Self as paradox of totality

Jung chose the term Self because it held a paradox he did not wish to resolve. It was “on the one hand definite enough to convey the sum of human wholeness and on the other hand indefinite enough to express the indescribable and indeterminate nature of this wholeness” (Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12 §20). Edinger states the structural form of the paradox: “the conception of the Self is a paradox. It is simultaneously the center and the circumference of the circle of totality” (Edinger 1972).

The paradox is not a residue of imprecision. It registers a genuine feature of the material: the Self includes the ego which tries to describe it, so any description the ego produces is internal to the very structure it is attempting to name. Edinger notes that his diagrams of the ego-self-axis “are thus inaccurate in other respects. For example, we generally define the Self as the totality of the psyche, which would necessarily include the ego. According to these diagrams… it would seem as though ego and Self became two separate entities.” The rational distinction is forced by the sub­ject matter and contradicts the definition that compels it. “The fact is, the conception of the Self is a paradox” (Edinger 1972).

To speak of the Self is therefore already to speak from within it. This is why Jung insists that “scientific usage the ‘self’ refers neither to Christ nor to the Buddha but to the totality of the figures that are its equivalent, and each of these figures is a symbol of the self” (Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12 §20) — symbols of the Self are not the Self but figures through which the Self, being at once center and whole, permits itself to be partly grasped.

Relationships

• self
• ego-self-axis
• quaternity

Primary sources

• jung-psychology-and-alchemy (Jung 1944)
• edinger-ego-and-archetype (Edinger 1972)