Uroboric Stage

The allegedly narcissistic, autistic, autoerotic, egocentric, and, as we saw, anthropocentric stage of the uroboros, so obvious in the child’s autarchic and naïve self-relatedness, is the precondition of all subsequent self-development.

Neumann directly defines the uroboric stage as the foundational developmental precondition for all ego-formation and individuation, reframing its apparent narcissism as structurally necessary rather than pathological.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis

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It slays, weds, and impregnates itself. It is man and woman, begetting and conceiving, devouring and giving birth, active and passive, above and below, at once.

Neumann establishes the uroboros as the primal symbol of undifferentiated totality — the self-contained pleroma that embodies the unity of all opposites prior to any psychic separation.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis

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The uroboros also symbolizes the creative impulse of the new beginning; it is the ‘wheel that rolls of itself,’ the initial, rotatory movement in the upward spiral of evolution.

Neumann identifies the uroboros not only as static primal containment but as the generative source of psychic and cosmic evolution, linking the stage to both origin and dynamic creative thrust.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis

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All this is in keeping with the uroboric state of perfection where body and psyche are identical… in the uroboric phase, when ego consciousness has not yet been differentiated into a separate system, centroversion is still identified with the functioning of the body as a whole.

Neumann characterizes the uroboric phase by the psychosomatic unity of body and psyche, with centroversion operating through metabolic rather than ego-conscious processes.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis

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The uroboros comes ‘before’ the stage of the Great Mother, and the Great Mother ‘before’ the dragon fight; but an absolute correlation in time is impossible because we have to consider the historical relativity of individual nations and cultures.

Neumann situates the uroboric stage as the first position in a sequence of psychological development, distinguishing archetypal sequence-dating from any fixed historical chronology.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis

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Within the original uroboric unity there were numerous organic and symbolic layers lying close together, which only became distinct and visible at the stage of separation.

Neumann argues that the uroboric stage contains an undifferentiated polyvalence of symbolic layers that only become distinct as ego-consciousness separates itself through subsequent developmental stages.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis

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The positive side of the Great Mother seems to be embodied in this stage of the uroboros… The dawn state of perfect containment and contentment was never an historical state.

Neumann clarifies that the uroboric stage is a psychic image rather than a historical reality, functioning as a borderline condition of original containment that is never literally recoverable.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis

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To become conscious of oneself, to be conscious at all, begins with saying ‘no’ to the uroboros, to the Great Mother, to the unconscious.

Neumann establishes ego-formation as fundamentally constituted by negation of the uroboric state, making differentiation from the uroboros the logical origin of all conscious selfhood.

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The fundamental dualistic conception, in Gnosticism, of a higher spiritual part and a lower material part presupposes the separation of the World Parents. Despite that, the pleroma has the uroboric character of completeness, wholeness, undifferentiatedness, wisdom, primordiality.

Neumann links the Gnostic pleroma to the uroboric state, demonstrating how the stage’s qualities of undifferentiated wholeness recur in theological and mythological traditions as prior to any dualistic separation.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019supporting

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The uroboric total divinity, envisaged in formless perfection as the ‘supreme God,’ is succeeded by the archetypal gods… Since there is as yet no developed ego consciousness, nor any effective individuality, there can be no relation between man and the cosmic events.

Neumann maps the uroboric stage onto the religious history of divinity, identifying it with formless pre-personal deity that precedes the differentiation of distinct archetypal figures and individual ego-relation.

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As the term ‘uroboric incest’ makes clear, this longing for death is a symbolical expression for the tendency of the ego and consciousness to self-disintegration, a tendency with a profoundly erotic character.

Neumann defines uroboric incest as the ego’s regressive erotic pull toward dissolution back into the undifferentiated uroboric state, framing the death wish as a structural temptation inherent in the developmental sequence.

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The uroboric phase is ruled by an ambivalent pleasure-pain feeling which attaches to all experiences that revert to the uroboric level or are overcome by it.

Neumann characterizes the uroboric phase by an inherent affective ambivalence, where experiences of reversion to this level carry both pleasurable and painful charge, making it a site of neurotic as well as creative dynamics.

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Among the basic phenomena characteristic of the uroboric existence of the group and the submersion of each part in the group psyche is the government of the group by the dominants of the collective unconscious, by the archetypes, and by instincts.

Neumann extends the uroboric stage from individual psychology to collective psychology, arguing that group life governed entirely by archetypal and instinctual forces constitutes a social analogue of the uroboric condition.

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Not until the differentiation into races, nations, tribes, and groups has, by a process of integration, been resolved in a new synthesis, will the danger of recurrent invasions from the unconscious be averted… that old serpent, the primordial uroboric dragon.

Neumann projects the overcoming of the uroboric stage onto a collective eschatological horizon, treating the ‘primordial uroboric dragon’ as the enduring collective-psychological danger requiring integrative synthesis at the level of humanity as a whole.

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It is no longer the unconscious, purely collective world of the uroboros that now dominates the ego, nor the conscious, purely collective world of the community, but both are combined and assimilated in a unique way.

Neumann contrasts the uroboric stage — in which collective unconscious dominance is total — with the integrated second-half-of-life condition where the individual synthesizes both poles, marking the developmental trajectory away from uroboric absorption.

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Over this whole sphere of symbolism looms the maternal uroboros… Conscious realization is ‘acted out’ in the elementary scheme of nutritive assimilation, and the ritual act of concrete eating is the first form of assimilation known to man.

Neumann locates food symbolism and nutritive ritual under the governing influence of the maternal uroboros, identifying alimentary assimilation as the first mode of psychic incorporation in the uroboric stage.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019supporting

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The stage of the maternal uroboros is characterized by the child’s relation to its mother, who yields nourishment, but at the same time it is an historical period in which man’s dependence on the earth and nature is at its greatest.

Neumann articulates the maternal uroboros as a distinct sub-phase in which both ontogenetic (child-mother) and phylogenetic (human-nature) dependency are at their maximum, structurally preceding differentiation of the Great Mother archetype.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019supporting

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In the early uroboric and matriarchal phase there is only the type of the seer who, by sacrificing his ego, and so having become effeminate by identification with the Great Mother, delivers himself of his utterances under the overwhelming impact of the unconscious.

Neumann extends the uroboric stage into a typology of prophetic consciousness, identifying mantic and ecstatic forms of vision with the ego-dissolution characteristic of uroboric and matriarchal psychology.

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This Sphinx is the age-old foe, the dragon of the abyss, representing the might of the Earth Mother in her uroboric aspect.

Neumann identifies the Sphinx as an embodiment of the uroboric Earth Mother, illustrating how the dragon-fight mythology is directed against the residual power of the uroboric stage.

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The uroboric form of the oldest Mother Goddess is the snake, mistress of the earth, of the depths and the underworld, which is why the child who is still attached to her is a snake like herself.

Neumann traces the iconographic form of the earliest Mother Goddess to the uroboric serpent, demonstrating how snake symbolism in archaic religion preserves the undifferentiated unity of the uroboric stage.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019aside

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The open womb is the devouring symbol of the uroboric mother, especially when connected with phallic symbols.

Neumann identifies the devouring womb — accompanied by phallic imagery — as the central symbol of the uroboric mother in her terrible, destructive aspect, linking the Gorgon and Medusa imagery to this stage.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019aside

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