Not so in Jungian psychology. In a word, complexes behave like independent beings, a fact especially evident in abnormal states of mind. In the voices heard by the insane they even take on a personal ego-character like that of the spirits who manifest themselves through automatic writing and similar techniques. We could, therefore, translate individuation as 'coming to selfhood' or 'self-realization'. But again and again I note that the individuation process is confused with the coming of the ego into consciousness and that the ego is in consequence identified with the self, which naturally produces a hopeless conceptual muddle.
Individuation is then nothing but egocentredness and autoeroticism.
It is as much one's self, and all other selves, as the ego. Individuation does not shut one out from the world, but gathers the world to oneself. It is the archetype of order as manifested in the totality of the personality, and as symbolized by a circle, a square, or the famous quaternity. There is little hope of our ever being able to reach even approximate consciousness of the self, since however much we may make conscious there will always exist an indeterminate and indeterminable amount of unconscious material which belongs to the totality of the self. The other one is the Shadow.