The Seba library treats Symbolic Integrity in 9 passages, across 5 authors (including von Franz, Marie-Louise, Beebe, John, Herman, Judith Lewis).
I think this integrity of the nucleus of the personality is what we would call an aspect of the Self, and it is the essence of Jungian psychology. We must not leave that on any account.
Von Franz identifies the innermost integrity of the personality with the Self and declares it the irreducible core of Jungian psychological practice, which must not be compromised even for strategic advantage.
, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales, 1974thesis
to reacquire one’s inner integrity or find the way back to this nucleus or innermost integrity, but not to stay like a big baby in the woods and think that this is it.
Von Franz distinguishes authentic symbolic integrity—recovered through confrontation with evil—from regressive innocence, insisting that mature integrity requires the full passage through psychological development.
, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales, 1974thesis
the anima is the place in a man’s psyche where the dream of integrity of personality can become a reality. The plumb line of personhood that develops between superior function hero and inferior function anima establishes the spine of personality, making ‘integrity in depth’ possible.
Beebe proposes that symbolic integrity in depth is structurally grounded in the typological axis connecting the ego’s dominant function to the anima, constituting the vertical spine of authentic personality.
, Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type: The Reservoir of Consciousness, 2017thesis
Integrity is the capacity to affirm the value of life in the face of death, to be reconciled with the finite limits of one’s own life and the tragic limitations of the human condition.
Herman, drawing on Erikson, frames integrity as the mature developmental achievement that sustains trust and meaning even under conditions of loss—directly relevant to symbolic life’s capacity to hold tension.
, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, 1992supporting
Her integrity in confronting him was soon matched by his integrity in identifying the dissociated mental state for himself, verifying that he was, in effect, ‘vibrating,’ with both fear and rage.
Beebe illustrates the clinical operation of integrity as a mutual, interpersonal phenomenon in which symbolic honesty in one partner evokes genuine self-recognition in the other.
, Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type: The Reservoir of Consciousness, 2017supporting
Breaking with psychoanalysis and entering into the active imagination discoveries recounted in The Red Book led Jung in his subsequent writings to embrace more fully the reality of the irrational. In so doing, he was disavowing an adaptation that had begun to feel false to him.
Beebe reads Jung’s break with Freudian psychoanalysis as the recovery of symbolic integrity—the refusal to sustain a persona-driven adaptation at the cost of authentic engagement with the irrational.
, Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type: The Reservoir of Consciousness, 2017supporting
challenges to the integrity of the ego. Having ADD is like being attacked all the time by an increased number of characters, and it’s like being less able to manage one’s surroundings—hence the greater number of negative endings.
Goodwyn interprets adversarial dream characters as symbolic indicators of threatened ego-integrity, lending empirical dream-content support to the thesis that symbolic life registers and dramatises the ego’s coherence or its dissolution.
, Understanding Dreams and Other Spontaneous Images: The Invisible Storyteller, 2018supporting
When one is able to work out a problem on a symbolic level and with a pure intention, things often seem to occur in exactly this way.
Von Franz notes, in passing, that symbolic work conducted with undivided intention—what she elsewhere identifies as integrity—has observable efficacy in transforming overwhelming affect.
, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales, 1974aside
integrity of in marriage, 257–58; persona and, 107
Jung’s seminar index registers integrity of personality as a distinct concept examined in the context of marriage and the persona, indicating its operational presence across relational and structural registers of his psychology.
, Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930, 1984aside