Transformative Learning and the Journey of Individuation. ERIC Digest No. 223.

For many years, Robert Boyd has focused on the deeper emotional and spiritual dimensions of learning that many have suggested are underdeveloped in dominant conceptions of transformative learning. Boyd's work is grounded in the field of depth psychology, which is based on a fundamental belief in the powerful role that the dynamic unconscious plays in shaping people's thoughts, feelings, and actions on a day-to-day basis. Boyd's view of transformative learning is grounded in Carl Jung's concept of individuation, which is a process by which individual beings are formed and differentiated. The forces and dynamics associated with individuation are largely unconscious and manifest themselves, independently from the conscious ego, within the emotional, affective, and spiritual dimensions of our lives. Images play a central role in Boyd's notion of transformative education. Research and theory in depth psychology provides some ideas about how to work with the images that might arise within educational contexts. This process, referred to as the "imaginal method," involves describing, associating, amplifying, and animating the images in order to foster learners' insights into their own perceptions and motivations. Boyd's view of transformative learning invites us to embrace a more mytho-poetic understanding of education, to deepen our sense of its emotional and spiritual strength. (Contains 19 references.) (MN)