What is the self?

Carl Jung, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Carl Jung answers

The self is not the ego. That distinction, simple as it sounds, is the hardest thing to hold in mind, because the ego perpetually mistakes itself for the whole. The ego I define as a complex of representations constituting the centrum of my field of consciousness, possessing a high degree of continuity and identity.1 It is a complex among other complexes — a content of consciousness, not its ground.

The self is something else entirely: the subject not of my consciousness alone but of my totality, embracing both the conscious and the unconscious psyche.2 Ego is the part; self is the whole that contains the part — and this means the part cannot fully apprehend what contains it. We can picture ourselves as a persona without great difficulty, but to make a clear image of what we are as self passes our powers of conception, because the operation requires the part to apprehend the whole.3

In unconscious fantasy the self often appears as a super-ordinated or ideal personality — Faust in relation to Goethe, Zarathustra in relation to Nietzsche; and where the archaic features of the self are split off from the higher personality, they appear as Mephisto, as the shadow, as the ugliest man.4 The self cannot be reduced to these images, but it speaks through them, and the images are our best evidence that something larger than the ego is at work.

What then is the self in its own nature? Intellectually it is nothing but a psychological concept, a construction that serves to express an undiscernible essence which we cannot grasp, since by its very definition it transcends our powers of comprehension.5 It might just as well be called the god in us — the beginnings of our whole psychic life seem inextricably rooted in this point, and our highest and deepest purposes seem to be striving toward it.6

The paradox is unavoidable; we always arrive at it when we try to describe something that lies beyond comprehension. The self emerges most clearly when the ego ceases to press its claim to mastery. When the mana — that charge of psychic power — is neither seized by the ego nor allowed to remain in the unconscious as a possessing force, it comes to rest in something that is both conscious and unconscious, or neither: a middle point between the opposites, the reconciliation of the conflict, the achieved product of the energic tension, the coming to birth of personality.7

This middle point is what I call the self. It is altogether ourselves, and yet unrecognizable; near, and yet strange; a virtual center of such mysterious constitution that it can demand relationship with animals and with gods, with crystals and with stars, without exciting our disapproval.8 The self, finally, is not a destination one arrives at and possesses.

It will always remain a superordinated quantity — for no matter how much we make conscious, there will always remain an indeterminate and indeterminable quantity of unconscious elements that belong to its totality.9 The work is never finished, because the self is larger than any moment of knowing.

Sources

  1. By ego, I understand a complex of representations which constitutes the centrum of my field of consciousness and appears to possess a very high degree of continuity and identity.
    Psychological Types
  2. I discriminate between the ego and the Self, since the ego is only the subject of my consciousness, while the Self is the subject of my totality: hence it also includes the unconscious psyche.
    Psychological Types
  3. It is easy to imagine that we possess partial souls. Thus, we can see ourselves as a persona, for instance, without too great difficulty. But it passes our bounds of conception to make a clear picture of what we are as self, because, for this operation, the part is required to apprehend the whole.
    Chapter I
  4. In unconscious phantasy the Self often appears as a super-ordinated or ideal personality, as Faust in relation to Goethe and Zarathustra to Nietzsche. In the effort of idealization the archaic features of the Self are represented as practically severed from the 'higher' Self, as in the figure of Mephisto with Goethe or in that of Epimetheus with Spitteler.
    Psychological Types
  5. Intellectually the self is nothing but a psychological concept, a construction that serves to express an undiscernible essence, and which in itself we cannot grasp, since, as its definition implies, it transcends our powers of comprehension.
    Chapter IV
  6. It might just as well be called 'the god in us.' The beginnings of our whole psychic life seem to be inextricably rooted in this point, and all our highest and deepest purposes seem to be striving towards it.
    Chapter IV
  7. This something is the desired 'middle point' of the personality, that indescribable something between the opposites, the reconciliation of the opposites, the result of the conflict, the 'achieved product' of the energic tension, the coming to birth of personality, a most individual forward step, the next stage.
    Chapter IV
  8. This something, though strange to us, is yet so near; it is altogether ourselves, and yet unrecognizable, a virtual middle-point of such a mysterious constitution that it can demand anything, relationship with animals and with gods, with crystals and with stars, without causing us to wonder, without even exciting our disapproval.
    Chapter IV
  9. Hence the self will always remain a superordinated quantity... no matter how much we make conscious, there will always be an indeterminate and indeterminable quantity of unconscious elements, which belong to the totality of the self.
    Chapter I