Kairos and the Illusion of Sovereignty and Rethinking Free Will in Depth Psychology
- Brainz Magazine
- Mar 31
- 7 min read
Dr. Dragana Favre is a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and a 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.
In psychotherapy, transformation often appears not as a linear process but as a sudden rupture, an unexpected moment of insight, illumination, or psychic reconfiguration. These moments, referred to by many names such as spark, déclic, aha, kairos, or a critical threshold, are not easily reducible to conscious intention or volitional effort. The therapeutic process may involve long periods of preparation, emotional labor, and interpretive work, yet the decisive turning point often seems to arise unbidden, from beyond the Ego's reach. This phenomenon raises fundamental questions about agency and autonomy: if the key moment of psychic change is not willed but awaited, does that mean free will is illusory? Is the transformation governed not by the Ego but by the Self, or even the unconscious structure of language and affect?
Jungian depth psychology presents a foundational challenge to the sovereign ego. In Jung’s (1959) model, the Self represents the totality of the psyche, encompassing both conscious and unconscious aspects, while the Ego occupies only a partial and often fragile position within this whole. From this perspective, change in psychotherapy, particularly the kind that results in individuation, requires the Ego to relinquish its centrality and open itself to messages from the unconscious. Jung does not deny agency, but he situates it within a larger, more dynamic psychic system. The Ego's task, in this view, is to relate to the Self and to become receptive to its compensatory function, often expressed through dreams, symbols, or spontaneous insights. “The Self is not only the center but also the whole circumference (of the circle) which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the center of this totality, just as the Ego is the center of consciousness” (Jung, 1959, p. 41). The spark, the turning point, then, may represent the moment when the Ego finally perceives and integrates what the Self has long been offering an alignment rather than a conquest.
This model does not obliterate free will but reframes it. The Ego does not choose transformation as it might choose a meal or an outfit; rather, it prepares for it, suffers toward it, and finally recognizes it when it arrives. In this view, the will is not a blunt instrument but a relational gesture, a willingness to hear, to reflect, and to endure symbolic tension. The post-Jungian elaboration of the transcendent function exemplifies this participatory notion of will. As Samuels (1985) observes, the transcendent function allows for a psychic synthesis to emerge from the conflict of opposites, a synthesis that is never purely manufactured by the Ego but co-emerges from the symbolic interplay between conscious and unconscious. Transformation is not imposed but received, and the Ego’s freedom lies in its capacity to remain present through discomfort and ambiguity.
Hillman (1975), in his revisionist and mythopoetic approach, pushes this further by critiquing the Ego's fantasy of mastery. For him, psychological transformation is less about achieving insight and more about yielding to imaginative processes that the ego cannot control. “We do not move toward insight so much as insight moves toward us through images that carry soul” (Hillman, 1975, p. 125). The moment of kairos is not so much a decision as it is a visitation. The subject must be attuned, receptive, and in symbolic dialogue with their psychic material, but they cannot command the moment of rupture. From this angle, free will appears as a capacity to host the unexpected, not to dictate it.
This idea of the subject as a participant rather than a sovereign agent is also central to psychoanalytic thought, particularly in Freudian and Lacanian traditions. Freud (1955), in his late work on repetition compulsion, described how the psyche returns again and again to traumatic scenes, not because the Ego chooses this path, but because the unconscious insists upon it. The Ego, far from being autonomous, is often structured around defenses that obscure true psychic movement. Transformation occurs only when these defenses are pierced not by conscious choice but by the irruption of unconscious content.
Lacan (1977) radicalizes this further by arguing that the subject is constituted in and through the Other, specifically, the symbolic order of language and desire. The subject is spoken before they speak, formed by signifiers that operate beyond conscious control. The moment of transformation, the kairotic break, is not a product of the Ego’s effort but a consequence of what Lacan terms la coupure, the cut or rupture in symbolic continuity. It is only through this disruption that a new position becomes possible. “It is only at the level of the unconscious that one finds the truth of a desire which is not the subject’s own, but that of the Other” (Lacan, 1977, p. 172). In this framework, agency is born after the break; prior to it, the subject is caught in a web of repetitions and identifications. The déclic, far from being an act of free will, is a crack in the symbolic that creates space for freedom to emerge retroactively, or, in another way of thinking, an entropic collapse.
The philosophical tradition also provides tools for understanding this reframed notion of free will. Kierkegaard (1992) famously described kairos as the intersection of eternity and time, a decisive moment that cannot be predicted or manufactured but only responded to with dread or faith. The subject does not control kairos; rather, kairos confronts the subject with the possibility of transformation. Heidegger (1962), similarly, places the question of freedom not in the domain of willful action but in the realm of Being. Authenticity arises not from choice in the conventional sense but from an attunement to Being as it discloses itself. In both cases, the will becomes a form of Gelassenheit, a letting-be rather than a command. The subject becomes free not by forcing change but by preparing to receive it. This makes us think of surrender in Woodman’s writings.
Contemporary neuroscience lends surprising support to this deconstruction of free will. In his well-known experiments, Libet (1985) demonstrated that brain activity precedes conscious intention by several hundred milliseconds, suggesting that what we experience as a free choice is often initiated by non-conscious neural processes. Libet’s model includes the possibility of a "veto," a capacity to inhibit action just before execution, but it nonetheless destabilizes the notion of the Ego as a sovereign agent. The neural groundwork for decisions is laid before we are aware of choosing. While this does not necessarily negate moral responsibility, it does reinforce the idea that conscious will operates within limits. It shapes, guides, or inhibits actions that are already set in motion by deeper layers of the psyche and soma.
Taken together, these perspectives suggest that the déclic in psychotherapy, the sudden moment of clarity or shift, is not an act of brute will but the culmination of a complex interplay between conscious effort, unconscious readiness, symbolic mediation, and perhaps even biological timing. The Ego does not decide in isolation; it waits, listens, and prepares. Free will is not abolished in this model but relocated. It exists not as absolute autonomy but as a humble, participatory force within a wider field of psychic, symbolic, and biological determinants. The Ego becomes free not when it controls the outcome, but when it aligns itself with a deeper process that includes but transcends it.
This model of participatory has ethical implications for psychotherapy. It calls for patience, symbolic work, and trust in the psyche’s own timing. It also calls for a reconsideration of therapeutic success: not as the execution of a goal but as the co-creation of conditions in which the unconscious can speak. The therapist, like the patient, must relinquish fantasies of mastery and become attuned to the rhythms of psychic life, its ebbs and flows, and its silences and ruptures. What appears passive waiting for the spark is, in fact, an active and difficult stance: the cultivation of readiness for the unknown.
In the end, perhaps the most radical freedom is not in choosing transformation but in consenting to be transformed. The moment of kairos is never entirely ours, but we can choose how we meet it: resisting, surrendering, or embracing. The Self may call, but the Ego must still answer.
Dragana Favre, Psychiatrist and Jungian Psychotherapist
Dr. Dragana Favre is a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and a 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-Yugoslavian 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:
Freud, S. (1955). Beyond the pleasure principle (J. Strachey, Trans.). In J. Strachey (Ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 18, pp. 1–64). London: Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1920)
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). New York: Harper & Row. (Original work published 1927)
Hillman, J. (1975). Re-visioning psychology. New York, NY: Harper & Row.
Jung, C. G. (1959). Aion: Researches into the phenomenology of the Self (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1951)
Kierkegaard, S. (1992). Concluding unscientific postscript to philosophical fragments (H. V. Hong & E. H. Hong, Trans.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1846)
Lacan, J. (1977). Écrits: A selection (A. Sheridan, Trans.). London, UK: Tavistock.
Samuels, A. (1985). Jung and the post-Jungians. London, UK: Routledge.
