Wholeness

1. Etymology

Wholeness names a state in which consciousness and the unconscious work together—anticipated by quaternity and mandala symbols. Related: self; completeness vs perfection; individuation.

2. Plain summary

Wholeness is not polish or moral perfection. Jung treats it as consciousness and unconscious cooperating—an approximate completeness that can lack perfection, like a figure suspended between opposites.

The psyche anticipates it in spontaneous symbols of unity (fourfold forms, circles). You are born with a kind of fundamental wholeness that breaks and re-forms as life differentiates; conscious wholeness is qualitative, not a score. Related to health as capacity, to creativity, and to the self as goal—without chasing “wholeness” as a brand.

Examples (exhaustive house list for this Index lemma — common wholeness-related figures and motifs named across Jung’s essays and standard Jungian lexica; not a claim that Jung’s CW contains only these):
consciousness–unconscious harmony; empirical via spontaneous symbols; quaternity / mandala as unity/totality; completeness not perfection; suspension between opposites; born whole → differentiation → re-formed conscious wholeness; qualitative not quantitative; secret goal of experience; relative to normality/conformism; synthesis of opposites / coniunctio; Western/Christian omissions (e.g. matter, evil, feminine — per lexica); individuation; self; child as wholeness-in-becoming; spirit–matter polarity.

3. Academic elucidation

4. Lexicon

Sharp (1991)

Wholeness. A state in which consciousness and the unconscious work together in harmony. … anticipated by the psyche in the form of spontaneous or autonomous symbols. These are the quaternity or mandala symbols… The realization of the self… leads to… an approximate state of wholeness that lacks perfection…

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

wholeness The fullest possible expression of all aspects of the personality… equated with health… potential and a capacity… We are born possessing fundamental wholeness but, as we grow, this breaks down and re-forms…

5. CW concordance — sample, not exhaustive

Although “wholeness” seems at first sight to be nothing but an abstract idea (like anima and animus), it is nevertheless empirical in so far as it is anticipated by the psyche in the form of spontaneous or autonomous symbols. These are the quaternity or mandala symbols… Their significance as symbols of unity and totality is amply confirmed by history as well as by empirical psychology.

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.

…the croquet ball is connected with the “round” motif and is therefore a symbol of wholeness, that is, of the self…

See also: self; individuation; mandala; quaternity; opposites; coniunctio; unconscious; spirit; child; god-image; father-complex.

References

Jung, C. G. (1959). Aion: Researches into the phenomenology of the self [The self]. 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. 9, pt. 2, p. 31, ¶¶59–60). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1951)

Jung, C. G. (1968). Psychology and alchemy. 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, p. 115, ¶150). 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.