The Mandala at Midlife: Jung and the Movement Toward Wholeness.

There are periods in life when the identity that has carried us for decades begins to shift. The roles remain recognizable, but perhaps they no longer contain the whole of who we are. These experiences can raise questions that are less concerned with achievement than with meaning: Who am I now? What remains unlived? What have I neglected, relinquished, or pushed aside? What belongs to me in this next phase of life?

Carl Jung believed that such questions become particularly important during the second half of life. His concept of individuation describes the lifelong process through which we become more conscious of the larger personality—not simply strengthening the ego, but gradually encountering and integrating aspects of ourselves that have remained unconscious, rejected, undeveloped, or unknown. One of the images Jung found most compelling for this movement toward psychological wholeness was the mandala. The mandala, for Jung, was far more than a beautiful circular design. It was an image of the Self.