Self In Jungian Psychology
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The Self in Jungian psychology is a dynamic concept which has undergone numerous modifications since it was first conceptualised as one of the '' Jungian archetypes''. Historically, the
Self The self is an individual as the object of that individual’s own reflective consciousness. Since the ''self'' is a reference by a subject to the same subject, this reference is necessarily subjective. The sense of having a self—or ''selfhood ...
, according to
Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philo ...
, signifies the unification of consciousness and unconsciousness in a person, and representing the psyche as a whole. It is realized as the product of
individuation The principle of individuation, or ', describes the manner in which a thing is identified as distinct from other things. The concept appears in numerous fields and is encountered in works of Leibniz, Carl Gustav Jung, Gunther Anders, Gilbert Sim ...
, which in his view is the process of integrating various aspects of one's personality. For Jung, the Self is an encompassing whole which acts as a container. It could be symbolized by a circle, a
square In Euclidean geometry, a square is a regular quadrilateral, which means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles (90-degree angles, π/2 radian angles, or right angles). It can also be defined as a rectangle with two equal-length adj ...
, or a
mandala A mandala ( sa, मण्डल, maṇḍala, circle, ) is a geometric configuration of symbols. In various spiritual traditions, mandalas may be employed for focusing attention of practitioners and adepts, as a spiritual guidance tool, for e ...
.


Two center hypothesis

The idea that there are two centers of the personality distinguished Jungian psychology at one time. The ego has been seen as the center of consciousness, whereas the Self is defined as the center of the total personality, which includes consciousness, the unconscious, and the ego; the Self is both the whole and the center. While the ego is a self-contained center of the circle contained within the whole, the Self can be understood as the greater circle.


Emergence of the Self

Jung considered that from birth every individual has an original sense of wholeness—of the Self—but that with development a separate ego-consciousness crystallizes out of the original feeling of unity.Henderson, "Myths" p. 120 This process of ego-differentiation provides the task of the first half of one's life-course, though Jungians also saw psychic health as depending on a periodic return to the sense of Self, something facilitated by the use of myths, initiation ceremonies, and
rites of passage A rite of passage is a ceremony or ritual of the passage which occurs when an individual leaves one group to enter another. It involves a significant change of status in society. In cultural anthropology the term is the Anglicisation of ''rite ...
.


Return to the Self: individuation

Once ego-differentiation had been more or less successfully achieved and the individual is somewhat anchored in the external world, Jung considered that a new task then arose for the second half of life - a return to, and conscious rediscovery of, the Self: individuation. Marie-Louise von Franz states that "The actual processes of individuation - the conscious coming-to-terms with one's own inner center (psychic nucleus) or Self - generally begins with a wounding of the personality". The ego reaches an impasse of one sort or another; and has to turn for help to what she termed "a sort of hidden regulating or directing tendency... norganizing center" in the personality: "Jung called this center the 'Self' and described it as the totality of the whole psyche, in order to distinguish it from the 'ego', which constitutes only a small part of the psyche". Under the Self's guidance, a succession of archetypal images emerges, gradually bringing their fragmentary aspects of the Self increasingly closer to its totality. The first to appear, and the closest to the ego, would be the
shadow A shadow is a dark area where light from a light source is blocked by an opaque object. It occupies all of the three-dimensional volume behind an object with light in front of it. The cross section of a shadow is a two-dimensional silhouette, o ...
or personal unconscious - something which is at the same time the first representation of the total personality, and which may indeed be at times conflated with the Self. Next to appear would be the Anima and Animus, the soul-image, which may be taken as symbolising the whole Self. Ideally however, the animus or anima comes into play in a mediating role between the ego and the Self. The third main archetype to emerge is the
Mana According to Melanesian and Polynesian mythology, ''mana'' is a supernatural force that permeates the universe. Anyone or anything can have ''mana''. They believed it to be a cultivation or possession of energy and power, rather than being a ...
figure of the wise old man/woman - a representative of the collective unconscious akin to the Self. Thereafter comes the archetype of the Self itself - the last point on the route to self-realization of individuation. In Jung's words, "the Self...embraces ego-consciousness, shadow, anima, and collective unconscious in indeterminable extension. As a totality, the self is a ''coincidentia oppositorum''; it is therefore bright and dark and yet neither". Alternatively, he stated that "the Self is the total, timeless man...who stands for the mutual integration of conscious and unconscious". Jung recognized many dream images as representing the self, including a stone, the
world tree The world tree is a motif present in several religions and mythologies, particularly Indo-European religions, Siberian religions, and Native American religions. The world tree is represented as a colossal tree which supports the heavens, thereb ...
, an elephant, and the Christ.


Perils of the Self

Von Franz considered that "the dark side of the Self is the most dangerous thing of all, precisely because the Self is the greatest power in the psyche. It can cause people to 'spin' megalomanic or fall into other delusionary fantasies that catch them up", so that the subject "thinks with mounting excitement" that he has grasped the great cosmic riddles. He therefore risks losing all touch with human reality. In everyday life, aspects of the Self may be projected onto outside figures or concepts such as the state, God, the universe or fate. When such projections are withdrawn, there can be a destructive inflation of the personality - one potential counterbalance to this being however the social or collective aspects of the Self.


Evolution of the Jungian concept of Self

Young-Eisendrath and Hall write that 'in Jung's work, self can refer to the notion of inherent subjective individuality, the idea of an abstract center or central ordering principle, and the account of a process developing over time'. In 1947
Michael Fordham Michael Scott Montague Fordham (4 August 1905 – 14 April 1995) was an English child psychiatrist and Jungian analyst. He was a co-editor of the English translation of C.G. Jung's Collected Works. His clinical and theoretical collaboratio ...
proposed a distinct theory of the ''primary self'' to describe the state of the psyche of neonates, characterised by homeostasis, or 'steady state' in his words, where self and other (usually the mother) are undifferentiated. It predicates that there is no distinction between the internal and external world, and there are as yet no different components in the internal world. Fordham derived his hypothesis partly from the Jungian concept of the archetype of the self, and the
psychoanalytic PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might ...
idea of internal 'objects'. The ''primary self'', taken as the original totality of each person, with its 'archetypal' tendencies to develop aspects, such as language,
complex Complex commonly refers to: * Complexity, the behaviour of a system whose components interact in multiple ways so possible interactions are difficult to describe ** Complex system, a system composed of many components which may interact with each ...
es etc., enters into relation with the external world through a continuous dual process of ''de-integration'' and ''re-integration'', a process said to be characteristic of the first half of life. Redfearn, for instance, who has also synthesised the classical archetypal theory with a developmental view based on years of clinical observation, sees the self as probably consisting of a range of subpersonalities over a lifetime. According to
Peter Fonagy Peter Fonagy, (born 14 August 1952) is a Hungarian-born British psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist. He studied clinical psychology at University College London. He is Professor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Developmental Science and H ...
the connections between "post-Freudians" and "post-Jungians" have been further strengthened after the advent of contemporary
neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, development ...
in this connection, as outlined in his foreword to Jean Knox's update on the "formation of internal working models", which he describes as a milestone.


Objection

Fritz Perls Friedrich Salomon Perls (July 8, 1893 – March 14, 1970), better known as Fritz Perls, was a Germany, German-born psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and psychotherapist. Perls Neologism, coined the term "Gestalt therapy" to identify the form of psychoth ...
objected that 'many psychologists like to write the self with a capital S, as if the self would be something precious, something extraordinarily valuable. They go at the discovery of the self like a treasure-digging. The self means nothing but this thing as it is defined by ''otherness.Fritz Perls, ''Gestalt Therapy Verbatim'' (Bantam) p. 8


See also

{{Columns-list, colwidth=30em, *
Self (psychology) The psychology of self is the study of either the cognitive, conative or affective representation of one's identity, or the subject of experience. The earliest formulation of the self in modern psychology derived from the distinction between the ...
*
Socialization In sociology, socialization or socialisation (see spelling differences) is the process of internalizing the norms and ideologies of society. Socialization encompasses both learning and teaching and is thus "the means by which social and cultur ...


References

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External links


Jung on the Archetype of the Self
{{Jung {{DEFAULTSORT:Self In Jungian Psychology
Jungian Analytical psychology ( de , Analytische Psychologie, sometimes translated as analytic psychology and referred to as Jungian analysis) is a term coined by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, to describe research into his new "empirical science" ...
Analytical psychology Jungian archetypes Carl Jung