Inflation

1. Etymology

Inflation (Latin inflatio, a blowing up) is Jung’s term for a mind swollen by unconscious contents—an exaggerated sense of importance (or its depressive opposite). Not ordinary vanity alone: a symptom of psychological possession, when the ego loses discrimination and takes too much of the unconscious upon itself.

Related forms: positive / negative inflation; mana-personality; identification with the collective psyche. Distinct from healthy grandeur of the self and from ordinary self-esteem.

2. Plain summary

Inflation is what happens when the everyday “I” gets flooded by something bigger than it can hold—archetypal force, collective mood, or extended consciousness without a flexible ego. You feel uniquely powerful (or uniquely worthless). Jung calls both forms inflation: consciousness regresses into unconsciousness; it cannot learn, argue, or forecast well because it is hypnotized by itself.

In practice, inflation shows when someone identifies with a role, a doctrine, a wound, or a god-image and loses the gap between ego and self. The cure-path is assimilation and disidentification—not more grandiosity, and not collapse into pure inferiority.

Examples (exhaustive house list for this Index lemma — common inflation-related figures and motifs named across Jung’s essays and standard Jungian lexica; not a claim that Jung’s CW contains only these):
exaggerated self-importance; compensated inferiority / negative inflation; egocentric consciousness hypnotized by itself; regression of consciousness into unconsciousness; loss of discrimination; identification with collective psyche; invasion by archetypal contents; extended consciousness without assimilation; hypomanic uniqueness vs depressive non-worth; possession; mana-personality; ego = Self collapse; persona inflation (role as totality); anima/animus possession; shadow denial feeding grandeur; complex seizure; projection of inflated contents onto leaders/gurus; calamity as inevitable correction; need to assimilate or disidentify; relation to individuation as counter-movement.

3. Academic elucidation

4. Lexicon

Inflation. A state of mind characterized by an exaggerated sense of self-importance, often compensated by feelings of inferiority. … Inflation, whether positive or negative, is a symptom of psychological possession, indicating the need to assimilate unconscious complexes or disidentify from the self. An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its own existence. … Paradoxically enough, inflation is a regression of consciousness into unconsciousness. This always happens when consciousness takes too many unconscious contents upon itself and loses the faculty of discrimination…

(Sharp, 1991, p. [provisional — unverified])

Samuels, Shorter & Plaut (1986)

Inflation refers to a greater or lesser degree to an identification with the collective psyche caused by an invasion of unconscious archetypal contents or as a result of extended consciousness. … disorientation accompanied either by a feeling of immense power and uniqueness or a sense of non-worth… The former represents a hypomanic state; the latter, depression.

5. CW concordance — sample, not exhaustive

An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its own existence. … Paradoxically enough, inflation is a regression of consciousness into unconsciousness. This always happens when consciousness takes too many unconscious contents upon itself and loses the faculty of discrimination…

… it seizes hold of the psyche with a kind of primeval force and compels it to transgress the bounds of humanity. It causes exaggeration, a puffed-up attitude (inflation), loss of free will, delusion, and enthusiasm in good and evil alike.
(Jung, 1917/1966, CW 7, pp. 106–107, ¶110)

… I would suggest that we speak instead of “psychic inflation.” The term seems to me appropriate in so far as the state we are discussing involves an extension of the personality beyond individual limits, in other words, a state of being puffed up.
(Jung, 1928/1966, CW 7, p. 198, ¶227)

The second way leads to identification with the collective psyche. This would amount to an acceptance of inflation, but now exalted into a system.
(Jung, 1928/1966, CW 7, p. 232, ¶260)

See also: ego; self; individuation; persona; shadow; anima; animus; complex; projection; archetype; psychoid. (Queued — not yet linked: mana-personality, possession, transcendent function, ego-self axis.)

References

Jung, C. G. (1966). On the psychology of the unconscious. 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. 7, pp. 106–107, ¶110). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1917)

Jung, C. G. (1966). The relations between the ego and the unconscious. 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. 7, pp. 198, 232, ¶¶227, 260). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1928)

Jung, C. G. (1968). Psychology and alchemy [Epilogue]. 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. 12, pp. 480–481, ¶563). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1944)

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.