Ego relativization stands as one of the cardinal operations in the depth-psychological project, designating the process by which the ego's claim to absolute centrality within the psyche is qualified, displaced, and subordinated to a wider field of psychic reality. Jung's foundational move—documented across the Collected Works and amplified by his commentators—was epistemological: the empirical discovery of an unconscious psyche outside consciousness necessarily diminished the ego's 'till then absolute' position, rendering it a part rather than the whole of personality. This demotion is not nihilistic annihilation of the ego but a calibration of its proper station in relation to the Self. Edinger traces the developmental arc: the ego must first separate from the Self, risk inflation and alienation, and then accept re-orientation toward the larger center. Neumann situates the pathology of non-relativization in what he calls 'secondary personalization'—the overvaluation of ego consciousness that defames transpersonal forces. Hillman and archetypal psychology radicalize the gesture: Goldenberg identifies 'radical relativization and desubstantiation of the ego' as a defining thrust of the entire archetypal movement, pursuing a soul-centered consciousness irreducible to ego perspectives. Jung himself in the Practice of Psychotherapy draws the crucial limit: relativization must not be carried so far that the ego is annihilated—a tension that keeps the concept permanently alive.
In the library
13 substantive passages
an attempt to bring to consciousness a standpoint outside the ego, involving a relativization of the ego and its contents... the position of the ego, till then absolute, became relativized.... It is part of the personality but not the whole of it.
Jung's own text, quoted here, establishes ego relativization as both the historical consequence of depth psychology's discovery of the unconscious and the operative goal of alchemical and analytic work—the ego demoted from absolute center to a significant but partial element of the personality.
Hillman, James, Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion, 1985thesis
the radical relativization and desubstantiation of the ego – will be discussed below.
Goldenberg's survey identifies ego relativization as one of the two defining programmatic emphases of archetypal psychology, distinguishing it from classical Jungian doctrine and marking it as a structural feature of the post-Jungian field.
the radical relativization and desubstantiation of the ego – will be discussed below.
Identical passage in the Brief Account confirms that ego relativization and desubstantiation is a foundational programmatic claim of archetypal psychology as a cultural and intellectual movement.
Hillman, James, Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account, 1983thesis
it is merely the one-sided over-valuation of the latter that has to be checked by a certain relativization of values. But this relativization should not be carried so far that the ego is complete
Jung articulates the disciplined limit of ego relativization: it is a corrective to over-valuation of consciousness, not an abolition of the ego, preserving a dialectical tension that defines the concept's clinical application.
Jung, Carl Gustav, The Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and Other Subjects, 1954thesis
The world of consciousness must now be levelled down in favour of the reality of the unconscious... the presumption of the ego can only be damped down by moral defeat.
In Aion, Jung addresses the second pathway to necessary ego relativization—through inflation arising from over-accentuation of ego personality—requiring a levelling of consciousness as a moral and psychological imperative.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951thesis
when secondary personalization seeks to assert itself by devaluing the transpersonal forces, it produces a dangerous overvaluation of the ego... a typical false constellation of the modern mind.
Neumann diagnoses the failure of ego relativization as 'secondary personalization,' a defensive maneuver that pathologically reduces transpersonal contents to personal terms, producing a culturally characteristic ego overvaluation.
Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019supporting
a corresponding relativization of the ego position in natural science. Cases of multiple personality were important because they confirmed the multiplicity of the individual.
Hillman situates ego relativization historically, noting that the fragmentation of early twentieth-century culture—in art, science, and psychopathology—corresponded to a structural undermining of the monocentric ego position.
a process in which the ego becomes increasingly aware of its origin from and dependence upon the archetypal psyche.
Edinger defines individuation as the progressive relativization of the ego through its growing recognition of dependence on the archetypal Self, framing the entire opus of Ego and Archetype around this orientation.
Edinger, Edward F., Ego and Archetype: Individuation and the Religious Function of the Psyche, 1972supporting
the central aim of all religious practices is to keep the individual (ego) related to the deity (Self). All religions are repositories of transpersonal experience and archetypal images.
Edinger argues that traditional religious practice functionally served the same purpose as ego relativization in depth psychology—protecting the individual from inflation by maintaining the ego's conscious relation to a superordinate center.
Edinger, Edward F., Ego and Archetype: Individuation and the Religious Function of the Psyche, 1972supporting
Power motivation of all kinds is symptomatic of inflation... Intellectual rigidity which attempts to equate its own private truth or opinion with universal truth is also inflation.
Edinger catalogs the symptoms of un-relativized ego—inflation, omnipotence, omniscience, illusory immortality—articulating the psychopathology that ego relativization is designed to correct.
Edinger, Edward F., Ego and Archetype: Individuation and the Religious Function of the Psyche, 1972supporting
To put it together with ego limits consciousness to the perspectives of the cave which today we would call the literalistic, personalistic, practicalistic, naturalistic, and humanistic fallacies.
Hillman argues that identifying consciousness with the ego constitutes multiple epistemological fallacies, offering a philosophical rationale for why ego relativization is necessary for genuine depth-psychological consciousness.
Hillman, James, Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion, 1985supporting
for some people the ego is dominated or overwhelmed by the unconscious. Others will undervalue the unconscious with equally psychopathological results.
Samuels surveys Jung's nuanced position—that the correct relationship between ego and unconscious is a balance, and that both over-domination and under-valuation of the unconscious represent psychopathological extremes relevant to the concept of ego relativization.
Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985aside
only a non-heroic ego can dispense with its strengths to permit integration of the products of the imagination.
Samuels, via Plaut and Hillman, suggests that ego relativization is a precondition for imaginative activity, since the heroic ego's rigidity forecloses the permeability required for integration of unconscious contents.
Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985aside