archetypal self · self
The Self Archetype stands as the architectonic concept of Jungian depth psychology — simultaneously the most contested and the most generative term in the entire analytical tradition. Jung's own formulations oscillate between two poles that Fordham identified as incompatible: the Self as the totality of the psyche (conscious and unconscious combined) and the Self as a specific central archetype that orders the other archetypes and from which the ego itself derives. This productive ambiguity has generated a century of commentary. Samuels documents the post-Jungian debate between Fordham's conception of a primary, a priori Self from which ego and archetypes 'deintegrate,' Kohut's developmentally constructed nuclear self, and Winnicott's object-relational self — each contesting the ontological status of what Jung called the 'ordering center of the psyche.' Edinger reads the Self through the lens of the ego-Self axis as the engine of individuation and the ground of religion. Hillman, by contrast, resists the Self's implicit monotheism, arguing that primacy of the Self marginalizes the polytheistic richness of the complexes. Stein and Hall provide synthetic orientations, tracing how the Self manifests symbolically — in mandalas, supraordinate figures, the imago Dei, the lapis philosophorum — as well as functionally, as the teleological center that both exceeds and encompasses ego-consciousness. The tensions between wholeness and centeredness, between empirical symbol and metaphysical hypothesis, between psychological fact and theological claim, give this archetype its unresolved and inexhaustible depth.
I have suggested calling the total personality which, though present, cannot be fully known, the self. The ego is, by definition, subordinate to the self and is related to it like a part to the whole.
Jung's canonical definition establishes the Self as the unknowable totality of personality, with the ego as a subordinate part that encounters the Self as an objective, quasi-external force.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951thesis
As archetype, the Self is the ordering center of the psyche as a whole, a whole greater than the ego but related most intimately to the ego. The Self as the totality of the psyche is the generative field of the individuation process.
Hall articulates the dual function of the Self — as ordering center and as totality — and identifies it as the generative ground of individuation, while noting the critical distinction between the archetype and any particular archetypal image of it.
, Jungian Dream Interpretation: A Handbook of Theory and Practice, 1983thesis
I must ask what are we to make of hell, damnation, and the devil, if these things are eternal? … I stress the unity of the self, this central archetype which is a complexio oppositorum par excellence, and that my leanings are therefore towards the very reverse of dualism.
Jung explicitly names the Self as a complexio oppositorum — the central archetype that unites opposites — distinguishing his psychological position from metaphysical dualism.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951thesis
Fordham (1963) felt that Jung developed two incompatible theories of the self. If the self means (a) the whole personality … then it can never be experienced … If the self refers to (b) a central archetype then it cannot also refer to the totality which includes the ego.
Samuels exposes Fordham's critique that Jung's Self concept harbors a fundamental internal contradiction between totality and centrality, leading Fordham to reconceive the Self as prior to and generative of both ego and archetypes.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis
the self is not only the centre but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious … the idea of a centre, of having a centre, of being motivated or regulated by a centre, may be the most accurate description of what is involved in a feeling of wholeness.
Samuels elaborates Jung's geometry of the Self — simultaneously center and circumference — and distinguishes the conceptual hypothesis of wholeness from the phenomenological experience of centeredness.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis
Central to the total psyche is the archetype of the self … Confrontation with the archetype of the self is both mysterious and powerful as well as incomprehensible to the conscious personality which is ego-bound and thing-bound.
Spiegelman situates the Self Archetype as the psychic center within the broader collective inheritance, emphasizing the destabilizing effect of its encounter on ego-consciousness and its capacity to initiate a new pattern of psychic functioning.
, Buddhism and Jungian Psychology, 1985thesis
Each human individual bears an impression of the archetype of the self. This is innate and given. Since each of us is stamped with the imago Dei by virtue of being human, we are also in touch with 'unity and totality [which] stand at the highest point on the scale of objective values.'
Stein traces Jung's identification of the Self Archetype with the imago Dei, arguing that the innate stamp of the Self links each person to unity and totality and explains the spontaneous appearance of mandala symbols during psychological crisis.
, Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction, 1998thesis
Empirically, the self appears in dreams, myths, and fairytales in the figure of the 'supraordinate personality', such as king, hero, prophet, saviour, etc., or in the form of a totality symbol, such as the circle, square, quadratura circuli, cross, etc.
Greene excerpts Jung's own phenomenological catalogue of Self symbols — both personal-supraordinate and geometric-totality forms — while noting that the Self remains empirically grounded rather than a purely metaphysical postulate.
, The Astrology of Fate, 1984thesis
The ego stands to the self as the moved to the mover, or as object to subject, because the determining factors which radiate out from the self surround the ego on all sides and are therefore supraordinate to it.
Samuels presents Jung's mature ego-Self formulation, in which the Self is the a priori supraordinate agency that generates and determines the ego rather than being produced by it.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis
The central idea of the lapis Philosophorum plainly signifies the self … the opus with its countless symbols illustrates the process of individuation, the step-by-step development of the self from an unconscious state to a conscious one.
Jung reads the alchemical lapis as a symbol of the Self and the entire opus as an allegory of individuation — the progressive conscientization of the Self Archetype.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951thesis
Unity and totality stand at the highest point on the scale of objective values because their symbols can no longer be distinguished from the imago Dei. Hence all statements about the God-image apply also to the empirical symbols of totality.
Jung establishes the systematic equivalence between the Self's totality symbols and the God-image, grounding the Self Archetype's numinosity in its overlap with theological categories while retaining an empirical-psychological frame.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951supporting
Jung writes: 'The anima/animus stage is correlated with polytheism, the self with monotheism.' … A primacy of the self implies rather that the understanding of the complexes … is of less significance for modern man than is the self of monotheism.
Hillman (via Miller) mounts his archetypal-psychological critique of Jung's privileging of the Self, arguing that correlating the Self with monotheism implicitly demotes the polytheistic multiplicity of complexes and archetypes.
, The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974supporting
The personal Atman, the self, is in everybody; it is the smallest thing, the thumbling in the heart of everybody, yet it is the greatest thing in the world, the super-personal Atman … there is only the self, and that is my self, for by definition the personal Atman is uniqueness.
Jung uses the Vedantic Atman to illuminate the paradox of the Self as both intimately personal and cosmically universal, insisting that the super-personal dimension can only be accessed through one's own individual Self.
, Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939, 1988supporting
The innermost archetype is the self … one of Jung's formulations concerning the self: that it is the most central archetype, the archetype of order which organises other
Samuels maps the Self as the innermost stratum of the archetypal layer-structure of the psyche, defining it functionally as the archetype of order that organizes all other archetypes.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
The parallel I have drawn here between Christ and the self is not to be taken as anything more than a psychological one … the alchemists … their parallel with the stone served to illuminate and deepen the meaning of the Christ-image.
Jung carefully delimits his Christ-Self parallel as strictly psychological, while tracing the historical layering of Self symbolism through alchemical stone imagery and Christology.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951supporting
The original Christian conception of the imago Dei embodied in Christ meant an all-embracing totality that even includes the animal side of man. Nevertheless the Christ-symbol lacks wholeness in the modern psychological sense, since it does not include the dark side of things.
Jung argues that the Christ-symbol, despite its Self-like totality aspirations, fails as an adequate Self symbol because it excludes the shadow, pointing toward the need for a more comprehensive psychological conception of wholeness.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951supporting
if the self is envisaged as being created during development, as in Kohut's view it is, then this is antithetical to Jung's archetypal theory and in particular to Fordham's post-Jungian conception of an a priori primary self.
Samuels sharpens the theoretical divide between Kohut's developmentally constructed self and the Jungian-Fordhamian a priori Self Archetype, identifying this as a foundational incompatibility between the two schools.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
Accentuation of the ego personality and the world of consciousness may easily assume such proportions that the figures of the unconscious are psychologized and the self consequently becomes assimilated to the ego.
Jung warns against ego-inflation through assimilation of the Self, identifying this as a pathological inversion of individuation in which the Self's supraordinate status is collapsed into ego-consciousness.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951supporting
the relationship with the Self, which as a super-ordinate entity is the creator and guide of our life. The creator is the Lord and the lawgiver. All freedom lies in God, therefore, and in man only insofar as he has consciousness.
Jung frames the Self as the supraordinate creator and lawgiver of psychic life, linking the development of consciousness to the individual's capacity to enter into relationship with the Self as inner divinity.
, Dream Interpretation Ancient and Modern: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936-1941, 2014supporting
analytical psychologists feel that there is a 'primitive self which looks like environment' arising out of the archetypes, something more than the operation of instinct.
Samuels records Winnicott's partial rapprochement with analytical psychology on the self, noting the Jungian view that an archetype-derived primitive self constitutes an environment for itself, transcending purely instinctual explanation.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
The God-image is not something invented, it is an experience that comes upon man spontaneously … The unconscious God-image can therefore alter the state of consciousness, just as the latter can modify the God-image once it has become conscious.
Jung articulates the dynamic reciprocity between the God-image (as Self symbol) and consciousness, establishing that the Self Archetype is encountered as an autonomous empirical fact rather than a conceptual construction.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951supporting
individuation — a process in which the ego becomes increasingly aware of its origin from and dependence upon the archetypal psyche.
Edinger establishes individuation as the progressive recognition by the ego of its derivation from and ongoing dependence on the archetypal psyche, of which the Self is the ordering center.
, Ego and Archetype: Individuation and the Religious Function of the Psyche, 1972supporting
To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Jung's discussion of shadow confrontation as prerequisite to self-knowledge situates the shadow encounter as the first necessary step toward relating consciously to the Self Archetype.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951aside
the numinous qualities which make the mother-imago so dangerously powerful derive from the collective archetype of the anima, which is incarnated anew in every male child.
Jung's account of the anima as a collective archetype provides essential structural context for understanding the Self as the innermost archetype beyond anima/animus in the layered architecture of the psyche.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951aside