Paradoxes of The Self

THIS PAPER is not an attempt to encompass the whole of the topic referred to in its title. It is a response to a stimulus. In the April, 1983, issue of this Journal (Vol. 28, No. 2) there appeared an article by Redfearn entitled ‘Ego and self: terminology’ (REDFEARN 14). Its author hoped to stimulate discussion particularly among those who teach and write in the field of analytical psychology. I was duly stimulated. Nevertheless, my wish to respond in writing was hampered by such difficulties that I several times nearly gave up the attempt. The questions of the nature and the relationships of the ego and the self to each other are big questions indeed, and it is not clear to what extent Redfearn attempted to deal with them in fifteen pages of text. He does attempt to circumscribe questions by regarding them as terminological ones. One difficulty for me was that, not being content with this circumscription, I could take up the issues he raises only by widening their scope still further. As will be seen, I was mostly taken up by the first seven lines of the paper which refer to maps of the mind, the ‘real thing’ in the case of the mind, the mind consisting of more maps and ‘much else’. I could see that much depended on these few lines. Perhaps they were meant as a simple introduction, to be taken for granted, but I could not easily do this, having long been engrossed in knotty questions of maps and models and what they refer to.

I was caught up too in the comments by Jacoby (JACOBY 7) and Schwartz-Salant (SCHWARTZ-SALANT 17) and in Redfearn's reply to these comments. It became apparent that the issues he raises are not only of the utmost intellectual difficulty but carry also a high charge of affect. I found that I was the victim of a number of double-binds of which I could identify two. One concerns the audience. Is this really ‘those who teach and write’, or is it second-year analytical trainees who need the simple guide? At a recent conference on supervi