Trinity as Developmental Rhythm

Edinger draws a distinction Jungian discourse frequently blurs. The trinity and the quaternity are not rival symbols of which one is incomplete but two valid symbols of different aspects of the psyche. “The threefold rhythm and the fourfold goal are separate symbolic entities neither of which properly can be interpreted in terms of the other” (Edinger 1972). The quaternity images totality in its structural, static, or eternal sense — the cross, the mandala, the four functions. The trinity images totality in its dynamic, temporal sense — the sequence father-son-spirit as a developmental process.

The distinction recovers the Christian trinity as a psychologically adequate symbol in its own register. Father, son, and spirit trace the three stages of conscious development Jung describes in Psychology and Religion: the undifferentiated identity with the father, the sacrificial separation into the son, and the articulation of the individuated ego with a supraordinate reality that cannot be called I. “The transition from the first to the second demands the sacrifice of childish dependence, so at the transition to the third stage an exclusive independence has to be relinquished” (Jung, quoted Edinger 1972). Each phase is a specific task, and the sequence is temporal.

Where the quaternity would add a fourth element — often the feminine, the shadow, or matter — the trinity as rhythm does not need completion. It is the form of process. Edinger’s clinical point is that patients whose individuation is in motion often dream in threes, and those who have consolidated a Self in time often dream in fours; the two types of image are not errors in each other’s direction but phases in a single temporal-structural grammar.

Relationships

• cross-as-quaternity-of-the-self
• individuation
• self

Primary sources

• edinger-ego-and-archetype (Edinger 1972, pp. 181–183)
• Jung, Psychology and Religion: West and East (CW 11, pars. 199–276, cited in Edinger 1972)