The sacrifice ritual and process of individuation: analysis of a model

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper aims to discuss a relation between the theme of sacrifice in Ancient Greece and in the Jungian understanding of the process of individuation and other similar models of personality/self-development. My argument claims that models such as the process of individuation, Post-Traumatic Growth or Positive Disintegration share features on a structural level with a specific model of sacrifice. A special focus will be on eniautos daimon, the Year-King or a spirit of the year, a concept popularized in anthropology at the beginning of the twentieth century which I claim had influence on developing Jung’s theory of individuation. In this paper, I will apply a philosophical analysis to models of psychotherapy, and especially Jungian psychology. The philosophical analysis of models allows to indicate structural similarities between them without claiming anything about their accuracy.