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CARL JUNG’S CONCEPT OF SELF

Lecture Notes in UTS
Saint Mary’s University
Second Semester SY 2020-2021

A. The psyche
Jung writes: ‘By psyche I understand the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as
unconscious’, (CW6 para 797) so we use the term ‘psyche’ rather than ‘mind’, since mind is used in
common parlance to refer to the aspects of mental functioning which are conscious. Jung maintained
that the psyche is a self-regulating system (like the body).
The psyche strives to maintain a balance between opposing qualities while at the same time
actively seeking its own development or as he called it, individuation. For Jung, the psyche is
inherently separable into component parts with complexes and archetypal contents personified and
functioning autonomously as complete secondary selves, not just as drives and processes. It is
important to think of Jung’s model as a metaphor not as concrete reality, or as something which is not
subject to change.

B. The ego
Jung saw the ego as the centre of the field of consciousness which contains our conscious
awareness of existing and a continuing sense of personal identity. It is the organiser of our thoughts
and intuitions, feelings, and sensations, and has access to memories which are not repressed. The ego
is the bearer of personality and stands at the junction between the inner and outer worlds.
The way in which people relate to inner and outer worlds is determined by their attitude type: an
extraverted individual being orientated to the outer world, and an introverted one primarily to the
inner world. Jung also noted that people differ in the conscious use they make of four functions which
he termed, thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition. In any individual, one of these functions is
superior and is therefore more highly developed than other functions, since greater use is made of it,
but each attitude operates in relation to the introversion or extraversion of the person, as well as in
conjunction with other less dominant functions, giving a number of different theoretical possibilities.
The ego arises out of the Self during the course of early development. It has an executive function,
it perceives meaning and assesses value, so that it not only promotes survival but makes life worth
living. It is an expression of the Self, though by no means identical with it, and the Self is much greater
than it. Jung compared the nature of consciousness to the eye: only a limited number of things can be
held in vision at any one time, and in the same way the activity of consciousness is selective. Selection,
he says, demands direction and other things are excluded as irrelevant. This is bound to make
conscious orientation one sided. The contents which are excluded sink into the unconscious where
they form a counterweight to the conscious orientation. Thus an increasing tension is created and
eventually the unconscious will break through in the form of dreams or images. So the unconscious
complex is a balancing or supplementing of the conscious orientation.

C. The personal unconscious

The personal unconscious is a product of the interaction between the collective unconscious and
the development of the individual during life. Jung’s definition of the personal unconscious is as
follows:
‘Everything of which I know, but of which I am not at the moment thinking; everything of which I was
once conscious but have now forgotten; everything perceived by my senses, but not noted by my
conscious mind; everything which, involuntarily and without paying attention to it, I feel, think,
remember, want, and do; all the future things which are taking shape in me and will sometime come to
consciousness; all this is the content of the unconscious’ (CW8, para 382). ‘Besides these we must include
all more or less intentional repressions of painful thought and feelings. I call the sum of these contents
the “personal unconscious”’ (CW8, para 270).
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One can see that there is more here than the repressed contents of the unconscious as
envisaged by Freud, for while it does include repression, Jung also sees the personal unconscious as
having within it potential for future development, and thus is very much in line with his thinking
about the psyche.

D. Complexes
Jung considered that the personal unconscious is composed of functional units called complexes,
and he reached the concept of the complex through some important and ground-breaking work he did
as a young man on word association. He found that there were internal distractions which interfered
with the association of the subjects to the test words, so that their reaction time was longer for some
words than others. These responses tended to form groups of ideas which were affectively toned and
which he named complexes or ‘feeling-toned complexes’. The word association test suggested the
presence of many types of complex not merely, as Freud claimed, a core sexual complex, or Oedipus
complex.
Complexes are determined by experience but also by the individual’s way of reacting to that
experience. A complex is in the main unconscious and has a tendency to behave independently or
autonomously so that the individual may feel that his behaviour is out of his control. We probably
have all said at one time or another when we have done something seemingly out of character: ‘I don’t
know what came over me’. This sense of autonomy is perhaps most marked in abnormal states of
mind, and can be seen most clearly in people who are ill; whom we sometimes think of as possessed,
but complexes are parts of the psyche of us all.
Complexes have their roots in the collective unconscious and are tinged with archetypal contents.
The problem for the individual is not the existence of the complexes per se, but the breakdown of the
psyche’s capacity to regulate itself. Jung held that the psyche has the ability to bring into awareness
dissociated complexes and archetypal material in order to provide a balance or compensation to
conscious life. He thought that the ego was prone to making inappropriate choices or to one-
sidedness, and that material arising from the unconscious could help to bring a better balance to the
individual and enable further development to take place
The further development tends to take place in a situation of conflict, which Jung saw as a creative
and inevitable part of human life. When unconscious contents break through into consciousness it can
lead to increased development in the individual. However, complexes can easily manifest themselves
without the ego being strong enough to reflect on them and enable them to be made use of, and it is
then that they cause us (and other people) difficulties. Jung was more concerned with the present and
with future development than with delving into the past, emphasising a teleological approach and
being concerned with the meaning of symptoms and their purpose.

E. The collective unconscious

The theory of the collective unconscious is one of the distinctive features of Jung’s psychology. He
took the view that the whole personality is present in potentia from birth and that personality is not
solely a function of the environment, as was thought at the time when he was developing his ideas, but
merely brings out what is already there. The role of the environment is to emphasise and develop
aspects already within the individual.
Every infant is born with an intact blueprint for life, both physically and mentally, and while these
ideas were very controversial at the time, there is much more agreement now that each animal
species is uniquely equipped with a repertoire of behaviours adapted to the environment in which it
has evolved. This repertoire is dependent on what ethologists call ‘innate releasing mechanisms’
which the animal inherits in its central nervous system and which become activated when appropriate
stimuli are encountered in the environment. These ideas are very close indeed to the theory of
archetypes developed by Jung.
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He wrote:
‘the term archetype is not meant to denote an inherited idea, but rather an inherited mode of
functioning, corresponding to the inborn way in which the chick emerges from the egg, the bird builds its
nest, a certain kind of wasp stings the motor ganglion of the caterpillar, and eels find their way to the
Bermudas. In other words, it is a “pattern of behaviour”. This aspect of the archetype, the purely
biological one, is the proper concern of scientific psychology’. (CW18, para 1228).
The archetypes predispose us to approach life and to experience it in certain ways, according
to patterns laid down in the psyche. There are archetypal figures, such as mother, father, child,
archetypal events, such as birth, death, separation, and archetypal objects such as water, the sun, the
moon, snakes, and so on. These images find expression in the psyche, in behaviour and in myths. It is
only archetypal images that are capable of being known and coming to consciousness, the archetypes
themselves are deeply unconscious and unknowable.
I have mentioned the biological, instinctual pole of the archetype, but Jung perceived the
concept as a spectrum, there being an opposing, spiritual pole which also has an enormous impact on
behaviour. Archetypes have a fascinating, numinous quality to them which makes them difficult to
ignore, and attracts people to venerate or worship archetypal images.

The 4 Major Jungian Archetypes

Archetypes are universal, inborn models of people, behaviors, or personalities that play a role
in influencing human behavior. They were introduced by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who
suggested that these archetypes were archaic forms of innate human knowledge passed down from
our ancestors.1
In Jungian psychology, the archetypes represent universal patterns and images that are part of the
collective unconscious. Jung believed that we inherit these archetypes much in the way we inherit
instinctive patterns of behavior.

Personal vs. Collective Unconscious

Jung was originally a supporter of his mentor Sigmund Freud. The relationship eventually
fractured over Jung's criticism of Freud's emphasis on sexuality during development, which led Jung
to develop his own psychoanalytic approach known as analytical psychology.
While Jung agreed with Freud that the unconscious played an important role in personality and
behavior, he expanded on Freud's idea of the personal unconscious to include what Jung called the
collective unconscious.
Jung believed that the human psyche was composed of three components:
 The ego
 The personal unconscious
 The collective unconscious
According to Jung, the ego represents the conscious mind while the personal unconscious contains
memories including those that have been suppressed.
The collective unconscious is a unique component in that Jung believed that this part of the psyche
served as a form of psychological inheritance. It contained all of the knowledge and experiences that
humans share as a species.

The Origins of Jung's Archetypes

Where do these archetypes come from then? The collective unconscious, Jung believed, was
where these archetypes exist. He suggested that these models are innate, universal, and hereditary.
Archetypes are unlearned and function to organize how we experience certain things.
"All the most powerful ideas in history go back to archetypes," Jung explained in his book  "The
Structure of the Psyche."
"This is particularly true of religious ideas, but the central concepts of science, philosophy, and
ethics are no exception to this rule. In their present form, they are variants of archetypal ideas created
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by consciously applying and adapting these ideas to reality. For it is the function of consciousness, not
only to recognize and assimilate the external world through the gateway of the senses but to translate
into visible reality the world within us," he suggested.
Jung rejected the concept of tabula rasa or the notion that the human mind is a blank slate at
birth to be written on solely by experience. He believed that the human mind retains fundamental,
unconscious, biological aspects of our ancestors. These "primordial images," as he initially dubbed
them, serve as a basic foundation of how to be human.
These archaic and mythic characters that make up the archetypes reside with all people from
all over the world, Jung believed. It is these archetypes that symbolize basic human motivations,
values, and personalities.
Jung believed that each archetype played a role in personality, but felt that most people were
dominated by one specific archetype. According to Jung, the actual way in which an archetype is
expressed or realized depends upon a number of factors including an individual's cultural influences
and uniquely personal experiences.
Jung identified four major archetypes but also believed that there was no limit to the number
that may exist. The existence of these archetypes cannot be observed directly but can be inferred by
looking at religion, dreams, art, and literature.
The four main archetypes described by Jung as well as a few others that are often identified
include the following.

The Persona
The persona is how we present ourselves to the world. The word "persona" is derived from a
Latin word that literally means "mask." It is not a literal mask, however.
The persona represents all of the different social masks that we wear among various groups
and situations. It acts to shield the ego from negative images. According to Jung, the persona may
appear in dreams and take different forms.
Over the course of development, children learn that they must behave in certain ways in order
to fit in with society's expectations and norms. The persona develops as a social mask to contain all of
the primitive urges, impulses, and emotions that are not considered socially acceptable.
The persona archetype allows people to adapt to the world around them and fit in with the
society in which they live. However, becoming too closely identified with this archetype can lead
people to lose sight of their true selves.

The Shadow
The shadow is an archetype that consists of the sex and life instincts. The shadow exists as part
of the unconscious mind and is composed of repressed ideas, weaknesses, desires, instincts, and
shortcomings.
The shadow forms out of our attempts to adapt to cultural norms and expectations. It is this
archetype that contains all of the things that are unacceptable not only to society, but also to one's
own personal morals and values. It might include things such as envy, greed, prejudice, hate,
and aggression.
Jung suggested that the shadow can appear in dreams or visions and may take a variety of forms. It
might appear as a snake, a monster, a demon, a dragon, or some other dark, wild, or exotic figure.
This archetype is often described as the darker side of the psyche, representing wildness,
chaos, and the unknown. These latent dispositions are present in all of us, Jung believed, although
people sometimes deny this element of their own psyche and instead project it on to others.

The Anima or Animus

The anima is a feminine image in the male psyche, and the animus is a male image in the female
psyche.5 The anima/animus represents the "true self" rather than the image we present to others and
serves as the primary source of communication with the collective unconscious.
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Jung believed that physiological changes as well as social influences contributed to the
development of sex roles and gender identities. Jung suggested the influence of the animus and anima
archetypes were also involved in this process. According to Jung, the animus represents the masculine
aspect in women while the anima represented the feminine aspect in men.
These archetypal images are based upon both what is found in the collective and personal
unconscious. The collective unconscious may contain notions about how women should behave while
personal experience with wives, girlfriends, sisters, and mothers contribute to more personal images
of women.
In many cultures, however, men and women are encouraged to adopt traditional and often
rigid gender roles. Jung suggested that this discouragement of men exploring their feminine aspects
and women exploring their masculine aspects served to undermine psychological development.
The combined anima and animus is known as the syzygy or the divine couple. The syzygy represents
completion, unification, and wholeness.

The Self
The self is an archetype that represents the unified unconsciousness and consciousness of an
individual. Jung often represented the self as a circle, square, or mandala.
Creating the self occurs through a process known as individuation, in which the various aspects
of personality are integrated. Jung believed that disharmony between the unconscious and the
conscious mind could lead to psychological problems. Bringing these conflicts into awareness and
accommodating them in conscious awareness was an important part of the individuation process.
Jung suggested that there were two different centers of personality:
 The ego makes up the center of consciousness, but it is the self that lies at the center of
personality.
 Personality encompasses not only consciousness but also the ego and the unconscious mind.
You can think of this by imagining a circle with a dot right at the center. The entire circle makes
up the self, where the small dot in the middle represents the ego.
For Jung, the ultimate aim was for an individual to achieve a sense of cohesive self, similar in many
ways to Maslow's concept of self-actualization.

Other Archetypes
Jung suggested that the number of existing archetypes was not static or fixed. Instead, many
different archetypes may overlap or combine at any given time.
The following are just a few of the various archetypes that Jung described:
 The father: Authority figure; stern; powerful
 The mother: Nurturing; comforting
 The child: Longing for innocence; rebirth; salvation
 The wise old man: Guidance; knowledge; wisdom
 The hero: Champion; defender; rescuer
 The maiden: Innocence; desire; purity
 The trickster: Deceiver; liar; trouble-maker