The Process of Individuation in the Story of Rostam and Sohrab (According to the character of Sohrab)

The story of “Rostam and Sohrab” is one of the most beautiful stories of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh which has been studied on the basis of different approaches. Sohrab’s character in this story as the quester/victim hero is the core of actions in the story. His unsuccessful quest to find his father which is compatible with the pattern of growth to achieve the self/ individuation in Jung’s opinion has high capacity for being analyzed psychologically. In this article, based on an analytical approach, we survey the pattern of searching for individuation in this story according to the “Process Of Individuation” theory which is one of the most important theories of the great psychologist of the twentieth century, Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1963). We also discuss the quality of the process of individuation by Sohrab and the causes of his failure in this process as the main question of this research by analyzing the actions of Sohrab and other characters of this story in the light of Jung’s archetypes: persona, shadow, anima, the old wise man and the self. The results of this research show that Sohrab’s story and his journey to Iran in order to find Rostam is compatible with the “Process of Individuation” of Jung. Moreover, the analysis of the quality of this compatibility shows that Sohrab encounters with the archetypes of persona, shadow, anima, the old wise man and the self in his path but because of the dominance of persona, shadow, and negative anima and not understanding the massages of positive anima and the old wise man, he cannot complete the process of individuation and achieve his father/self/wholeness.