The Seba library treats Greater Personality in 9 passages, across 1 author (including Edinger, Edward F.).
There is an encounter between the ego and the Greater Personality represented as God, angel or superior being of some kind. There is a wound, or a suffering of the ego, as a result of this encounter.
Edinger defines the four-stage Job archetype as the structural template for every encounter with the Greater Personality, establishing wounding as a constitutive and not merely incidental feature.
, Science of the Soul: A Jungian Perspective, 2002thesis
an encounter with the Greater Personality is necessarily a secret; one can’t talk about it, at least not in its particulars. It’s a secret that both creates the individual as something separate from the collective, and at the same time is a wound that painfully separates and alienates one from the collective.
Edinger argues that the encounter with the Greater Personality is inherently secret, simultaneously individuating the ego and alienating it from collective life.
, Science of the Soul: A Jungian Perspective, 2002thesis
Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra is the outstanding recorded example of a modern encounter with the Greater Personality… only Faust and Zarathustra bear witness to this encounter with the larger center of the psyche.
Edinger identifies Nietzsche’s Zarathustra as the pre-eminent modern instance of the encounter with the Greater Personality, situating it as the cultural precursor to Jung’s analytical psychology.
, Science of the Soul: A Jungian Perspective, 2002thesis
the experience of the Greater Personality is of such numinosity that it may sometimes bring into being a whole new religion. But now for the first time, in what I would call the Jungian era, we are in a position to begin to understand scientifically
Edinger claims that the Greater Personality encounter carries sufficient numinosity to generate entire religious traditions, and that the Jungian era uniquely permits a scientific understanding of this phenomenon.
, Science of the Soul: A Jungian Perspective, 2002thesis
That is the nature of the Greater Personality. That is part of what it is. That is why we talk about wounding. It doesn’t exist within the categories of the ego, of human decency. It bursts those categories on both sides, on the good side and on the evil side.
Edinger characterizes the Greater Personality as a force that transgresses the ego’s moral and conceptual categories, manifesting as both good and evil and thereby necessitating the concept of wounding.
, Science of the Soul: A Jungian Perspective, 2002thesis
Krishna does then is to explain patiently to Arjuna, in this calm, objective way, the difference between the ego and the Self, thereby acquainting him with the nature of the Greater Personality.
Edinger reads the Bhagavad Gita’s dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna as a cross-cultural instance of the Greater Personality instructing the ego in the distinction between ego and Self.
, Science of the Soul: A Jungian Perspective, 2002supporting
he had to identify with Zarathustra in spite of the fact that he felt, as this verse proves, a definite difference between himself and the old wise man… it was an almost autonomous production; with unfailing certainty the words presented themselves.
Edinger uses Jung’s analysis of Nietzsche to demonstrate that the Greater Personality manifests as an autonomous, quasi-dictating force that overwhelms the conscious author’s intentional agency.
, Science of the Soul: A Jungian Perspective, 2002supporting
Encounter with the Greater Personality of Jungian psychology. One has a road map, so to speak, that helps one find one’s bearings when this experience falls from above.
Edinger argues that Jungian psychology provides a conceptual map that allows individuals who undergo an encounter with the Greater Personality to orient themselves rather than be overwhelmed or destroyed by it.
, Science of the Soul: A Jungian Perspective, 2002supporting
Science of the Soul: Encounter with the Greater Personality / The Therapeutic Life / The Vocation of Depth Psychotherapy / The Transference Phenomenon
The table of contents establishes ‘Encounter with the Greater Personality’ as the foundational section of Edinger’s late work, situating the concept as the organizing premise for his entire account of depth psychotherapy.
, Science of the Soul: A Jungian Perspective, 2002aside