The centring process occupies a pivotal position in analytical psychology as the psyche’s innate tendency to orient itself around a dynamic, self-organising core — the Self — rather than remaining dispersed in ego-bound or instinct-driven states. Jung identified this process empirically: the spontaneous production of mandala imagery in active imagination and dream series pointed to an autonomous ordering function within the unconscious, one that appeared to operate ‘as though already in possession of the goal to be circumscribed.’ The term thus names both a teleological movement and a structural achievement — the gradual subordination of ego-consciousness to a superordinate psychic centre. In the therapeutic context, it describes what happens when symbols, active imagination, and the integration of shadow, anima/animus, and other unconscious contents coalesce into a more unified personality. Neumann extended this insight ethically, arguing that ‘the process of centring in the Self’ requires the inclusion of unconscious elements into personality structure, distinguishing the Western individuation path from Eastern world-renunciation. The index entries in the Collected Works confirm the term’s technical precision: both the ego and the symbol are explicitly cross-referenced under ‘centring process,’ suggesting that the ego is neither dissolved nor absolute but repositioned within a wider psychic economy. Debates concern whether this process follows a universal stage-sequence or operates more idiosyncratically, and whether its archetypal scaffolding retains cross-cultural validity.
the archetype determines the nature of the configurational process and the course it will follow, with seeming foreknowledge, or as though it were already in possession of the goal to be circumscribed by the centring process.
Jung defines the centring process as a teleologically directed, archetype-governed configuration of the psyche that appears to anticipate its own goal of psychic wholeness.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960thesis
and centring process, 101; compensat-ing, 123; danger of fixed meaning, 157; derivation from archaic functioning, 123; feminine, 30072; of the goal, 197
The Collected Works index cross-references ‘symbol’ directly with ‘centring process,’ establishing the symbol as the primary vehicle through which psychic centring is expressed and clinically observed.
, Collected Works Volume 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy, 1954thesis
ego, 49, 102, 112, 173, 194, 233, 244^ 259, 264, 289; vs. anima, 226; and centring process, 51
The index entry links the ego explicitly to the centring process, indicating that the ego’s relationship to the Self is constitutively defined by this orienting dynamic.
, Collected Works Volume 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy, 1954thesis
ego, 49, 102, 112, 173, 194, 233, 244, 259, 264, 289; vs. anima, 226; and centring process, 51
A parallel index reference in the Practice of Psychotherapy volume confirms ‘centring process’ as a consistent technical term cross-referenced with the ego’s structural position in the psyche.
, The Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and Other Subjects, 1954supporting
the new way is quite specifically concerned to strengthen and deepen our ‘being-in-the-world’, and it is this which makes possible the process of centring in the Self and the inclusion of the unconscious elements within the structure of the personality.
Neumann extends the centring process into an ethical and existential register, arguing that it requires engagement with the world and the assimilation of unconscious contents rather than withdrawal.
, Depth Psychology and a New Ethic, 1949thesis
the archetype of the Self is responsible, and which can manifest itself in images in the shape of mandalas in the broadest sense
Roesler identifies the Self-archetype and mandala imagery as the theoretical foundation of the transformation process, situating the centring process within ongoing debates about the empirical validity of Jungian stage theory.
, The Process of Transformation — The Core of Analytical Psychology and How it Can Be Investigated, 2025supporting
The symbol of the mandala has exactly this meaning of a holy place, a temenos, to protect the centre. And it is a symbol which is one of the most important motifs in the objectivation of unconscious images. It is a means of protecting the centre of the personality
Chodorow documents Jung’s identification of mandala symbolism with the temenos function, which serves to protect and stabilise the emergent psychic centre during the centring process.
, Jung on Active Imagination, 1997supporting
The idea of the circumambulatio in this picture is the patient’s first attempt to find a centre and a container for his whole ps
Jung reads a patient’s mandala drawing as the inaugural gesture of the centring process — the circumambulatio as a ritual enactment of orienting the psyche toward its own core.
, Collected Works Volume 18: The Symbolic Life, 1976supporting
The result of this technique was a vast number of complicated designs whose diversity puzzled me for years, until I was able to recognize that in this method I was witnessing the spontaneous manifestation of an unconscious process which was merely assisted
Jung describes the empirical discovery underlying the centring process: active imagination and creative elaboration of fantasy revealed an autonomous, self-organising unconscious activity.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960supporting
This series is noteworthy because it gives an unusually complete description of a psychic fact that I had observed long before in many individual cases.
Jung’s analysis of the four-hundred-dream series in Psychology and Alchemy provides the most extensive empirical documentation of the step-by-step unfolding of the centring process through symbol development.
, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944supporting
the distillation had to start ‘from the midst of the centre’ (ex medio centri). The accentuation of the centre is again a fundamental idea in alchemy.
The alchemical concept of ex medio centri is identified as a historical precursor to the centring process, grounding Jung’s psychological term in the long tradition of symbolic work on the Self.
, Collected Works Volume 3: The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease, 1907supporting
The centre seems to be parti
The dream series analysed in Psychology and Religion charts the progressive emergence of circular and quaternary symbols, each documenting a stage in the centring movement of the unconscious toward wholeness.
, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958supporting
The design of the dreamer indicates the way in which his analysis will continue, and at the same time it is a means to concentrate him.
Jung presents mandala construction in dream analysis as simultaneously diagnostic of, and instrumental to, the centring process in ongoing analytic work.
, Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930, 1984supporting
a part of the psyche that reaches far back into the primitive past were expressing itself in these pictures and finding it possible to function in harmony with our alien conscious mind.
Jung notes that symbolic picture-making satisfies a natural psychic need by enabling archaic layers of the psyche to harmonise with conscious life, a precondition for the centring process.
, The Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and Other Subjects, 1954aside
a patient needs only to have seen once or twice how much he is freed from a wretched state of mind by working at a symbolical picture, and he will always turn to this means of release whenever things go badly with him.
Jung observes that creative symbolic work produces immediate psychological relief and cultivates independence, marking an early practical access point to the centring process in therapy.
, Collected Works Volume 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy, 1954aside