The Society of Too, Liminality, the Other, and the Disappearance of Transformation
- 3 days ago
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Dr. Dragana Favre is a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and seeker of the human psyche's mysteries. With a medical degree and extensive neuroscience education from prestigious institutions like the Max Planck Institute and Instituto de Neurociencias, she's a seasoned expert.
We live in a time that might be described as a shift from a society of two to a society of too. At first glance, the difference appears to be little more than a linguistic coincidence, a single added letter. Yet within that small difference lies one of the central psychological dramas of contemporary life. Two implies relationship: myself and the Other, ego and unconscious, individual and community, the known and the unknown. It is the tension between two positions from which something genuinely new can emerge.
Too, by contrast, signifies excess. Too much information, too much stimulation, too many identities, too many opinions, too many images, too many possibilities. In the society of too, content is not lacking; space is. Contacts are abundant; encounters are rare. Information proliferates, yet transformation becomes increasingly elusive.
The paradox of contemporary life is that we have never been more connected and yet perhaps never more distant from one another. Our technologies promise unlimited communication while simultaneously creating new forms of isolation. Algorithms offer endless opportunities for connection, yet they often trap us within increasingly narrow circles of affirmation. Rather than encountering something genuinely different, we repeatedly encounter reflections of ourselves. What disappears is not relationship itself but its liminal dimension, the possibility that the Other might change us.
In classical Jungian psychology, transformation never arises from complete identification with oneself. It emerges through encounter with something the ego does not control. The shadow, the anima or animus, a dream image, an unexpected affect, or a symbol from the depths of the psyche all arrive as forms of otherness within the self.[12] More recent post-Jungian thinkers have expanded this idea, suggesting that otherness is not confined to the unconscious but permeates the world itself. James Hillman spoke of the soul of the world, while contemporary authors such as Susan Rowland, Stanton Marlan, Lucy Huskinson, and Fanny Brewster have emphasized that transformation occurs not only through introspection but through encounters with what remains irreducibly other: nature, culture, history, technology, the body, and other people.
Seen from this perspective, ours is a culture that simultaneously longs for liminality and fears it. Victor Turner (1969) described liminality as a threshold state, a space in which the old identity no longer functions while the new one has not yet arrived. It is a condition of uncertainty, disorientation, ambiguity, and possibility. Yet contemporary culture has become increasingly intolerant of such states. In a world organized around optimization, productivity, and perpetual availability, uncertainty is treated as a malfunction. We are expected to know immediately who we are, what we think, where we stand, and to which group we belong. Ambiguity is experienced not as a fertile condition but as a threat.
Perhaps the dynamic can be expressed through a simple formula, "When two becomes too frightening, it is emptied out. When that emptiness becomes unbearable, it is filled with too. And when too fills everything, we can no longer see two."
This formula captures something essential about contemporary subjectivity. Genuine encounters with otherness are unsettling. The Other may challenge our identity, expose our projections, or confront us with aspects of ourselves we would rather avoid. Faced with that discomfort, we retreat. Yet the space left behind does not remain empty for long. It becomes filled with stimulation: information, entertainment, political certainty, consumer goods, endless scrolling, new projects, and new identities. Thus emerges a culture of excess. But excess does not solve the problem; it merely conceals it.
Byung-Chul Han (2017) has argued that ours is no longer primarily a society of prohibition but a society of positivity and abundance. Everything is available, accessible, and seemingly possible. Yet this limitless openness produces a peculiar exhaustion. When there are no boundaries, there is no form. When there is no resistance, there is no transformation. And when there is no encounter with genuine otherness, development itself begins to stagnate.
From a post-Jungian perspective, one might even suggest that contemporary culture is developing what could be called a liminality complex. Jung described complexes as relatively autonomous psychic systems that shape perception, affect, and behaviour.[13] A liminality complex would not simply be a fear of change; rather, it would involve a simultaneous fascination with and avoidance of transformation. We desire change while resisting the process through which change occurs. We want a new version of ourselves without the confusion that precedes it. We want creativity without uncertainty, spiritual growth without disorientation, and meaning without the loss of previous certainties.
Wolfgang Giegerich has repeatedly argued that psychological development does not occur through the accumulation of experiences but through the death of particular forms of consciousness. Yet contemporary culture displays a profound fear of psychological death. We continually generate new content in order to avoid confronting emptiness. But emptiness is not the enemy of transformation; it is one of its prerequisites. Just as a symbol emerges from the tension between opposites, new meaning emerges only when old meaning loses its authority.
This brings us back to the question of the Other. Emmanuel Levinas famously argued that the Other always exceeds our understanding. The Other cannot be reduced to our concepts, categories, or expectations. Their alterity remains fundamentally irreducible. Yet contemporary culture increasingly transforms the Other into a projection. We encounter labels rather than persons, political identities rather than human beings, profiles rather than presences. The living complexity of the Other is replaced by representations that can be more easily managed and controlled.
Jean Baudrillard anticipated this development when he described a world in which simulations begin to replace reality itself. Today, that process has become deeply embedded in everyday life. Community becomes audience. Friendship becomes networking. Love becomes compatibility. Wisdom becomes information. Presence becomes availability. Each substitution removes some aspect of the liminal uncertainty inherent in genuine relationship. They offer contact without the risk of transformation.
Yet psychological growth depends precisely upon what these substitutions eliminate. Jung understood the symbol as something that emerges when opposing forces remain in tension long enough for a third possibility to appear. Transformation, therefore, requires a capacity to endure uncertainty. It requires staying in the space between. It requires resisting the urge to resolve ambiguity prematurely.
Recent post-Jungian scholarship has deepened this insight. Susan Rowland argues that creativity emerges through encounters with radical alterity rather than through the repetition of the familiar. Fanny Brewster explores how cultural and racial differences function as psychological thresholds that cannot be overcome through denial but only through dialogue. Lucy Huskinson writes of imagination as a meeting place between different layers of reality. Across these diverse perspectives, a common theme emerges: transformation is not achieved by eliminating difference but by learning to inhabit it.
Perhaps this leads us to a deeper formula of individuation, "We do not become One by eliminating Two. We become One when we recognize that Two is already part of One."
This may be one of the central paradoxes of Jungian psychology. Individuation does not mean returning to homogeneity. It does not mean resolving all tensions or erasing all differences. It means developing a psychic capacity large enough to contain difference without destroying it. The Self is not a unity that abolishes multiplicity; it is a unity capable of holding multiplicity.
The contemporary problem, then, is not an excess of difference but a diminishing capacity to symbolically engage with difference. As a result, we oscillate between two extremes. On one side lies the emptiness of the isolated ego, fearful of encounter. On the other lies the noise of the society of too, where emptiness is covered over by endless stimulation. In both cases, the space of transformation disappears.
The task of contemporary psychology may therefore be neither to eliminate liminality nor to master it, but to learn once again how to contain it. Not to control the threshold, but to create conditions in which the threshold can be inhabited. Analysis, art, ritual, friendship, community, and genuine dialogue remain among the few spaces where it is still possible to remain long enough between the old and the new for something unexpected to emerge.
For what is truly new never arises from excess. It emerges from encounter. It emerges between myself and the Other, between certainty and uncertainty, between what is dying and what has not yet found a name.
In a world of too, perhaps one of the most important tasks of individuation is to recover the reality of two. And perhaps the next step is even more difficult: to recognize that behind both too and two lies one, not a static unity, but a living wholeness that continuously emerges through relationship, tension, difference, and encounter. The Self, in this sense, is not found beyond liminality; it is discovered through our willingness to remain within it.
Read more from Dragana Favre
Dragana Favre, Psychiatrist and Jungian Psychotherapist
Dr. Dragana Favre is a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and seeker of the human psyche's mysteries. With a medical degree and extensive neuroscience education from prestigious institutions like the Max Planck Institute and Instituto de Neurociencias, she's a seasoned expert. Her unique approach combines Jungian psychotherapy, EMDR, and dream interpretation, guiding patients towards self-discovery and healing. Beyond her profession, Dr. Favre is passionate about science fiction, nature, and cosmology. Her ex-Yugoslav roots in the small town of Kikinda offer a rich backdrop to her life's journey. She is dedicated to helping people find their true selves, much like an alchemist turning lead into gold.
References:
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[2] Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid modernity. Polity Press.
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[13] Jung, C. G. (1969). A review of the complex theory. In The structure and dynamics of the psyche (R. F. C. Hull, Trans., CW 8, pp. 92–104). Princeton University Press.
[14] Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority (A. Lingis, Trans.). Duquesne University Press.
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