The Self Archetype stands as the most architecturally significant concept in the depth-psychological canon Jung bequeathed to his successors. Across the corpus, it is rendered simultaneously as the totality of the psyche—embracing conscious and unconscious alike—and as its ordering center, a duality that generates productive tension throughout the literature. Jung himself, most fully in Aion, frames the Self as that which the ego relates to ‘as the moved to the mover,’ a supraordinate entity whose empirical symbols—the mandala, the lapis philosophorum, the Christ-figure—carry an unmistakable numinosity. Samuels documents how this double formulation (center versus totality) produced genuine theoretical crisis among post-Jungians: Fordham found the two positions logically incompatible and proposed instead that the Self transcends both ego and archetypes, with these arising through a ‘deintegration’ from a primary a priori Self. Hall refines the distinction between the archetype as such and its particular archetypal images in dreams. Edinger locates the Self at the telos of individuation—the goal toward which the ego labors through repeated cycles of alienation and reunion. Hillman provocatively contests the privileging of the Self over the polytheistic plurality of complexes. Spiegelman draws the Eastern parallel between the Jungian Self and the Atman. The cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural resonance of the concept, along with its persistent ambiguity as both hypothesis and experienced reality, makes it the indispensable pivot of depth-psychological discourse.
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 foundational definition of the Self as the total personality of which the ego is merely a subordinate part, establishing the core hierarchical relationship at the heart of analytical psychology.
, 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 nature of the Self—as both ordering center and psychic totality—and identifies it as the generative ground of individuation, while noting the crucial distinction between the archetype itself and its particular dream images.
, Jungian Dream Interpretation: A Handbook of Theory and Practice, 1983thesis
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 cites Jung’s most precise formulation of the ego-Self relationship, establishing the Self as the a priori supraordinate subject whose determining factors encompass consciousness entirely.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis
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 because the ego… is ‘in’ the totality. 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 contains two logically irreconcilable formulations—totality and central archetype—and presents Fordham’s resolution whereby the Self is posited as beyond both archetypes and ego.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis
I must ask… how very much 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 insists that the Self, as a complexio oppositorum, unites opposites within a single archetype, directly rebutting charges of dualism and affirming the Self’s function as the psyche’s supreme coincidence of contraries.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951thesis
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.
Drawing directly on Jung, Greene catalogs the empirical manifestations of the Self archetype—both personified and geometric—emphasizing its numinosity and its status as a working hypothesis rather than a metaphysical entity.
, The Astrology of Fate, 1984thesis
Central to the total psyche is the archetype of the self. Jung states, ‘the self is not only the center but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the centre of the totality, just as the ego is the centre of the conscious mind.’
Spiegelman situates the Self archetype within a cross-cultural context, aligning Jung’s formulation with Eastern notions of the Atman and demonstrating how confrontation with the Self displaces the center of psychic gravity from ego to unconscious.
, Buddhism and Jungian Psychology, 1985supporting
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 equates the empirical symbols of the Self—preeminently the mandala—with the God-image, arguing that at the apex of objective value, Self-symbolism and the imago Dei become phenomenologically indistinguishable.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951supporting
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 underscores the universality of the Self archetype as an innate stamp—the imago Dei impressed on every human being—linking its constellation to mandala symbolism during psychic crises.
, Jung’s Map of the Soul: An Introduction, 1998supporting
The central idea of the lapis Philosophorum plainly signifies the self, so 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 identifies the alchemical lapis as a primary symbol of the Self and reads the entire opus alchymicum as a symbolic map of individuation—the progressive actualization of the Self into consciousness.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951supporting
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 distinguishes between the Self as conceptual hypothesis of totality and the phenomenological experience of having a center, arguing the latter best captures the lived reality of the Self.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
The innermost archetype is the self… it is the most central archetype, the archetype of order which organises other archetypes.
Samuels maps the Self as the innermost layer of a concentric archetypal structure—shadow, anima/animus, and Self—identifying it as the meta-archetype that organizes all others.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
Jung writes: ‘The anima/animus stage is correlated with polytheism, the self with monotheism.’… he also states that the self is ‘the archetype which it is most important for modern man to understand.’
Hillman, via Miller, challenges Jung’s privileging of the Self over archetypal plurality, exposing the tension between a monotheistic Self and the polytheistic complexity of the archetypal field.
, 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, the general collective Atman.
Jung draws on Vedantic thought to illuminate the paradox of the Self—simultaneously the most intimate individual center and the universal transpersonal ground—using the Atman equation to bridge Eastern and Western formulations.
, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939, 1988supporting
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.
Jung articulates the Self as a super-ordinate entity functioning as creator and inner lawgiver, aligning the psychological relationship with the Self to the theological relationship with God.
, Dream Interpretation Ancient and Modern: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936-1941, 2014supporting
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 maps the theoretical divide between Kohut’s developmental self-psychology and the Jungian-Fordhamian a priori Self, showing that the question of whether the Self is innate or constructed is the central fault line separating the 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. Although this is the exact opposite of the process we have just described it is followed by the same result: inflation.
Jung warns that ego-inflation can occur in two directions—ego dissolving into the Self, or Self being absorbed into the ego—both producing the same pathological outcome of inflation.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951supporting
The parallel I have drawn here between Christ and the self is not to be taken as anything more than a psychological one… Just as the ancients believed that they had said something important about Christ with their fish symbol, so it seemed to the alchemists that their parallel with the stone served to illuminate and deepen the meaning of the Christ-image.
Jung carefully delimits his Christ-Self parallel as purely psychological, using the alchemical lapis-Christ correspondence to illuminate how the Self archetype has historically been projected onto religious savior figures.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951supporting
For Winnicott, unlike Jung, Fordham and Neumann, usually depicted the self as the end product of an evolution from unintegrate to integrate.
Samuels contrasts Winnicott’s view of the self as developmental endpoint with the Jungian tradition’s conception of the Self as a priori organizing ground, locating a fundamental divergence in the two traditions’ teleological assumptions.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985aside
The process of individuation… in which the ego becomes increasingly aware of its origin from and dependence upon the archetypal psyche.
Edinger frames individuation as the ego’s growing recognition of its derivation from the archetypal Self, positioning the Self as the originating matrix from which conscious identity differentiates.
, Ego and Archetype: Individuation and the Religious Function of the Psyche, 1972aside