the collectivity nor of individuality, but about the disposition so that the dialog between the individual and the collective does not become unilateral and constitutes integration at a higher level of existence. It is about an education that enables the life of the individual and not its suppression in the name of the collectivity, be it manifested in the existence of the State or in another form of organization of the collectivity of individuals.

One of the greatest challenges is probably to begin the transformation oneself, for, as Jung writes

[...] there are few who look within themselves, few who ask themselves whether they would not be more useful to human society if each one began with himself, whether it would not be better, instead of demanding from others, to test first in his own person, in his innermost forum, the suspension of the prevailing order, the laws and victories that they proclaim in the public square (^{Jung, 2014}a, p. 11).

Personal transformation would provide the conditions for one to know how to distinguish what is mine and what is the world's, and then become capable of letting it be that which deserves to be, according to a judgment without projections; to finally know how to transform that which needs to be transformed. A marriage between activity and passivity (between anima and animus), that results in the serenity and wisdom of one who knows when and how to act on the world and what to transform, avoiding the activity that simply transfers personal conflicts to the outside and tries to solve them in the outside.