Rebirth

1. Etymology

Rebirth names a process experienced as renewal or transformation of the personality—psychic reality beyond sense measurement. Related: individuation; transformation; night-sea-journey; nigredo.

2. Plain summary

You cannot weigh or photograph rebirth; you speak it, profess it, feel filled by it. Jung lists five forms: metempsychosis, reincarnation, resurrection, psychological rebirth (individuation), and indirect change through participation in a transformation process. His focus is psychological rebirth—ritual or personal experience that enlarges personality.

Group ecstasy is not the same. A crowd sharing one emotion yields a collective psyche lower than the individual; change may occur but rarely lasts. Samuels ties lasting rebirth to encounter with the archetype of transformation—vs aesthetic thrill without alteration of being, or vs pathological “rebirths” (inflation, possession, identification).

Examples (exhaustive house list for this Index lemma — common rebirth motifs named across Jung’s essays and standard Jungian lexica; not a claim that Jung’s CW contains only these):
psychic reality beyond observation; five forms (metempsychosis / reincarnation / resurrection / psychological / participatory); enlargement of personality; vs lasting group transformation; Khidr / mana guides; stone / Christ / guru projections of larger self; initiation / ritual renewal; night-sea / death–rebirth mythologems; kinship with individuation.

3. Academic elucidation

In analytical psychology rebirth is transformation as psychic reality, centered on individuation rather than literal afterlife doctrines. Lexica (Sharp; Samuels pp. 126) supply paraphrase Do not invent loci.

4. Lexicon

Sharp (1991)

Rebirth. A process experienced as a renewal or transformation of the personality. … Rebirth is not a process that we can in any way observe… We have to be content with its psychic reality. … Jung distinguished between five different forms of rebirth… Psychological rebirth was Jung’s particular focus… He cautioned against confusing [group experiences] with genuine rebirth.

(Sharp, 1991) — cites CW 9i ¶206, ¶¶225f.

Samuels, Shorter & Plaut (1986) — rebirth p. 126

rebirth A psychic experience of transcendence and/or transformation that is not observable from an exterior perspective but is nevertheless a reality felt and attested to… subjective result of an encounter with the ARCHETYPE of TRANSFORMATION…

(Samuels, Shorter, & Plaut, 1986/2013, p. 126)

5. CW concordance — sample, not exhaustive

Rebirth is not a process that we can in any way observe. We can neither measure nor weigh nor photograph it. It is entirely beyond sense perception. We have to do here with a purely psychic reality, which is transmitted to us only indirectly through personal statements. … We have to be content with its psychic reality.
(Jung, 1940/1968, CW 9i, p. 116, ¶206)

To experience transformation in a group and to experience it in oneself are two totally different things. … Thus identification with the group is a simple and easy path to follow, but the group experience goes no deeper than the level of one's own mind in that state. It does work a change in you, but the change does not last.
(Jung, 1940/1968, CW 9i, pp. 125–126, ¶¶225–226)

See also: individuation; night-sea-journey; nigredo; inflation; possession; mana-personality; reductive; reflection.

References

Jung, C. G. (1968). Concerning rebirth. In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.) (2nd ed., Vol. 9, Pt. 1, pp. 116, 125–126, ¶206, ¶¶225–226). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1940)

Samuels, A., Shorter, B., & Plaut, F. (1986). A critical dictionary of Jungian analysis. Routledge.

Sharp, D. (1991). Jung lexicon: A primer of terms & concepts. Inner City Books.