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Self

Self — Descent Press Index (entry forthcoming).

Jae Botávn

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Self
  1. Etymology

Self in English names ones own person or identity (Old English self). Jung keeps the everyday word but capitalizes its technical weight: the Self (often lowercased in older translations as self) is not the everyday “I,” but the archetype of wholeness and the regulating center of the whole psyche.

Related forms: self-realization; ego–self axis; German Selbst. Distinct from ego (center of consciousness) and from persona (social face).

  1. Plain summary

The Self is Jung’s name for the deep center and whole circle of the personality—more than the daytime “I,” and more than any single role. It is the pattern of wholeness that individuation circles toward.

Think of a mandala, a god-image, or a dream figure that feels larger than ego yet intimately you.” The Self can initiate psychic life and also appear as a goal. It is not a church dogma in Jung’s claim—he calls it empiricalbut it rhymes with religious language because it touches destiny, authority, and totality. Ego is the center of consciousness; the Self is the center of the whole (conscious and unconscious together).

Examples (exhaustive house list for this Index lemma — common Self-related figures and motifs named across Jung’s essays and standard Jungian lexica; not a claim that Jungs CW contains only these):

archetype of wholeness; regulating center transcending ego; totality of psychic phenomena; center and circumference; ego as center of consciousness vs Self as center of totality; transcendental / only partly empirical concept; god-image similarity; destiny / authority in psychological life; Self as initiator and as goal; mandala as Self-image; Christ / Buddha / stone / child as symbolic carriers; ego–self axis; inflation when ego identifies with Self; relation to psychoid unknowability; shadow / anima/animus as figures on the way; complexes as parts within the whole; projection of Self onto leaders or doctrines; numinous experiences associated with Self.

  1. Academic elucidation

  1. Lexicon
Self. The archetype of wholeness and the regulating center of the psyche; a transpersonal power that transcends the ego. As an empirical concept, the self designates the whole range of psychic phenomena in man. … It is a transcendental concept, for it presupposes the existence of unconscious factors on empirical grounds and thus characterizes an entity that can be described only in part.

The self is not only the centre, but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the centre of this totality, just as the ego is the centre of consciousness.

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

  1. CW concordance — sample, not exhaustive
One of these concepts is the self. The entity so denoted is not meant to take the place of the one that has always been known as the ego, but includes it in a supraordinate concept.

I have suggested calling the total personality which, though present, cannot be fully known, the self. The ego is, by definition, subordinate to the self and is related to it like a part to the whole.

(Jung, 1951/1959, CW 9ii, p. 5, 9)

… conscious and unconscious are not necessarily in opposition to one another, but complement one another to form a totality, which is the self. According to this definition the self is a quantity that is supraordinate to the conscious ego.

(Jung, 1928/1966, CW 7, p. 243, ¶274)

See also: individuation; psychoid; archetype; persona; shadow; anima; animus; complex; projection; active imagination. ego. god-image.

References

Jung, C. G. (1959). Aion: Researches into the phenomenology of the self. Collected works Vol. 9ii.

Jung, C. G. (1966). The relations between the ego and the unconscious. Collected works Vol. 7.

Jung, C. G. (1971). Psychological types. Collected works Vol. 6.

Samuels, A., Shorter, B., & Plaut, F. (1986). A critical dictionary of Jungian analysis.

Sharp, D. (1991). Jung lexicon: A primer of terms & concepts.

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