self alienation
De-identification — treated in the depth-psychology corpus under the near-synonymous rubric of 'alienation from self' — occupies a central diagnostic and existential position across the literature. Karen Horney furnishes the most systematic clinical account: she traces a spectrum from dramatic depersonalisation and amnesia at one pole to subtler forms of self-estrangement in which 'the general capacity for conscious experience is impaired,' situating the phenomenon squarely within the neurotic flight from the real self. For Horney, de-identification is simultaneously a consequence of the neurotic process and its deepest wound — the 'selling of one's soul' that Kierkegaard named 'sickness unto death.' Edward Edinger translates this clinical picture into Jungian structural terms, arguing that de-identification results from damage to the ego-Self axis: when parental rejection is experienced as divine rejection, the rupture is inscribed as a permanent psychic wound predisposing the individual to states of alienation 'which can reach unbearable proportions.' Andrew Samuels clarifies the distinction — often blurred in practice — between ego-Self separation (a normal developmental achievement) and ego-Self alienation (a pathological rupture). Across these perspectives a core tension persists: whether de-identification is primarily a relational wound (Horney, Edinger, Neumann) or an intrinsic structural liability of ego-formation itself. The clinical stakes are high: Edinger links unbearable alienation directly to violence, both homicidal and suicidal, while Horney demonstrates that patients rarely present with alienation as their chief complaint, rendering it clinically elusive.
the abandoning of self corresponds to the selling of one's soul. In psychiatric terms we call it the 'alienation from self.' This latter term is applied chiefly to those extreme conditions in which people lose their feeling of identity
Horney establishes alienation from self as the psychiatric equivalent of the devil's pact, ranging from gross identity loss to subtler neurotic estrangement from conscious experience.
, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, 1950thesis
The loss of self, says Kierkegaard, is 'sickness unto death'; it is despair — despair at not being conscious of having a self, or despair at not being willing to be ourselves.
Invoking Kierkegaard, Horney argues that de-identification is a silent despair rarely named by patients, whose loss of contact with 'the core of their psychic existence' underlies their presenting symptoms.
, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, 1950thesis
the ego-Self axis is damaged and the child is then predisposed in later life to states of alienation which can reach unbearable proportions. This course of events is due to the fact that the child experiences parental rejection as rejection by God.
Edinger grounds de-identification in early relational failure, arguing that parental rejection is psychically registered as divine rejection and becomes structurally embedded as permanent ego-Self alienation.
, Ego and Archetype: Individuation and the Religious Function of the Psyche, 1972thesis
alienation begins; the ego-Self axis is damaged. A kind of unhealing psychic wound is created in the process of learning he is not the deity he thought he was.
Edinger presents de-identification as an inevitable but potentially wounding moment in ego development, arising when the ego's original identity with the Self is broken by reality encounters.
, Ego and Archetype: Individuation and the Religious Function of the Psyche, 1972thesis
at the root of violence of any form lies the experience of alienation — a rejection too severe to be endured.
Edinger draws a direct causal line from unbearable de-identification to violence, reading the Cain myth as its archetypal dramatization.
, Ego and Archetype: Individuation and the Religious Function of the Psyche, 1972thesis
alienation between ego and self results. Edinger comments that it is difficult in practice to distinguish between ego-self separation and ego-self alienation. Alienation results from the fact that the real parent simply cannot accept all the aspects of the child's personality
Samuels, synthesising Edinger and Neumann, clarifies that ego-Self alienation — as distinct from normal separation — originates in parental failure to contain the totality of the child's Self.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
it is a source of never-ending astonishment how comparatively well a person can function with the core of himself not participating.
Horney documents the paradoxical functional adequacy that can mask profound de-identification, demonstrating how alienation from self may remain clinically invisible.
, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, 1950supporting
their alienation from self makes it possible for them to change their personality according to the requirements of the situation. Chameleonlike, they always play some role in life without knowing that they do it
Horney identifies role-playing fluidity and false spontaneity as cardinal surface manifestations of underlying de-identification, where no stable self participates in lived experience.
, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, 1950supporting
Disconnection between the ego and Self causes a 'lack of self-acceptance … emptiness, despair, [and] meaninglessness' as if an individual feels they are not 'worthy to exist'
Dennett, following Edinger, applies de-identification to addiction, showing how ego-Self disconnection manifests as radical unworthiness and provides the psychic ground for substance disorders.
, Individuation in Addiction Recovery: An Archetypal Astrological Perspective, 2025supporting
the real self is weakened, or paralyzed, or 'driven from sight' by the neurotic process
Horney debates Freud's ego-weakness thesis, arguing that in neurosis the constructive real self is not inherently absent but actively estranged — a distinction with profound therapeutic consequences.
, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, 1950supporting
the 'self' of a neurotic person who is alienated from his spontaneous energies, from his authentic wishes, who does not make any decisions of his own and assume responsibility for them
Horney critiques Freud's ego-concept as itself a portrait of the de-identified self, arguing that what Freud normalises as ego-function is already a symptom of alienation.
, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, 1950supporting
the dream equates this condition with sin — a precise equivalent to Augustine's view ... The 'super-order' goes into effect to remove the 'overload' as soon as the ego becomes inflated — thus protecting against the dangers of subsequent alienation.
Edinger reads a patient's dream as articulating an unconscious compensatory mechanism that guards against inflation and the consequent de-identification it would produce.
, Ego and Archetype: Individuation and the Religious Function of the Psyche, 1972supporting
the ways of avoiding responsibility for self. We have discussed most of them in speaking earlier of face-saving devices and protective measures against the onslaught of self-hate.
Horney links de-identification to the refusal of self-responsibility, showing how face-saving devices collectively deepen estrangement from authentic selfhood.
, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, 1950supporting
utter metaphysical elevation coincides, in the acosmic essence of man, with utter cosmic alienation.
King's exposition of Gnostic anthropology presents cosmic alienation — the transmundane self imprisoned in a hostile world-system — as a mythological precursor to depth-psychological accounts of de-identification.
, What Is Gnosticism?, 2003aside
a repair of the ego-Self axis is occurring. Meetings with the therapist will be experienced as a rejuvenating contact with life which conveys a sense of hope and optimism.
Edinger describes the therapeutic reversal of de-identification through transference, wherein the therapist-as-Self provides a reparative relational axis.
, Ego and Archetype: Individuation and the Religious Function of the Psyche, 1972aside