> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.descentpress.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # God-image - URL: https://www.descentpress.com/index/god-image/ - Published: 2026-09-05T06:53:45.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-11T23:31:39.000Z - Author: Jae Botávn - Tags: #index ## 1\. Etymology **God-image** (German *Gottesbild*; Latin *imago Dei* in theological adjacency) names a **psychic image** of the divine—not a claim about God “in himself.” Jung separates *God* (metaphysical object) from *God-image* (psychological fact / imago). Related: *imago*; numinous symbol of totality; relation to the [self](https://www.descentpress.com/index/self/). --- ## 2\. Plain summary A **God-image** is the psyche’s picture of what is highest, most compelling, and most whole—an image that gathers scattered parts of a life and can feel sacred. It is not the same as proving God exists. Psychology can work with the image; it cannot settle what God is beyond the image. The God-image often rhymes with the [self](https://www.descentpress.com/index/self/): highest value, supreme dominant, image of totality. Because totality includes shadow, the God-image has two sides—light and dark. When the [ego](https://www.descentpress.com/index/ego/) merges with it, [inflation](https://www.descentpress.com/index/inflation/) follows; when it is only projected outward, inner authority stays empty. **Examples (exhaustive house list for this Index lemma — common God-image-related figures and motifs named across Jung’s essays and standard Jungian lexica; not a claim that Jung’s CW contains only these):** unifying / transcendent symbol; drawing together psychic fragments; uniting polarized opposites; psychic product distinct from the object it points to; numinous attractor of attention and energy; cross-cultural / age-recurrent idea-form; image of totality; identity or immediate relation to the Self; two sides (good / evil); contamination of object and imago; distinction God vs God-image; refusal of psychological hypostatization; complex of psychological facts operable in analysis; “church within” / psychic container / value system / moral arbiter; highest value claimed as God (conscious or unconscious); recurring religious motifs in dogma and myth; Christ / Buddha / mandala / stone as possible carriers (images, not identity claims); [projection](https://www.descentpress.com/index/projection/) onto leaders, doctrines, partners; [inflation](https://www.descentpress.com/index/inflation/) when ego = God-image; relation to [archetype](https://www.descentpress.com/index/archetype/) and [collective unconscious](https://www.descentpress.com/index/collective-unconscious/); [psychoid](https://www.descentpress.com/index/psychoid/) unknowability of archetype-as-such behind the image. --- ## 3\. Academic elucidation --- ## 4\. Lexicon **Samuels, Shorter & Plaut (1986)** > God-image … a unifying and transcendent symbol capable of drawing together heterogeneous psychic fragments or uniting polarised opposites. … The God-image points to a reality that transcends consciousness, is extraordinarily numinous … As such, it is an image of totality and ‘as the highest value and supreme dominant in the psychic hierarchy, the God-image is immediately related to, or identical with, the Self’ … Being an image of totality, however, the God-image has two sides; one good, the other evil. … It is the fault of the everlasting contamination of object and imago that people can make no conceptual distinction between ‘God’ and ‘God-image’… --- ## 5\. CW concordance — sample, not exhaustive > Unity and totality stand at the highest point on the scale of objective values because their symbols can no longer be distinguished from the *imago Dei*. Hence all statements about the God-image apply also to the empirical symbols of totality. > As the highest value and supreme dominant in the psychic hierarchy, the God-image is immediately related to, or identical with, the self… > (Jung, 1951/1959, CW 9ii, p. 109, ¶170) > The God-image is not something invented, it is an experience that comes upon man spontaneously… The unconscious God-image can therefore alter the state of consciousness, just as the latter can modify the God-image once it has become conscious. > (Jung, 1951/1959, CW 9ii, p. 194, ¶303) > … I make use of a God-concept or an equally metaphysical concept of energy … because they are images which have been found in the human psyche from the beginning. … neither the moral order, nor the idea of God, nor any religion has dropped into man’s lap from outside … he contains all this *in nuce* within himself… > (Jung, 1916/1969, CW 8, p. 360, ¶528) --- **See also:** [self](https://www.descentpress.com/index/self/); [inflation](https://www.descentpress.com/index/inflation/); [ego](https://www.descentpress.com/index/ego/); [archetype](https://www.descentpress.com/index/archetype/); [collective unconscious](https://www.descentpress.com/index/collective-unconscious/); [psychoid](https://www.descentpress.com/index/psychoid/); [projection](https://www.descentpress.com/index/projection/); [individuation](https://www.descentpress.com/index/individuation/); [shadow](https://www.descentpress.com/index/shadow/); [anima](https://www.descentpress.com/index/anima/); [animus](https://www.descentpress.com/index/animus/); [complex](https://www.descentpress.com/index/complex/). [synchronicity](https://www.descentpress.com/index/synchronicity/). [transcendent function](https://www.descentpress.com/index/transcendent-function/). [imago](https://www.descentpress.com/index/imago/). *(Queued — not yet linked: numinosum.)* ## References Jung, C. G. (1959). Aion: Researches into the phenomenology of the self. In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), *The collected works of C. G. Jung* (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.) (Vol. 9ii, pp. 31–32, 109, 194, ¶¶60, 170, 303). Pantheon / Bollingen. (Original work published 1951) Jung, C. G. (1969). General aspects of dream psychology. In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), *The collected works of C. G. Jung* (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.) (2nd ed., Vol. 8, p. 360, ¶528). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1916) Samuels, A., Shorter, B., & Plaut, F. (1986). *A critical dictionary of Jungian analysis*. Routledge. Sharp, D. (1991). *Jung lexicon: A primer of terms & concepts*. Inner City Books. *(No God-image headword; adjacent heads only.)* ---