Centroversion

Centroversion becomes conscious. The ego is exposed to a somewhat painful process which, starting in the unconscious, permeates the entire personality. This psychological mutation with its symptomatology and symbolism Jung has described as the individuation process.

Neumann identifies the second half of life as the phase in which centroversion ceases to operate silently behind ego-formation and becomes consciously experienced as the individuation process itself.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis

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Co-ordinated with them is consciousness, the control system of centroversion. The registration and combination of stimuli from outside and inside, balanced reaction to them, the storing of stimuli and reaction-patterns are among the essential functions of an ego-centered system of consciousness.

Neumann defines centroversion as the superordinate regulatory principle of which ego consciousness is the specific functional organ, grounding the concept in a biopsychic theory of organismic self-regulation.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis

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Whereas in its later developments centroversion promotes the formation of ego consciousness as its specific organ, in the uroboric phase, when ego consciousness has not yet been differentiated into a separate system, centroversion is still identified with the functioning of the body as a whole.

Neumann traces centroversion’s earliest operation to the uroboric phase, where it manifests as somatic self-regulation prior to any differentiated ego, establishing the term’s developmental range.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis

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there is no sign of the regulating intervention of centroversion or of the regulation of the group by the cultural canon. The mass, therefore, is the decay of a more complex unit not into a more primitive unit but into a centerless agglomeration.

Neumann invokes the loss of centroversion as the defining pathology of mass psychology, where absence of psychic self-regulation produces chaotic dissolution of personality structure.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis

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Centroversion, during its first conscious phase, manifests itself as narcissism, a generalized body feeling in which the unity of the body is the first expression.

Neumann specifies narcissism as the initial conscious manifestation of centroversion, situating the concept within the developmental sequence from somatic unity to differentiated ego.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis

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ego and consciousness are organs of centroversion, the ego rightly emphasizes its central position. This basic fact of the human situation has its mythological equivalent in the divine birth of the hero and his filiation to ‘heaven.’

Neumann grounds the mythological motif of the hero’s divine origin in the structural fact that ego and consciousness serve as instruments of the centroversive process.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019supporting

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the power motive is the psychological precursor of centroversion… What is required in such a condition is a growth of consciousness which will transform needy love and power-striving into their mature forms of object love and centroversion.

Edinger positions centroversion as the psychological maturation of the power motive, the condition achieved when autonomous inner authority replaces compulsive dependence on external objects.

Edinger, Edward F., Science of the Soul: A Jungian Perspective, 2002thesis

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The extraverted, erotic aspect of an I-Thou relationship would be object love; the introverted, religious aspect would correspond to centroversion. Practically, these two possibilities appear simultaneously.

Edinger aligns centroversion with the introverted-religious pole of mature relatedness, presenting it as the inner complement to object love within an integrated psychological economy.

Edinger, Edward F., Science of the Soul: A Jungian Perspective, 2002supporting

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ego consciousness: and centroversion, see centroversion; and collective, see collective; development of, xviff passim, 5, 12ff

The index entry in Neumann’s text cross-references ego consciousness and centroversion as co-ordinate entries, confirming the structural inseparability of the two concepts throughout the work.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019aside

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