The 7 Deadly Sins as the Path to Individuation

The 7 Deadly Sins as the Path to Individuation

Or - What to do about Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride?

This course is about all the things we commonly think of as ‘wrong behavior’ or ‘wrong attitude’. All of them are also conceived as leading away from some spiritual goal, whether it’s the Christian sins, Jewish het, the Yogic hindrances, or the Buddhist poisons. What might the psychological goal really be? How do we understand these apparently uncontrollable but ubiquitous experiences? Every culture has a set of these values and rules – and every culture has one attitude toward these problems: don’t do them. Or else.

This course proposes a different approach. Most ‘sins’ are seen as caused by a lack of will, spiritual impurity, character flaw, or as the result of a problematic history. All of these approaches ignore the dynamics (and potential wisdom) of the unconscious. Typical markers of this process include the subjective experiences of guilt and shame, and the collective phenomenon of blame. In light of these dynamics, Jung sees any of these experiential states as a message from the unconscious, a message meant to help us develop a greater understanding of ourselves, to change something in our attitude, and therefore achieve a fuller wholeness.

It is only from this perspective of “what is it for?” that we can understand where these eruptions of the unconscious are going, and so we can translate their message into wisdom and cognitive, actionable, information. This move gives the clinician a powerful symbolic tool to understand and to alleviate the suffering that is caused by a thwarted process of individuation.