Within depth psychological theory, growth often requires the letting go, giving up, or surrendering of underdeveloped or maladaptive ego functioning. However, the important and necessary concept of surrender within psychological development has been marginalized because of the paradoxical nature of the experience, as well as Western culture's antipathy toward any concepts even remotely sounding like defeat or failure. This dissertation is an attempt to address the neglect which surrender has historically experienced and to restore its rightful place within depth psychological theories of growth and development. Utilizing a thematic hermeneutical methodology, a particular type of letting go or giving up, termed transformative surrender, was identified as a meta concept under which both sacrifice and submission can be understood. The definition of transformative surrender is the letting go or giving up of real or symbolic aspects of one's self through either a voluntary or non-volitional process in order to maintain or re-establish a transpersonal relationship but without foreknowledge of the actual outcome. A review of transformative surrender within Eastern, Western, and mystical spiritual traditions demonstrated the ubiquitous archetypal nature of this event in the spiritual development of religious members. Applying transformative surrender to depth psychological schools showed that only analytical psychology incorporates this concept, because it alone is based upon establishing and maintaining a relationship with a transpersonal Other greater than one's own ego consciousness. Transformative surrender episodes within analytical psychology are serial experiences initiating times of psychological development during the individuation process. A re-imagining of transformative surrender within analytical psychology, utilizing the concepts of liminality, emptiness, unknowing, and the Buddhist image of sunyata, was offered to better conceptualize and illustrate the role of the ego with the Self. This revisioning of the ego's experience, while not ignoring the change that it must undergo in relativizing its previous beliefs, is more congruent with the reciprocal dependence that Jung envisioned for both the ego and Self within the individuation process. Clinical case material illustrating this re-imagining of transformative surrender, as well as therapeutic implications and future research considerations, were also presented.
