The individuation process, far from being an anachronism as Giegerich claims, continues to be the psyche's logical response to the forces in the world that would disenfranchise the individual. I would compare to the buddhist priest's telling the dead that they are dead before leading them through the bardo to rebirth. Contemporizing the malaise of this chief and making it ours, Giegerich writes that we in the West are in precisely this position with respect of our traditional sources of soul-making. I think that Giegerich's own article belies this possibility. It has never been claimed that every Tom, Dick, or Harry has big dreams or a call to the magnum opus of the soul.
Big dreams are the prerogative of the chiefs.
Giegerich, though he may squirm to be so characterized, is a chief of our tribe. Hillman has lionized him as the most important thinker in Jungian psychology today. Just as the chief of an indigenous people was once inspired in his leadership by dreams informative of the forces at play in the life of his tribe, Giegerich's article provides guidance and direction to analytical psychology in relation to the forces of contemporary life it imaginatively perceives. The present on-line discussion, in fact, is dedicated to the wider theme of sorting out the future of analytical psychology for the next century. Where Jung saw individuality as a crucial feature of the soul's logical life, potent enough to occasionally raise the moral level of the collective, Giegerich sees it as logically defunct in our present world.