Plotinus and the Jungian Self

The Plotinian the-one and the Jungian self are the same archetypal reality described from opposite directions. Plotinus begins at the summit — hen, the One or the Good — and traces the descent of emanation through nous and psyche-plotinian down to matter. Jung begins at the base — the ego in its matter-bound condition — and traces the ascent through shadow, anima or animus, to the collective unconscious whose center is the Self.

Edinger states the correspondence plainly: “This is very similar, in broad outlines, to the structure of the psyche as Jung has represented it, keeping in mind that in analysis the psyche is discovered by going upwards from below, rather than downwards from above, as Plotinus has it. In analysis one starts with the ego, equivalent to the level of matter, and works toward the Self” (Edinger 1999, p. 99). The inversion is methodological, not substantive. Plotinus is the cosmologist of the Self seen from above; Jung is the empiricist of the Self seen from below.

Jung made the connection explicit. The Ninth Tractate of the Fourth Ennead, with its doctrine of the one Soul present whole in every point, is cited by Jung as the ancient witness to the collective-unconscious and as parallel to synchronicity (Edinger 1999). The unus mundus of the late alchemists — which Jung took as empirical ground for a unified psycho-physical reality — is read by Jung through Plotinus as its philosophical forerunner.

What the archetypal post-Jungian elaborators add is that the Plotinian lineage never left the tradition. Hillman’s Mercurius, Corbin’s mundus imaginalis, the anima mundi of archetypal psychology — each returns, in its own register, to the Plotinian source.

Sources

• plotinus: the One as origin; three hypostases; soul’s descent and return
• carl-jung: the Self as center of the psyche; Plotinus as witness to the collective unconscious and synchronicity (via Edinger citation)
• edward-edinger: the explicit cross-mapping of Plotinian cosmology onto Jungian psychology