Carl Jung's Afternoon of Life: Individuation, Aging, and Learning to Notice What Has Always Been There

“The afternoon of life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.” — Carl Jung

A few weeks ago, my sister Kelly said something that stayed with me.

“As we get older,” she said, “we start to see the afterlife more.”

I knew exactly what she meant.

Not in a religious way, and not as a belief system. More as a shift in perception. A way of noticing things that had always been there, but hadn’t held my attention before.

Light breaking through clouds in a way that feels personal. A rainbow showing up when you weren’t looking for reassurance. A coincidence that gives you pause, not because it proves anything, but because it feels meaningful.

Almost ten years ago, when I was thirty-eight or thirty-nine, I wrote a graduate paper on Jung’s concept of individuation and what he called the afternoon of life. I was standing right at the edge of midlife, thinking carefully, writing academically, still very much in theory mode. Now, as I approach fifty, I can see that the ideas themselves were sound. I simply hadn’t lived enough of them yet.

Individuation and the Shape of a Life

In that paper, The Process of Individuation and Its Challenges, I described individuation as “the psychic parallel to the physical process of aging,” drawing on Jungian scholar Jolande Jacobi’s understanding of individuation as something that unfolds over time rather than something we achieve through effort or ambition.

I still stand by that framing. What has changed is how it feels from the inside.

Individuation is often framed as self-improvement or spiritual growth, which has never quite fit for me. The process feels less like striving and more like integration. Less about becoming something new, and more about allowing what has been sidelined to come back into the room.

In the first half of life, the ego does important work. We build careers, relationships, families, and identities. We learn how to function in the world and how to belong within it. Jung referred to this phase as the morning of life, a period focused on establishment, productivity, and outward momentum.

That work matters. It just doesn’t answer every question.

Midlife as a Change in Orientation

Carl Jung observed that somewhere between the mid-thirties and mid-forties, many people experience a psychological turning point. Often it doesn’t arrive as a dramatic crisis. More commonly, it shows up as restlessness, dissatisfaction, or a quiet sense that something essential is missing, even when life appears successful from the outside.

In my earlier writing, I explored this period as an expansion rather than a decline. The psyche begins to ask for something different. The unconscious, long managed and contained, starts to push back.

At the time, I understood this intellectually. Now I recognize it through lived experience.

As we age, the boundary between inner and outer worlds softens. We become less inclined to project everything outward and more willing to encounter meaning internally. The shadow, the unlived parts, and the questions we postponed while we were busy building a life begin to surface. Not because something is wrong, but because something is ready.

Carl Jung's Synchronicity, Depth, and Attention: Entering the Afternoon of Life

Jung used the term synchronicity to describe meaningful coincidence that isn’t explained by cause and effect. Importantly, he never framed synchronicity as proof of anything supernatural. He understood it as meaning becoming visible when the psyche is attentive enough to notice.

Earlier in life, attention is pulled forward. We focus on what’s next, what needs to be built, and what still needs proving. Over time, especially after loss, love, disappointment, and change, our relationship to time shifts. We slow down. We notice more. Not because more is happening, but because we are paying attention differently.

Then we enter what Carl Jung named the afternoon of life.

This is where Kelly’s comment about the afterlife really lands for me. I don’t think we begin to see the afterlife because death is closer. I think we begin to sense continuity because our grip on certainty loosens.

People who work closely with those who have had near-death experiences often hear similar themes. Life is intentional. Love carries more weight than accomplishment. Difficulty is not punishment. Earth is demanding because growth here requires constraint, friction, and relationship.

From there, depth doesn’t pull us out of life. It roots us more fully in it.

Individuation as Staying

One of Jung’s most grounded insights was that individuation doesn’t remove us from the world. It doesn’t ask us to transcend our humanity. It asks us to inhabit it more honestly.

The ego doesn’t disappear in this process. What changes is its role. Conscious and unconscious begin to work in relationship rather than opposition.

In my graduate paper, I wrote about the danger of clinging to the rules of the first half of life once we’ve clearly entered the second. Anxiety, depression, addiction, and despair often emerge not because something has failed, but because something essential has been ignored for too long.

That understanding feels even more accurate now than it did then.

Where I Am Now

As I approach fifty, I’m less interested in labels and more interested in alignment. I trust resonance more than explanation. I no longer feel the need to land on certainty in order to find meaning.

I still believe individuation is our life’s work. What I understand now is that it unfolds whether we cooperate with it or not. The invitation is simply to pay attention, to notice what stops us, to let meaning show up without forcing it into language, and to stay present in a world that is often painful and still deeply beautiful.

If we begin to sense what people call the afterlife more clearly as we age, perhaps it isn’t about where we’re going. Perhaps it’s about finally seeing what has always been here.

If this resonates with you or you have any questions, please feel free to comment or drop me at line.

Click here to access the blog version of my academic paper on Individuation.

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