Jung's Contribution to the Evolving Concept of Self

Carl Jung used the term self to refer to the central organizing and “moving” principle of the psyche itself, as a whole, whereas he used ego to refer to that which is commonly referenced by the term self in contemporary self psychology and object-relations theory. This larger Jungian concept of self will be elaborated shortly. It should be noted incidentally that Jung defined the psyche as the totality of all mental processes. He first excluded the unconscious from the concept of psyche, confining the concept strictly to that which is conscious. But he later suggested that the unconscious, and possibly even the physical world, could also be included as an aspect of the psyche.

Although the concept of self as currently understood in the non-Jungian world is closely identified with the subjective (phenomenological) “I,” a framework for further identification of specific aspects of self-functioning is emerging. Paraphrasing and slightly rearranging Suler (1993), one current framework for identification of distinct but overlapping characteristics (not categories) of the overarching concept of self includes the following breakdown of the concept: (a) the self-as-structure, (b) the experiencing self, (c) the observing self, (d) the willing self, and (e) the superordinate self. The “pathological self” could be added, but is beyond the scope of the present paper. We must remember that each of these are functions or aspects of the self, not distinct and separate categories of the self.

Object-relations theory, the move in psychoanalysis from instinct theory toward a phenomenological but still somewhat objectively posited and positivistically oriented theoretical formulation, views the self as “a structure consisting of self and object representations, and the more basic cognitive-affective schemata that comprise these representations,” which derive from interactions with significant others, and are often coded as “good” or “bad.” “Patterns of [these] representations are consol