Models of the Self

Warren Colman

In : Jungian Thought in the Modern World.

Introduction:

The self is the centre and the circumference of Jung’s psychology. Its realisation through

the process of individuation was, for Jung, the ultimate goal towards which we strive as

human beings; indications of its presence can be found in all aspects of human endeavour

but especially in religion and mythology. Unlike Freud, Jung did not regard religion and

spirituality as illusions or sublimations of some other basic instinctual force. He

recognised religion as expressing in itself a fundamental and irreducible need of human

beings for purpose and meaning and the recognition of something greater than themselves.

It was this ‘something’ that Jung termed the self, taking the term not from its customary

usage in Western psychology but from the Hindu notion of the Self or ‘Atman’, that

aspect of divine power which resides in every individual as the source of being.

This usage sets ‘the Jungian self’ apart from almost all other Western conceptions of the

self. These tend to equate the self with ‘the sense of self’ or the capacity to possess a

sense of self.1 This, after all, is the ordinary everyday usage of the word: it is what I mean

when I refer to ‘myself’ and what I mean when I stop to think about who this little word

‘I’ refers to. In this sense, having a self is equivalent to the development of a capacity to

understand the meaning of ‘I’ and is concerned with the experience of subjectivity as a

coherent and continuous sense of being a particular person. Jung regards this as the

personal self, which he refers to as the ego. It is the self of which we are conscious and,

as such, forms a content of consciousness as well as being its centre. By contrast, the
Jungian self is always that which transcends consciousness, that which is greater than

what I take to be ‘my self’.

Jung’s thinking on the self is full of complexities, paradoxes and uncertainties, many of

which are inherent in any attempt to discuss something which, by definition, transcends

human comprehension. It is perhaps inevitable that he used ‘the self’ to refer to several

different but overlapping conceptions just as ‘the God-image’, which Jung regarded as

indistinguishable from the self, has a potentially infinite range of meanings. There are

various ways of categorising these different usages (e.g. Redfearn 1985; Gordon 1985).

In this chapter, I shall outline three aspects of the Jungian self: the self as the totality of

the psyche, the self as an archetype and the self as a personification of the unconscious. I

then consider how some of the conflicts in the subsequent development of Jungian

thinking can be understood in terms of the differing emphasis given to these different

aspects of the self. Finally, I propose a fourth way of thinking about the self as the

process of the psyche.

Contrasts and comparisons: the self is not myself

Jung was ahead of his time in recognising the shifting and multiple nature of ego

consciousness. He saw the ‘ego-complex’ (that which I take to be me, my personal

identity) as only one amongst many complexes or ‘sub-personalities’, any of which could

invade or disrupt the conscious mind or even act independently of it2. Jung’s psychology

is therefore well in accord with recent trends towards ‘de-centering’ or ‘deconstructing’

the self. The difference is that Jung goes further, reaching towards some overarching

view of a self which encompasses and can potentially unite the multiplicity within it.

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Jung would also have recognised the arguments of social constructionism and discourse

theory that the self is a socially constructed fiction maintained via a complex web of

interweaving social narratives. Only he would have said that this was what he meant by

the persona. The persona (from the mask worn by actors in Greek drama) is the face that

we put on for the world. It is how we appear to others and, sometimes, to ourselves. But

it is not who we truly are. (CW6: para 370). Thus Jungian psychology takes issue with

social constructionism when the latter maintains that there is no self beyond social

appearances.

The closest parallel to Jung is the concept of ‘self-actualisation’ in humanistic psychology,

particularly associated with Abraham Maslow . This is certainly close to Jung’s concept

of individuation and Maslow’s description of ‘peak experiences’ undoubtedly refers to

experiences of psychic wholeness such as Jung describes, as well as those described in the

literature of spirituality and mysticism. These experiences, though, are best thought of as

intimations of a wholeness which ultimately transcends them. The Jungian self thus refers

not only to what is actualised but includes all that which is not actualised and never can be

actualised.

The Self as the Totality of the Psyche

As a totality, the self can only be partially represented in consciousness, either through

experiences of wholeness or through symbolic images which represent a wholeness

greater than oneself. This does not necessarily mean that experiences and feelings of

wholeness actually are ‘the whole person’. Since the self includes the unconscious as well

as the conscious mind, and the unconscious is by definition unknown to consciousness,

the greater part of the self must remain forever unknowable. Even though we may

become conscious of hidden aspects of ourselves, even though we might realise

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considerable aspects of our potential, the unconscious (in Jung’s conception of it) is like

an inexhaustible reservoir, a living stratum that continually regenerates itself and is

therefore infinite. Furthermore, the unconscious also includes the archetypes,

fundamental structuring factors of the psyche that underlie conscious experience but can

never themselves become conscious. We do not know the archetypes - we only know the

multiple representations of them in consciousness. To remain true to the hypothesis of

archetypes, we must remain true to their ultimately irrepresentable nature: that is, we must

always keep in mind that what we see are images. Perhaps it is like looking at a movie

screen: if we try to see where the images come from, we are blinded by the light of the

projector and see nothing.

Jung regards the symbolic representations of totality which appear in consciousness as

indistinguishable from the God-image. This is not to say that all such representations

appear in the form of ‘God’, nor that ‘God’ and ‘the self’ are the same thing - something

that psychology is not in a position to establish in any event (CW9ii: para 308). What

Jung does claim is that religious imagery is concerned with the symbolism of psychic

wholeness and that religious aspirations are identical with the goal of individuation. He

particularly cites the image of Christ who represents ‘the whole man’ that each of us

might become. ‘In the same way that Christ represents a personality greater than the

average man, Christ, as a symbol, represents something greater than the average ego - the

self.’ (Samuels 1985: 98; CW11: para 414). However, since the defining feature of the

self as a totality is that it is infinitely greater than the ego, any symbol which is greater

than the individual may be a symbol of the total self (CW11: para 232)

For example, a woman whose life had previously been severely restricted in various ways

told me of a dream in which she released a genie which grew to enormous size, filling the

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entire horizon. I saw this as an image of her unrealised self: the genie has enormous

power, far beyond that of its master, the ego, and yet it is in the service of the ego and can

only do what the ego commands. This is a clear example of how a symbol of the self may

nevertheless represent a part self. A symbol of totality would actually have to encompass

not only the genie but also its master, and perhaps the lamp as well. We might even take

the entire story of Aladdin as a symbol of the self: the cave, the evil old man, the princess

and her father could all be seen as archetypal aspects of an individual personality so that

we might have to consider the story as a whole to get a sense of the total self.

Ultimately, symbols are always indications of a reality beyond themselves. So, for

example, when Jung spoke of his experiences with mandalas saying ‘in them I saw the

ultimate’ (Jung 1963: 222), he did not mean that the mandala itself expresses the ultimate

but that his contemplation of mandalas enabled him to see ‘the ultimate’ through them.

Someone else might see only a mandala. Symbols depend on a relationship between the

object and its perceiver. As in physics, the observer influences the observed and the

observed influences the observer.

The same problem of how to represent the irrepresentable has been a consistent theme in

Western philosophy and theology since before the time of Christ3. The Jewish

philosopher, Philo, first distinguished between God’s ousia, his unknowable essence

which lies beyond our reach, and his energia, his activities in the world. Philo’s project

was to reconcile the abstract, eternal and immobile divinity of Aristotle - the Unmoved

Mover - with the God of the Jews who was very much an actor in human affairs. Later in

their formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity, the Cappodacian Christians also took up

Philo’s distinction, arguing that God has one ousia but three hypostastes - the exterior

expression of God’s internal - and unknowable - nature. Thus the Trinity is actually not

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God Himself but merely the only way that God can manifest himself to our human

comprehension. Similarly, the Gnostics regarded the God of Creation as a lower God or

demiurge, behind whom stood a series of higher levels of being before the true God

himself could be reached. In the Kabbalah, this higher God is called En Sof ‘that which

is infinite’. This inner aspect of God is so hidden, so impersonal and inconceivable that

he is not even mentioned in the Bible (Scholem 1941: 12).

Many religious thinkers and mystics such as Dionysius the Aeropagite, Maimonides and

Meister Eckhardt have argued that since God is unknowable he can only be defined

negatively by that which he is not. Meister Eckhardt distinguished between the God of

the Trinity and the unknowable Godhead whom he called ‘Nothing’. This echoes Jung’s

suggestion that the self does not exist as such. All these distinctions refer to the

impossibility of achieving any representation of ‘the thing in itself’ which is, in any event,

not a ‘thing’ (therefore it is ‘no-thing’). If we regard God’s ousia, ‘En Sof’ and the

Godhead as referring to an infinite totality, then all representations of it are necessarily

partial. Negative theology attempts to school the mind out of its habitual tendency to

form images and concepts which it then takes for reality by making it attempt to think the

unthinkable. In this way, it may be possible to go beyond the limits of thought to an

experience in which ‘this’ and ‘that’ dissolve in ‘that which is and is not’. Zen koans

utilise a similar method.

In mystical experience, the distinctions between partial and total, conscious and

unconscious, subject and object cease to have any meaning. There is no longer a state in

which I, the subject, am conscious of something (the object); rather there may be a state of

boundless infinitude which the subject/object dualism of language that structures our

normal consciousness is unable to capture. This would be an experience of the self’s

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capacity to unite the opposites which constitute its structure or, to put it the other way,

that the opposites which structure the psyche are united in the self.

Although such experiences are rare, even for those who dedicate their lives to the spiritual

discipline of achieving them, partial experiences of wholeness and moments in which the

unity of all things is glimpsed are not unusual. These moments offer an intimation of

wholeness, an incontrovertible inkling of a psychic totality that remains forever out of

reach and unknowable.

The Self as an Archetype

It is confusing that Jung refers to the self as both the totality and an archetype within the

totality, albeit the central one. Fordham, in a careful examination of the way Jung talks

about the self, points out the contradiction between these two usages (Fordham 1987: 1-

33). For if the self is the totality of the psyche including all the archetypes, how can it also

be one of them? Furthermore, as an archetype, the self cannot be the totality since it

excludes the ego which perceives it and is structured by it. Nevertheless, the symbolic

images which represent the self in consciousness are clearly archetypal and therefore

presumably structured by the archetype which they represent - i.e. the archetype of the

self. This is where the notion of archetypes as discrete entities ‘in’ the psyche begins to

break down. Archetypes are better thought of as modes of experiencing, tendencies to

experience the world and ourselves in particular ways. This enables us to recognise the

dual nature of archetypes: they generate particular symbolic images but these images also

refer to particular psychic functions. The image of the hero, for example, refers to the

struggle to achieve psychic separateness, particularly in relation to the mother. When a

particular archetype is ‘constellated’, that is when a particular psychic function needs to

be undertaken or developed, the psyche ‘throws up’ the relevant symbols that galvanise

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the conscious mind towards action. These images may occur spontaneously - in dreams,

for example - but there may also be ‘ready made’ images in the culture which assume a

particular fascination and importance for the individual at specific points in their

development.

From this, we can see that archetypal symbols of wholeness (indicators of ‘the archetype

of the self’) may occur more strongly in fragmented individuals than in more integrated

one. They are generated by the compensatory function of the unconscious which acts to

balance the conscious situation. While it is paradoxical to think of ‘the archetype of the

self’ as somehow separate from or contained within the self, it is possible to think of

archetypal processes directed towards wholeness and of a ‘central archetype’ whose

centring functions involve the organisation and integration of the psyche as a whole.

Symbols of psychic wholeness therefore function to draw the individual towards

wholeness and, especially, towards becoming more centred. For the closer one is to the

centre, the more panoramic one’s view of the periphery and the less one is thrown around

by the oscillating turmoil of psychic life. Eventually, perhaps, one arrives at ‘the still

point of the turning world’, an image of the self par excellence.

In his later work, Jung also came to think of the self as the archetype of the ego. He

seems to have recognised that the sharp distinction between ego and self could not always

be maintained since the more individuated one becomes, the closer the conscious ego

approximates to psychic wholeness (albeit this is an ever receding goal). The self is also

akin to consciousness in that both can be described as a circle whose centre is everywhere

and whose circumference is nowhere - a description originally applied to God. While the

ego is the totality of consciousness (‘I’ am in everything I experience), the self is the

totality of conscious and unconscious and, in the same way, is omnipresent. This suggests

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that the archetype of the self can be thought of as the archetype of subjectivity - i.e. as a

basic principle which underlies the experience of a subjective self out of which the ego

gradually develops. This line of thinking has recently been developed by Polly Young-

Eisendrath whose work I discuss later in this chapter.

The Self as a Personification of the Unconscious

Jung recognised that the archetypal figures that appear in dreams, mythology, fairy tales

and other symbolic systems such as alchemy or the tarot were personifications of psychic

functions. It is therefore not unreasonable to assume that some archetypal figures,

especially those concerned with leadership in some way might be personifications of the

totality of psychic functions - i.e. the self. Just as the king represents the whole nation, so

the King or Lord or God might represent the whole psyche. But here we see the paradox

of part and whole creeping in again: the King not only represents the people, he is himself

one of them, albeit a particularly powerful one. Jung often sees the relationship between

King or God figures and one of their subjects as symbolic of the relationship between the

self and the ego. But then it becomes hard to sustain the notion that the King is a

personification of the whole self since what we see are two parts in relation to one another

that together make up the whole. There is a blurring here so that ego/conscious is seen in

opposition to self/unconscious and in this way the self takes on the guise, not of totality,

but of a personification of the unconscious.

The clearest example of this is in Answer to Job (CW11: para 560-758) where Jung takes

Job’s conflict with Yahweh as a metaphor for the relationship between the ego and the

self. However, Yahweh is more like a personification of the elemental powerhouse of the

unconscious while the ego represents the puny but essential forces of consciousness.

Yahweh is presented like an omnipotent infant who cannot contemplate any check to his

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own importance and becomes consumed with world-shattering rages when his own wishes

are thwarted. The self is thus seen as identical with the primitive, undifferentiated

unconscious, full of raw potential which needs to be refined by the ego, here represented

by Job’s challenge to his almighty God. Jung sees Job as forcing God to recognise - and

justify - his own injustice, thereby bringing about an increase in consciousness,

represented by the birth of Christ.

This has led to a model, developed by later Jungians such as Erich Neumann and Edward

Edinger, in which ego development is seen as a progressive emergence and differentiation

from the self (equated with the unconscious). This makes it especially difficult to hold

onto the way that the ego is at the same time part of the self and, furthermore, in the

course of development becomes more like the self through greater assimilation and

realisation of unconscious contents. This leads Edinger to assert an ‘ego-self paradox’ by

which the ‘dialectic between ego and self [leads] paradoxically to both greater separation

and greater intimacy’ (Edinger 1960: 18). This apparent paradox can be unpicked if we

distinguish between self as totality and self as unconscious. Through the individuation

process, greater consciousness naturally produces greater intimacy with assimilated

psychic contents precisely because there is also a greater separation from unconsciousness.

The more separation from unconsciousness there is, the greater the awareness of self.

In addition to their paradoxical part/whole nature, there is a further difficulty with

symbolic personifications of the self: they produce a misleading attribution of subjectivity.

This can result in a failure to distinguish between personified symbols of the self and the

unknowable reality to which they refer. Edinger gives a clear example of this when he

argues that since the self includes everything that we are, the self also accepts everything

that we are (Edinger 1960: 10). This is rather like saying that the periodic table accepts

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all the elements because it includes them. It begs the question as to whether the self can

have this kind of personal, emotional subjectivity or whether this view is a sort of

anthropomorphic ‘category mistake’ on the part of the ego. This issue is also strongly

echoed in theological controversies about the nature of God. Is God remote, impersonal

and ineffable like Brahman and the Unmoved Mover or is He a personal God, like the

Judeo-Christian God who has a personal, emotional relationship with his creation (cf. the

ego)? If God is too remote, we become unable to relate to him at all. Yet if he is too

personal, there is a danger that we (the ego) attribute to God (the self) our own human

attributes and thereby reduce the awesome infinitude of the All. Even for Jews and

Muslims, the Christian idea of a God-man was a step too far: the attribution of human

form to the divine infinitude was regarded as blasphemy.

The three aspects of the self I have considered are held together in Jung’s thinking by the

overall sense of the self as ‘the greater personality’. For example, he describes it as ‘a

more compendious personality’ that takes the ego into its service (CW11: para 390). Jung

regards the development of this kind of relativity and humility as crucial to the process of

individuation: the ego must renounce its arrogant omnipotence and recognise its

dependence on forces greater than itself. This view is certainly in accord with the self as

a greater totality of which the ego is only a small part. It also recognises that the greater

part of that totality resides in the unconscious and it is the task of the ego to acknowledge

unconscious archetypal forces and to bring into consciousness the potential inherent

within them. Perhaps most important of all in this view of the self are those occasions in

which the self seems to speak to us, when we hear ‘the inner voice’ or feel ‘the will of

God’, a greater power possessed of far greater knowledge and intelligence to which our

own small conscious purposes must bow. It is easy to see how such experiences promote

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a view of the self as possessing personal subjectivity. However, they may more accurately

be construed as messages in personified form, messages that indicate the existence of a

larger overall organisation and purpose that encompasses the ego: the archetype of the

self.

In the subsequent development of Jung’s thought, the accentuation of these different

aspects has produced several conflicting models. Much of the controversy has been played

out in a series of furious debates about the role and nature of the self in infancy. Jung

himself had little interest in infancy and childhood, perhaps because he regarded that

phase of life as belonging to the Freudian territory from which he had become an exile.

As later Jungian analysts have turned their attention to the first half of life, they have

taken differing views on whether, and in what way, the self is present from the beginning

of life and/or only emerges in the course of development. The three developments I shall

now consider roughly correspond to the three models I have outlined:

1) the mythological approach (represented by Neumann and Edinger) which emphasises

self as unconscious;

2) the biological approach developed by Michael Fordham, whose concept of ‘the primary

self’ is a model of the self as a pre-existing totality

3) the constructivist approach, represented by Polly Young-Eisendrath and Louis Zinkin,

who, in slightly different ways, concentrate on the archetype of the self as the

organising principle underlying personal subjectivity.

Jung and Neumann: Primary Union

Neumann, who most closely follows Jung, believed that the infant exists in a state of

primary undifferentiated union with the mother who ‘carries’ the infant’s self in

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projection. In this model there is a symbolic equation between unconscious, self and

mother. The mother represents the self to the infant who is like a dependent ego carried in

the maternal matrix of the unconscious self. As ego consciousness grows, so the child

gradually separates from the mother (and later, the father) through a series of archetypal

conflicts. Neumann sees the world’s great myths, particularly hero myths and creation

myths as symbolic depictions of the development of consciousness on both a collective

and an individual level (ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny) (Neumann 1954).

This theory represents the self as being similar to what Kleinian analysts refer to as ‘the

good internal object’. The mother initially acts as a container, which later becomes

internalised. This aspect of the mother is particularly well suited to represent the self

since container symbols are amongst its most characteristic symbols, such as the castle,

the city and especially the alchemical vessel or vas, in which symbolic transformations

take place. The mother’s womb contains the infant as the self contains the ego,

surrounding it on all sides, while the mother’s breast, like the self (and the unconscious) is

the source of all its nourishment and is itself a circle symbol par excellence. Symbolic

linkages between mother, self and unconscious are therefore particularly strong and it is

hardly surprising that the mother features as a particularly powerful symbol of the greater

totality and our dependence upon it. This is a good illustration of the way that archetypal

representations are often fused so that one image can represent many archetypes just as

one archetype can be represented by many images. (Freud called this ‘over-

determination’). Only in the course of later development do the archetypes of self, mother

and child differentiate out from each other in the way they are perceived by the conscious

mind.

Fordham: The Primary Self

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Michael Fordham approached the study of the self in infancy from a completely different

point of view and, as a result, was sharply critical of Neumann’s approach. His

background and interest was in the Cambridge empirical school of biology - worlds apart

from the German mythological Idealism of Neumann. Fordham was interested in the

analysis of actual children and took an empirical approach to what could actually be

observed in their behaviour as well as their fantasies. He particularly objected to the

implication that the infant has no autonomy and is merely a function of the psychology of

the parents. In his view, the child is an active and separate individual from the start. In

recent years, child development studies have amply confirmed Fordham’s view that the

mental capacities of infants had been grossly under-estimated. It is therefore idealistic,

romantic and sentimental to believe that infants exist in a state of primary union and have

no self of their own.

Fordham’s approach takes the infant as primarily a biological organism, a psychosomatic

entity, rather than a symbolic or social being. These elements are not denied but are

understood within an overall conception of psychic development that parallels the

unfolding processes of biological development from the simple fertilised egg to the

complexity of a fully developed human creature.

Fordham uses ‘self’ in terms of an organism’s capacity to initiate psychic and somatic

activity. Fordham’s interest is therefore primarily with the total self and, in particular with

its earliest form which he termed the primary self. He proposes the existence of a primary

psychosomatic integrate which contains everything that the self will become in potential.

The primary self is ‘a blueprint for psychic maturation from which the behaviour of

infants may be derived’ (Fordham 1976: 11). The primary self ‘deintegrates’ when it

meets environmental triggers that produce a ‘readiness for experience’. Such readiness is

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typified by the new born infant’s rooting for the breast. When a deintegrate is ‘met’ by

the environment, an experience takes place and the self ‘reintegrates’ with the new

experience included in it. This rhythmic alternation between deintegration (going to meet

the world) and reintegration (returning to the self) continues throughout life.

Fordham’s model allows for the unending development of a self of increasing complexity

and sophistication out of the most rudimentary elements. It also enables us to understand

how increasing differentiation of psychic elements and discrimination of environmental

experiences develops in parallel with increasing levels of integration. The integrated adult

self is therefore (ideally) like a symphony orchestra: many different parts operating in a

co-ordinated way to produce a richly layered, complex texture of meaningful sound. The

model also allows us to understand a) dis-integration, where the parts do not cohere and

some instruments are either silenced or busy ‘blowing their own trumpet’ in disregard of

the whole, and b) failures of development where the self does not deintegrate sufficiently

and the personality remains stunted, unable to form the internal experiences out of which

a meaningful relation to the world can develop. Fordham suggested that infantile autism

could be understood as the most extreme example of such a failure to deintegrate.

Zinkin and Young-Eisendrath: The Constructivist Critique

Where Fordham starts from the innate activity of the infant, constructivists start from the

intersubjective interaction between mother and infant. Thus, Louis Zinkin, Fordham’s

colleague in the London Society of Analytical Psychology, objected to the notion of a

primary self that was pre-given. He pointed out that there never is a point prior to

interaction with the environment when some undifferentiated entity could be said to exist:

‘one would have to go back to the earliest beginnings of the universe to find ... the

intellectual necessity ... of an original undifferentiated state’ (Zinkin 1987b: 177 ).

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Therefore, he argued ‘there never is an objective entity which corresponds to [the primary

self]’ (Fordham & Zinkin 1987: 142). In fact, Fordham agreed that the primary self ‘has

no date’ and confirmed that he was talking about ‘cosmic experiences extending to the

limits of space and time’ (Fordham & Zinkin 1987: 143). An apparently hard-nosed

scientific concept has suddenly become, at the same time, a highly mystical one. The

dialogue between Fordham and Zinkin echoes the Zen Buddhist question ‘What is the face

of the Buddha before you were born?’ The primary self is the original Buddha face.

Once again we find that we are brought up against the limits of what is thinkable.

For these reasons, Zinkin believed that ‘the self only comes into existence through

interaction with others’ (Zinkin 1991: 6) and that it was meaningless to speak of a self that

exists prior to the infant having any conception of ‘myself’. In other words, the self is

constructed, not by the individual in isolation but through an interactive field out of which

‘the individual’ emerges. At the risk of oversimplification we might say that Neumann

puts the self ‘in’ the mother, Fordham puts it ‘in’ the infant and Zinkin puts it in between

mother and infant4.

Polly Young-Eisendrath, an American Jungian with a strong interest in re-aligning

Jungian thought with post-modern trends in philosophy and psychology, is also a firm

adherent of a constructivist position. She is particularly opposed to the tendency to

attribute subjectivity to the self as if it is a person, and to reify the self as if it were a

substantive entity. She identifies these tendencies as stemming from the epistemological

errors of ‘realism’ and ‘essentialism’ as a result of which ‘we may sound as though we

can know the unknowable in saying the Self has intentions, views and desires’ (Young-

Eisendrath 1997a: 162). Instead, she emphasises the aspect of archetypes as

predispositions to particular forms and images of psychic functioning. Following the

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philosopher, Rom Harré (also an influence on Zinkin) she has identified what she calls

‘the invariants of subjectivity’. These are coherence, continuity, a sense of agency and

affective relational patterns. Since these are universal features of subjectivity, within a

wide range of different ways of thinking about and experiencing a personal self, she

concludes that they must be archetypal. Therefore, she suggests that, especially in his

later work,

it was Jung’s own intention to present his concept of Self as a universal

predisposition to form a unified image of individual subjectivity. This

predisposition arises out of a transcendent coherence, that unity of life that

is not personal and may be called God, Tao, Buddha Nature, a central

organising principle (of the universe) or other names.

(Young-Eisendrath 1997b: 54)

Since the form that individual subjectivity takes is that which Jung calls the ego, Young-

Eisendrath is arguing that the self is the archetype of the ego. As such, it is not the

totality, far less a personification of the unconscious, but an abstract principle of

organisation and coherence which structures human subjectivity as it is constructed ‘in a

context that includes culture, language, and other persons’(Young-Eisendrath & Hall

1991: xii). Young-Eisendrath and Zinkin emphasise different aspects of the same overall

project: both stress that the archetypal self cannot be divorced from the personal self and

that the personal self is acquired through mutual interaction, not a given that arises in and

of itself. However, where Zinkin is interested in the detailed dialogue that takes place

between mother and infant, Young-Eisendrath takes a more abstract, philosophical

approach and has been able to re-align constructivist thinking with Jung’s view of the self

as an archetype. For neither of them is the self-as-totality a relevant consideration.

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Self as Process

In this concluding section, I want to begin to sketch out a view of the self which is both

totality and archetype, both organising principle and that which is organised. In this view,

the self is best understood as the overall process of the psyche. That is, it is not simply an

organising principle within the psyche but is better thought of as the organising principle

of the psyche.5 There is no principle or archetypal structure which is in any way separate

from that which it is organising. The structure is inherent in itself - the self is both a

tendency towards organisation (the process of individuation) and the structure of that

organisation (the self as archetype). In other words, the psyche is self-structuring and the

name for that process is the self. What misleads us is our tendency to isolate elements of

thought into ‘contents’: then the self-as-archetype becomes a ‘content’ ‘within’ the

psyche-as-the-total-self, creating an artificial paradox. If we think of the self as the

process of the psyche, this paradox disappears. This also avoids the tendency that has

dogged religious thought and has cropped up again in Jungian psychology: the tendency to

hypostasise the self as a ‘thing’ to be known. In her post-modern ‘campaign’ against

reification, realism and essentialism in Jungian psychology, Young-Eisendrath is a direct

descendent of Philo, the Cappodacians and all negative theologians. In fact, she does

indeed draw on another kind of negative theology: the Buddhist doctrine of ‘no-self’

which was itself originally a corrective against the Hindu tendency to concretise Atman as

a substantive self.6

However, Brahman (and Atman as its individual aspect) is also, properly conceived, not a

discrete entity but something that pervades everything. In a Hindu parable, Brahman is

compared to salt dissolved in water. It cannot be seen nor can it be distinguished from the

18
water in which it is. It is thus everywhere and nowhere. This may seem to be an

essentialist view, as if there is a definable essence of being which is Brahman. But here

the essence is inseparable from the element in which it is found - lived existence. It is as

if the self is not an experience and certainly not a content of experience but rather the

taste of experience, its quality.7 Brahman is that which ‘cannot be spoken in words, but

that by which words are spoken ... What cannot be thought with the mind, but that

whereby the mind can think.’ (from theUpanishads: quoted in Armstrong 1997: 40). If we

apply this to the self, we might say that the self is not subjectivity but the condition by

which subjectivity is possible. It is not myself, nor the experience of myself but the very

possibility of my having self-experience. This, I think, is what Jung means by the larger

personality that is the self. It is a recognition that our self-organisation is not bounded by

our self-awareness but is the overall purpose and organisation of our existence as human

organisms. If there is anything which qualifies as archetypal, surely this is it.

This way of thinking is also, surprisingly close to developments in Darwinian biology and

the burgeoning field of consciousness studies. This linkage is particularly interesting

since two of the key proponents in this field, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, are

vigorously atheistic and reductionist, apparently the very antithesis of the Jungian

zeitgeist.

In his book, Consciousness Explained, Dennett (1991) proposes an explanation of

consciousness based on what he calls ‘the Multiple Drafts Model’. This model is

strikingly post-modern in that it eschews the existence of any single point at which

consciousness takes place in favour of a multiplistic, de-centered view of both

consciousness and the self. He argues that we must rid ourselves of the homuncular

fantasy in which neuro-physiological processes are somehow all directed towards and

19
served up to a ‘Central Meaner’ who receives ‘inputs’ from sensory data and the body in

‘the Cartesian Theatre’ of consciousness. Rather he suggests the brain is like a serial

processor in which multiple versions of events, meanings, emotional and sensory states

and language co-exist in such a way that it is not possible to distinguish any boundary

between those that become conscious (‘mental’) and those which do not. Consciousness

is therefore a field which is in continual flux, rather like Jung’s view of the psyche as a

multiplicity of complexes.

Rather than the self as an ‘inner person’ (homunculus), Dennett suggests, like Young-

Eisendrath, that the self is an abstraction. Furthermore, it is one which, in rudimentary

form, is attributable to all life forms: even the lowliest amoeba must make a distinction

between ‘me’ and ‘the rest of the world’ [not-me]:

This minimal proclivity to distinguish self from other in order to protect oneself is

the biological self, and even such a simple self is not a concrete thing but just an

abstraction, a principle of organization. (Dennett 1991: 414)

This seems to me to recognise that all organisms are driven by an overall sense of

purposive intelligence that is beyond the conscious mind. It is simply that in human

beings, the self is inevitably of a far more complex kind and, appropriately, its

contemplation inspires awe. So, while the self may not possess subjectivity, it becomes

unremarkable to attribute to it an overall purposive intelligence with coherent intentions

and ‘needs’ that transcend consciousness. How else could we function at all? We have

only to consider the complex functioning of our internal organs (and our brains most of

all) to see this. Why should we expect the psychic aspect of ourselves to be constructed

any differently? This is the basis for Jung’s teleological view of the psyche as a holistic

20
system of purposive self-regulating functions. Conscious realisation of the processes at

work in ourselves may well make us feel humble and small and offer a rebuke to the

hubris of the ego, but must also provide that deep-rooted, inalienable reassurance of what

Winnicott calls ‘going on being’. We do not need to know how we do it, we just discover

that we are doing it.8

Dennett applies the same kind of thinking to the construction of a personal self. As he

puts it, we find ourselves ‘spinning a self’ just as the spider finds itself spinning a web.

We do not know what we are doing or why we are doing it; it is as if it is doing us.

Dennett proposes the construction of the self as an example of what the biologist Richard

Dawkins has called the ‘extended phenotype’ - extended effects of genetic activity

through which a creature’s environment is altered. Examples include spiders’ webs,

beavers’ lakes and the stone shells created by caddis flies (Dawkins 1982). There is a

very close parallel here to Fordham’s argument for the primary activity of the self.

Fordham, too, argues that the infant is able to ‘create’ aspects of its environment by its

own activity. Extended into the intersubjective view, we might say that all of us act on

each other to promote the development of our individualised personal lives which are

therefore part of the extended phenotype of the human organism. I suggest that ‘the self’,

like God, is an image of this process. The God-image appears to be the source of our

existence but it is also the result of the processes it represents. The God-image is the

image, not of the self that is spun (myself), but of the process by which it is spun - that

through we live and breathe and have our being. As individual subjects, we are subject to

the self.

If the self is the process of being human, it follows that the self is in everything we are.

This view also offers a reconciliation of the part/whole paradox. The thrust of Dennett’s

21
philosophical critique is against the conception of a conscious agent who somehow exists

in the Cartesian Theatre of consciousness, observing and making decisions separately

from the processes of awareness through which It exists9. Similarly, we need to get away

from the idea of a self ‘in’ the unconscious or anywhere else for that matter. So, for

example, when Fordham says the self deintegrates and reintegrates, we might see the self

as deintegration and reintegration. Indeed, Fordham states that ‘a deintegrate is endowed

with and continuous with the self’. This means that parts of the self are endowed with the

qualities of the self since, as I indicated earlier, the self is the quality of experience.

Louis Zinkin uses the analogy of the hologram to refer to the way that parts of the self are

not distinct from the whole self but rather are merely different forms that the self takes.

In the hologram, the whole image is present in every part of it since the image is a

function of wave patterns that form the holomovement. Zinkin concludes that

Movement is primary and the appearance of forms as they emerge from the

movement is secondary. ..... It would be better understood if the

movement of the psyche in individuation is taken as primary, not the

structures such as the archetypes , the ego and the self or the unconscious,

which are only comparatively stable and autonomous forms (Zinkin 1987a:

124)

I want to take this just a little bit further and suggest that the self is the holomovement.

Therefore the whole self is present in every part of it. It is omnipresent from the very start.

Furthermore, since it is never a discrete entity, there is no need to postulate starting from a

self-contained system, as Fordham does in the hypothesis of the primary self (Fordham &

Zinkin 1987: 138). The nascent individual may be a system but it is perpetually in

22
interaction with other systems, and itself made up of myriad part-systems down to the

level of the genes and further down to their atomic constituents, until the search for

origins disappears once more into the nothingness of the unthinkable and becomes

infinite. The self emerges out of this primary wholeness and develops towards a

discriminating consciousness capable of asking from whence it came. Our individuation

involves us becoming distinct and discrete individuals to the point at which we can

confront the universe from which we have sprung as discriminated but intrinsically

connected parts of it. Then, if we can grasp it, we might once again know the experience

of wholeness at a different level: at the level of consciousness, the highest level of

differentiation known to us. At this level, we might become differentiated enough to

perceive our interconnection and oneness with the universe.

Notes:

23
1

This is true of the concept of the self in psychoanalysis, for example, where the concept has been mainly used in

America, by followers of Heinz Hartmann’s ego-psychology. Some Jungians feel that Kohut’s view of the self as ‘the

centre of the psychological universe’ is similar to Jung’s, albeit he does not refer to its potential connection with the

image of the divine. For a detailed elaboration of this view see Jacoby 1985.

2
The term ‘sub-personality’ has been used by Joseph Redfearn in his book My Self, My Many Selves (Redfearn, 1985).

Redfearn’s work is a comprehensive elaboration of the multiplicity of the self in terms of the shifting identifications of

‘the I’ and its relation to ‘the Not-I’.

3
I am indebted to Karen Armstrong’s A History of God (1997) for most of the information in this and the following

paragraph

4
These views may also be combined. For example, Hester Solomon (1997; 1998), while adhering closely to Fordham’s

view of the primary self, has sought to demonstrate that Jung’s notion of the self in transformation is both primary and

relational.

5
Similarly, Rosemary Gordon refers to the self as a structure within the psyche whereas I think it would be more accurate

to describe it as the structure of the psyche (Gordon 1985: 269)

6
Following a hint from one of Jung’s letters, she refers to the self as an ‘empty center’ around which the personality is

organised (Young-Eisendrath and Hall 1991: 61). I have developed this view elsewhere in relation to the ‘heart of the

mystery’ in Hamlet. ( Colman 1998).

7
Robert Pirsig has made ‘Quality’ the centre of a philosophical system, supraordinate to the subjective reality of mind

and the objective reality of matter. He equates Quality with Tao which, in turn, Jung equates with the self. (Pirsig 1974)

8
While I was working on this paragraph, I received a letter from an ex-patient telling me how she had been hi-jacked at

gunpoint and fully expected to be raped and killed. She attributed the fact that neither had happened mainly to an
inexplicable feeling of wholeness, calm, and inner confidence that she experienced as she faced death head on. As a

child, she had been devastated when she realised that no-one, not even her mother, could prevent her from dying and she

had suffered from fears of dying ever since. The strange thing, was, she told me, that as she was driven for several hours

at gunpoint into the middle of nowhere, she felt, for the first time, a certainty that she would go on breathing and that her

body was capable of sustaining her. It must have taken the presence of death as an external reality to shock her into an

experience of the self.

9
It seems to me to beg the question to refer to such a Cartesian agent as either ‘he’ or ‘she’. How does it know that it is

gendered in the first place??!

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