Notes from the therapy room: Clearing the space for yourself to arrive.

I’ve been thinking about disidentification recently as a prelude to individuation, arguably the central aim in a successful psychotherapy process. Individuation is a kind of psychic organisation: a process by which a person becomes distinct within themselves, psychically separate, internally coherent, and capable of living from their own centre. When an individual lives from what is internally true to their essence, even when it’s not externally approved (especially when it's not externally approved), rather than organising themselves around adaptation to parent, culture, partner, or system, they move toward individuation.

Jung saw individuation as the central task of psychological life:

“Individuation means becoming an ‘in-dividual,’ and, in so far as ‘individuality’ embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one’s own self.”

Two Essays on Analytical Psychology

He described individuation as involving:

• Disentangling from the collective: family myths, cultural roles, projections

• Facing the shadow: everything disowned or denied

• Reconciling the opposites within: masculine/feminine, light/dark, persona/self

This is an integration of the Self, the total psyche, not just the ego. As Jung famously said:

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”

So… just untangle (psychically) from your family, confront the abyss, integrate the shadow, and reconcile all internal opposites. Easy. Should be done by lunch… I do love a short list.

Identification: What Is It?

In this dynamic, identification refers to the unconscious process by which a person takes on aspects of another, often a parent or early caregiver, and integrates those aspects into their own psychic structure. It’s structural: the parent becomes internalised as a way of being, feeling, or relating.

Children internalise the voices, values, and behaviours of caregivers. This can be conscious (“I want to be like her”) or an unconscious survival defence (“If I mirror him, or behave a certain way, I’ll be safe, loved”). Over time, these identifications may form the deep scaffolding of the false self, initially adaptive, but potentially maladaptive if they outlive their purpose.

In healthy dynamics, identification supports development, empathy, and belonging, transferring virtues and strengths. But when the original figure is unconscious, or worse - harmful, absent, engulfing, or idealised, identification can become a cage to free yourself from rather than a foundation to build your life upon. That’s when conscious disidentification offers a way home to yourself.

Psychosynthesis and Identification

Roberto Assagioli’s psychosynthesis model places disidentification at the heart of self-liberation. He describes it as a technique for freeing the self from over-identification with roles, emotions, or thoughts, allowing for greater flexibility and authenticity. The process is developmental: individuals move from strong attachment, to moderate attachment, and eventually to non-attachment, gaining increasing freedom and self-awareness.

Disidentification: The First Step Toward Selfhood

Disidentification is a process of separation. It involves seeing what you’ve internalised that is not yours and gently (or even forcefully) removing it from the seat of your identity - consciously, intentionally. It’s specific, can be painful, and often tied to a particular figure or projection.

You disidentify with what was taken in: the critical mother, the idealised father, the shameful label, the scapegoat role etc.

The Nature of Disidentification

Disidentification is often surgical, an intentional removal, a cutting of the psychic umbilical cord. Individuation is more architectural, a construction, the organic build of your true self.

• Disidentification clears the space.

• Individuation builds the house.

You cannot individuate while living inside someone else’s structure. You cannot build a true self on top of a false image.

Disidentification is what clears the inherited blueprint, so you can see through the smoke and mirrors to what’s actually yours. It’s the moment of stepping out of the mother’s gaze, the father’s silence, the family myth, the role you were given. Until that happens, you may still be orienting your being around their psychic field, not your own. In therapy we work towards fostering a “Self” that can compassionately lead and integrate the whole personality and help you recognise and disidentify from internalised roles or voices, supporting the individuation process.

The Process: Repetition, Grief, and Shadow Integration

Disidentification isn’t a single moment of release. It’s a process of seeing, forgetting, and seeing again. Sometimes, what you’ve disidentified from creeps back in through another door, like grief, that messy animal that comes through the back door when you least expect to find it there..

You may feel the bind before you can name it, a sense of being inhabited, moved by something that isn’t quite yours.. a feeling of building on something structurally unsound.

Psychic possession, not of a demon, but of an unconscious legacy. Something you never agreed to but were carrying anyway... like coming home from a long trip and ending up in the backseat of a taxi with everyone else’s bags. Luggage everywhere. Heavy, tangled, and none of it yours. Disidentification is the moment you notice. Individuation is getting out of the car, walking home, empty-handed, toward the life that’s actually yours.

Shadow Work

Shadow Work is the process of becoming conscious of what you’ve disowned.

Some of it is yours and some of it was projected onto you. Compassion matters - towards yourself, and towards others. Not to excuse, but to understand.

Integration doesn’t mean accepting everything. It means sorting. What is mine? What isn’t?

What do I want to give back, let go of, keep?

That’s what makes individuation possible - standing cleanly in what’s true.

The Risks and Supports Needed

There can be an “inner vacuum” after disidentification, a destabilising emptiness where old identifications once lived. Support and containment are crucial during this phase, whether through therapy, community, or other grounding practices. Sudden loss of old identifications can be unsettling, and the process is often repetitive and grief-filled, as you metabolise unprocessed emotions that may not even be your own.

Reclaiming Psychic Space

What’s been taken is psychic space, the inner architecture where selfhood forms, breathes, expands. To reclaim it, you listen. In therapy, we notice the internal voices: Whose voice is that? When did you first hear it? You don’t push it out, but see it, welcome it, trace its origin, feel it, and let it move through you and out. Over and over, you clear the space for yourself to arrive.

Authorship and Freedom

It’s a return to authorship, the beginning of true freedom, a rebirth. Viktor Frankl captured this beautifully in Mans Search for Meaning:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Both individuation and disidentification are about sovereignty, the inner field where, even if everything external is controlled or intruded upon, something remains intact, the freedom to hold your position, your truth.

Conclusion

Once you’ve stepped out of the inherited system, you get to live a life that’s truly yours. It might look strange, luxurious, unambitious, eccentric, playful.. who knows... It might not make sense to anyone else. But it will be yours. Your one precious life.