Symposium The Self in Review

After Reading many previous reviews and revisions of Jung's concept, the self, I am impressed with how much serious thinking by Jungian analysts has gone into clarifying this multi-faceted subject since Jung's work was finished. For the most part the theoretical basis as expressed by Jung himself has been reaffirmed, namely that the self as a central archetype of order and a symbol of totality of psychic life equally co-exist. As conceptualised so well by Fordham, it may serve this dual function without undue sense of paradox (FORDHAM 2). If we were to express this in a visual image we might say the self is both a circle and the central point within that circle. If the circle is the totality, the central point would represent the ordering principle.

However, when I try to make sense out of the imagery of the self I run into some unexpected difficulties that make the concept seem indeed paradoxical. At first it may even seem non-existent. Jung sometimes referred to it as a psychological non-ego and the title of a fine work of explication is M. Esther Harding's The I and the Not I (HARDING 3). A kind of nihilistic attitude is sometimes adopted over it, causing Jung to say the recognition of the self is ‘a defeat for the ego.’ But then the imagery abounds in colourful references to the lotus, the jewel, Atman, the philosopher's stone, and all sorts of other attributes that lift the self into the heights of spiritual power far beyond the reach of ordinary mortals. Yet it is also to be found everywhere, it is the ‘still small voice’, the smallest scintilla or spark of light in the darkness, and its possessor should receive its message in a state of absolute submission.

But if we place metaphor to one side and look at the manifestation of self-hood in action, we may find our centring totality at work in a more humanly understandable form. By this I refer to the common experience we analysts all have in our work when we are dealing with an intimate relation of ego and self.