Depth psychology — the tradition associated with Jung, Hillman, Stein, von Franz, and others — has practical applications to careers that the source literature often obscures behind dense language. The five concepts below are what travel best into a career field guide.
1. Shadow
The shadow is the part of the personality the conscious self has refused. In career terms, the shadow often contains a vocational direction that was rejected early — by family pressure, social context, fear, or simple convenience. Specific envy of particular people doing particular work is the most reliable signal that shadow material is asking to be acknowledged. The Labyrinth chapter of Berufung is the worksheet practice for naming the suppressed direction.
2. Second half of life
Jung argued that the first half of life is for building the ego — establishing a position, earning competence, finding a place. The second half is for vocation — finding the work you were meant to do, distinct from the work that earned you your standing. The transition between the two often arrives between 35 and 50 and is structural rather than pathological. The Berufung method is calibrated for this arrival.
3. Vocation
From the Latin vocare, to call. In depth-psychology terms, vocation is work you are summoned to rather than work you choose — but the calling has to be heard, named, and acted on. Most people experience vocation as a recurring feeling that they're for something specific they haven't yet acknowledged. The Compass chapter is the practice for converting the calling into a written sentence.
4. Complex
A complex is a recurring stuck pattern — same problem, different settings, year after year. In career terms, the same kind of role keeps failing in the same kind of way. The complex is information: there's unprocessed material in the pattern asking to be named. The Scale worksheet — the values audit — is the most reliable practice for surfacing what the complex is defending.
5. Individuation
Jung's term for the lifelong process of becoming the specific person you are, rather than the generic version of who you were supposed to be. Career individuation is the work of building a body of work that nobody else could have made — because it sits at the intersection of your specific values, strengths, and vocation. The four Berufung worksheets together are a structured map for the work.
What to do next
If any of these concepts land for you, the Labyrinth + Compass worksheets are the depth-psychology-shaped chapters of the method. The free introduction walks into the first chapter.
The full method — and the four printable worksheets that walk you through it — is laid out in Berufung. The reading takes a weekend; the work itself takes most readers two to four weeks. The free introduction is the opening chapter in full.