Part I

INDIVIDUATION AND THE STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT

And if it is true that we acquired our knowledge before our birth, and lost it at the moment of birth, but afterward, by the exercise of our senses upon sensible objects, recover the knowledge which we had once before, I suppose that what we call learning will be the recovery of our own knowledge . . .

PLATO*

* Phaedo, translated by Hugh Tredennick, Collected Dialogues, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series LXII, 1961.

CHAPTER ONE

The Inflated Ego

The sun will not overstep his measures; if he does, the Erinyes, the handmaids of Justice, will find him out.

—HERACLITUS¹

1.EGO AND SELF

Jung’s most basic and far-reaching discovery is the collective unconscious or archetypal psyche. Through his researches, we now know that the individual psyche is not just a product of personal experience. It also has a pre-personal or transpersonal dimension which is manifested in universal patterns and images such as are found in all the world’s religions and mythologies.² It was Jung’s further discovery that the archetypal psyche has a structuring or ordering principle which unifies the various archetypal contents. This is the central archetype or archetype of wholeness which Jung has termed the Self.

The Self is the ordering and unifying center of the total psyche (conscious and unconscious) just as the ego is the center of the conscious personality. Or, put in other words, the ego is the seat of subjective identity while the Self is the seat of objective identity. The Self is thus the supreme psychic authority and subordinates the ego to it. The Self is most simply described as the inner empirical deity and is identical with the imago Dei. Jung has demonstrated that the Self has a characteristic phenomenology. It is expressed by certain typical symbolic images called mandalas. All images that emphasize a circle with a center and usually with the additional feature of a square, a cross, or some other representation of quaternity, fall into this category.

There are also a number of other associated themes and images that refer to the Self. Such themes as wholeness, totality, the union of opposites, the central generative point, the world navel, the axis of the universe, the creative point where God and man meet, the point where transpersonal energies flow into personal life, eternity as opposed to the temporal flux, incorruptibility, the inorganic united paradoxically with the organic, protective structures capable of bringing order out of chaos, the transformation of energy, the elixir of life–all refer to the Self, the central source of life energy, the fountain of our being which is most simply described as God. Indeed, the richest sources for the phenomenological study of the Self are in the innumerable representations that man has made of the deity.³

Since there are two autonomous centers of psychic being, the relation between the two centers becomes vitally important. The ego’s relation to the Self is a highly problematic one and corresponds very closely to man’s relation to his Creator as depicted in religious myth. Indeed the myth can be seen as a symbolic expression of the ego-Self relationship. Many of the vicissitudes of psychological development can be understood in terms of the changing relation between ego and Self at various stages of psychic growth. It is this progressive evolution of the ego-Self relation which I propose to examine.

Jung originally described the phenomenology of the Self as it occurs in the individuation process during the second half of life. More recently we have begun to consider the role of the Self in the early years of life. Neumann, on the basis of mythological and ethnographical material, has depicted symbolically the original psychic state prior to the birth of ego consciousness as the uroborus, using the circular image of the tail-eater to represent the primordial Self, the original mandala-state of totality out of which the individual ego is born.⁴ Fordham, on the basis of clinical observations of infants and children, has also postulated the Self as the original totality prior to the ego.⁵

It is generally accepted among analytical psychologists that the task of the first half of life involves ego development with progressive separation between ego and Self; whereas the second half of life requires a surrender or at least a relativization of the ego as it experiences and relates to the Self. The current working formula therefore is, first half of life: ego-Self separation; second half of life: ego-Self reunion. This formula, although perhaps true as a broad generality, neglects many empirical observations made in child psychology and in the psychotherapy of adults. According to these observations, a more nearly correct formula would be a circular one, which could be diagrammed thus:

The process of alternation between ego-Self union and ego-Self separation seems to occur repeatedly throughout the life of the individual both in childhood and in maturity. Indeed, this cyclic (or better, spiral) formula seems to express the basic process of psychological development from birth to death.

According to this view the relation between the ego and Self at different stages of development could be represented by the following diagrams:

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig. 3                              Fig. 4

These diagrams represent progressive stages of ego-Self separation appearing in the course of psychological development. The shaded ego areas designate the residual ego-Self identity. The line connecting ego-center with Self-center represents the ego-Self axis–the vital connecting link between ego and Self that ensures the integrity of the ego. It should be understood that these diagrams were designed to illustrate a particular point and are thus inaccurate in other respects. For example, we generally define the Self as the totality of the psyche, which would necessarily include the ego. According to these diagrams, and to the method of this presentation, it would seem as though ego and Self became two separate entities, the ego being the smaller lump and the Self the larger lump of the totality. This difficulty is inherent in the subject matter. If we speak rationally, we must inevitably make a distinction between ego and Self which contradicts our definition of Self. The fact is, the conception of the Self is a paradox. It is simultaneously the center and the circumference of the circle of totality. Considering ego and Self as two separate entities is merely a necessary rational device for discussing these things.

Figure 1 corresponds to Neumann’s original uroboric state. Nothing exists but the Self-mandala. The ego germ is present only as a potentiality. Ego and Self are one, which means that there is no ego. This is the total state of primary ego-Self identity.

Figure 2 shows an emerging ego which is beginning to separate from the Self but which still has its center and greater area in primary identity with the Self.

Figure 3 presents a more advanced stage of development; however, a residual ego-Self identity still remains. The ego-Self axis, which in the first two diagrams was completely unconscious and therefore indistinguishable from ego-Self identity, has now become partly conscious.

Figure 4 is an ideal theoretical limit which probably does not exist in actuality. It represents a total separation of ego and Self and a complete consciousness of the ego-Self axis.

These diagrams are designed to illustrate the thesis that psychological development is characterized by two processes occurring simultaneously, namely, progressive ego-Self separation and also increasing emergence of the ego-Self axis into consciousness. If this is a correct representation of the facts, it means that ego-Self separation and growing consciousness of the ego as dependent on the Self are actually two aspects of a single emergent process continuous from birth to death. On the other hand, our diagrams also demonstrate the general validity of assigning awareness of the relativity of the ego to the second half of life. If we take Figure 3 to correspond to middle age, we see that only at this stage has the upper portion of the ego-Self axis begun to emerge into consciousness.

The process by which these developmental stages unfold is an alternating cycle which is represented in the diagram (Figure 5, p. 41). As this cycle repeats itself again and again throughout psychic development it brings about a progressive differentiation of the ego and the Self. In the early phases, representing approximately the first half of life, the cycle is experienced as an alternation between two states of being, namely, inflation and alienation. Later a third state appears when the ego-Self axis reaches consciousness (Figure 3) which is characterized by a conscious dialectic relationship between ego and Self. This state is individuation. In this chapter we shall consider the first stage, inflation.

2.INFLATION AND ORIGINAL WHOLENESS

The dictionary definition of inflation is: Blown up, distended with air, unrealistically large and unrealistically important, beyond the limits of one’s proper size; hence, to be vain, pompous, proud, presumptuous.⁶ I use the term inflation to describe the attitude and the state which accompanies the identification of the ego with the Self. It is a state in which something small (the ego) has arrogated to itself the qualities of something larger (the Self) and hence is blown up beyond the limits of its proper size.

We are born in a state of inflation. In earliest infancy, no ego or consciousness exists. All is in the unconscious. The latent ego is in complete identification with the Self. The Self is born, but the ego is made; and in the beginning all is Self. This state is described by Neumann as the uroborus (the tail-eating serpent). Since the Self is the center and totality of being, the ego totally identified with the Self experiences itself as a deity. We can put it in these terms retrospectively although, of course, the infant does not think in this way. He cannot yet think at all, but his total being and experience are ordered around the a priori assumption of deity. This is the original state of unconscious wholeness and perfection which is responsible for the nostalgia we all have toward our origins, both personal and historical.

Many myths depict the original state of man as a state of roundness, wholeness, perfection, or paradise. For instance, there is the Greek myth recorded by Hesiod of the four ages of man. The first, original age was the golden age, a paradise. The second was the silver age, a matriarchal period where men obeyed the mothers. The third age was bronze, a period of wars. And the fourth age was the iron age, the period at which he was writing which was utterly degenerate. About the golden, paradise age, Hesiod says:

(The golden race of men) lived like gods without sorrow of heart remote and free from toil and grief . . . They had all good things; for the fruitful earth unforced bore them fruit abundantly and without stint. They dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things, rich in flocks and loved by the blessed gods.⁷

In the paradise age, the people are in union with the gods. This represents the state of the ego that is as yet unborn, not yet separated from the womb of the unconscious and hence still partaking of the divine fullness and totality.

Another example is the Platonic myth of original man. According to this myth, the original man was round, in the shape of a mandala. In the Symposium Plato says:

The primeval man was round, his back and sides forming a circle . . . Terrible was their might and strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great, and they made an attack upon the gods . . . and would have laid hands upon the gods . . . the gods could not suffer their insolence to go unrestrained.⁸

Here the inflated, arrogant attitude is particularly evident. Being round in the initial period of existence is equivalent to assuming oneself to be total and complete and hence a god that can do all things. There is an interesting parallel between the myth of the original round man and Rhoda Kellogg’s studies of pre-school art.⁹ She has observed that the mandala or circle image seems to be the predominant one in young children who are first learning how to draw. Initially a two-year-old with pencil or crayon just scribbles, but soon he seems to be attracted by the intersection of lines and begins to make crosses. Then the cross is enclosed by a circle and we have the basic pattern of the mandala. As the child attempts to do human figures, they first emerge as circles, contrary to all visual experience, with the arms and legs being represented only as raylike extensions of the circle (Picture 1). These studies provide clear empirical data indicating that the young child experiences the human being as a round, mandala-like structure and verify in an impressive way the psychological truth of Plato’s myth of the original round man. Child therapists also find the mandala an operative, healing image in young children (Picture 2). All of this indicates that, symbolically speaking, the human psyche was originally round, whole, complete; in a state of oneness and self-sufficiency that is equivalent to deity itself.

Picture 1. The sequence of Gestalts from bottom to top represent the probable evolution of human figures in the drawings of young children.

Picture 2. This painting by a seven-year-old girl during psychotherapy marks reestablishment of psychic stability.

The same archetypal idea that connects childhood with nearness to deity is presented in Wordsworth’s Ode on Intimations of Immortality:

Our Birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!¹⁰

From the standpoint of later years, the close connection of the child’s ego with divinity is a state of inflation. Many subsequent psychological difficulties are due to residues of that identification with deity. Consider, for instance, the psychology of the child in the first five years or so. On one hand it is a time of great freshness of perception and response; the child is in immediate contact with the archetypal realities of life. It is in the stage of original poetry; magnificent and terrifying transpersonal powers are lurking in every commonplace event. But on the other hand the child can be an egotistic little beast, full of cruelty and greed. Freud described the state of childhood as polymorphous perversion. This is a brutal description but it is at least partially true. Childhood is innocent but it is also irresponsible. Hence, it has all the ambiguities of being firmly connected with the archetypal psyche and its extra-personal energy, and at the same time being unconsciously identified with it and unrealistically related to it.

Children share with primitive man the identification of ego with the archetypal psyche and ego with outer world. With primitives, inner and outer are not at all distinguished. For the civilized mind, primitives are most attractively related to nature and in tune with the life process; but they are also savages and fall into the same mistakes of inflation as do children. Modern man, alienated from the source of life meaning, finds the image of the primitive an object of yearning. This accounts for the appeal of Rousseau’s concept of the noble savage and other more recent works which express the civilized mind’s nostalgia for its lost mystical communion with nature. This is one side, but there is also the negative side. The real life of the primitive is dirty, degrading and obsessed with terror. We would not want that reality for a moment. It is the symbolical primitive for which we yearn.

When one looks back on his psychological origin, it has a twofold connotation: first, it is seen as a condition of paradise, wholeness, a state of being at one with nature and the gods, and infinitely desirable; but secondly, by our conscious human standards, which are related to time and space reality, it is an inflated state, a condition of irresponsibility, unregenerate lust, arrogance and crude desirousness. The basic problem for the adult is how to achieve the union with nature and the gods, with which the child starts, without bringing about the inflation of identification.

The same question applies to the problems of child-rearing. How can we successfully remove the child from his inflated state and give him a realistic and responsible notion of his relation to the world, while at the same time maintaining that living link with the archetypal psyche which is needed in order to make his personality strong and resilient? The problem is to maintain the integrity of the ego-Self axis while dissolving the ego’s identification with the Self. On this question rest all the disputes of permissiveness versus discipline in child rearing.

Permissiveness emphasizes acceptance and encouragement of the child’s spontaneity and nourishes his contact with the source of life energy with which he is born. But it also maintains and encourages the inflation of the child, which is unrealistic to the demands of outer life. Discipline, on the other hand, emphasizes strict limits of behavior, encourages dissolution of the ego-Self identity and treats the inflation quite successfully; but at the same time it tends to damage the vital, necessary connection between the growing ego and its roots in the unconscious. There is no choice between these–they are a pair of opposites, and must operate together.

The child experiences himself quite literally as the center of the universe. The mother at first answers that demand; hence, the initial relationship tends to encourage the child’s feeling that its wish is the world’s command, and it is absolutely necessary that this be so. If the constant and total commitment of the mother to the child’s need is not experienced, the child cannot develop psychologically. However, before long, the world necessarily begins to reject the infant’s demands. At this, the original inflation begins to dissolve, being untenable in the face of experience. But also, alienation begins; the ego-Self axis is damaged. A kind of unhealing psychic wound is created in the process of learning he is not the deity he thought he was. He is exiled from paradise, and permanent wounding and separation occur.

Repeated experiences of alienation continue progressively right into adult life. One is constantly encountering a two-fold process. On the one hand we are exposed to the reality encounters which life provides, and which are constantly contradicting unconscious ego assumptions. This is how the ego grows and separates from its unconscious identity with the Self. At the same time we must have recurring reunion between ego and Self in order to maintain the integrity of the total personality, otherwise there is a very real danger that as ego is separated from Self the vital connecting link between them will be damaged. If this happens to a serious extent we are alienated from the depths of ourselves and the ground is prepared for psychological illness.

The original state of affairs–experiencing oneself as the center of the universe–can persist long past childhood. For instance, I recall a young man who thought quite naively: The world is my picturebook. All the things he encountered he thought were put there for his purposes–for his amusement or his instruction. He quite literally considered the world to be his oyster. External experiences had no inherent reality or meaning except as they related to him. Another patient had the conviction that when he died the world would come to an end! In the state of mind that generates such an idea, identification with the Self is also identification with the world. Self and world are coextensive. This way of experiencing things does have a certain truth, a genuine validity; but it is a viewpoint which is absolutely poison in the early phases of development when the ego is trying to emerge from the original wholeness. Much later in life, the realization that there is a continuity between the inner and outer worlds can have a healing effect. Here is one more example of the Mercurius of the alchemists who may be the panacea to some and poison to others.

Many psychoses illustrate the identification of the ego with the Self as the center of the universe, or the supreme principle. For instance the common delusion among the insane that one is Christ or Napoleon is best explained as a regression to the original infantile state where the ego is identified with the Self. Ideas of reference are also symptoms of extreme ego-Self identity. In such cases the individual imagines that certain objective events have a hidden relationship to himself. If he is paranoid the delusion will be of a persecuting nature. For example, I remember a patient who saw men fixing the wires on a telephone pole outside her apartment window. She interpreted this as evidence that a wire tapping device was being installed to eavesdrop on her telephone calls and thus get evidence against her. Another patient thought that the news commentator on television was conveying a private message to him. Such delusions derive from a state of ego-Self identity which assumes that oneself is the center of the universe and hence attaches private significance to outer events which are in fact totally indifferent to one’s existence.¹¹

A common example of the inflated state of ego-Self identity is provided by what H. G. Baynes has called, the provisional life. Baynes describes the state as follows:

(The provisional life) denotes an attitude that is innocent of responsibility towards the circumstantial facts of reality as though these facts are being provided for, either by the parents, or the state, or at least by Providence . . . (It is) a state of childish irresponsibility and dependence.¹²

M.-L. Von Franz describes the same condition as an identification with the puer aeternus image. For such a person, what he is doing:

. . . is not yet what is really wanted, and there is always the fantasy that sometime in the future the real thing will come about. If this attitude is prolonged, it means a constant inner refusal to commit oneself to the moment. With this there is often, to a smaller or greater extent, a saviour complex, or a Messiah complex, with the secret thought that one day one will be able to save the world; the last word in philosophy, or religion, or politics, or art, or something else, will be found. This can go so far as to be a typical pathological megalomania, or there may be minor traces of it in the idea that one’s time has not yet come. The one thing dreaded throughout by such a type of man is to be bound to anything whatever. There is a terrific fear of being pinned down, of entering space and time completely, and of being the one human being that one is.¹³

The psychotherapist frequently sees cases of this sort. Such a person considers himself as a most promising individual. He is full of talents and potentialities. One of his complaints is often that his capacities and interests are too wide-ranging. He is cursed with a plethora of riches. He could do anything but can’t decide on one thing in particular. The problem is that he is all promises and no fulfillment. In order to make a real accomplishment he must sacrifice a number of other potentialities. He must give up his identification with original unconscious wholeness and voluntarily accept being a real fragment instead of an unreal whole. To be something in reality he must give up being everything in potentia. The puer aeternus archetype is one of the images of the Self, but to be identified with it means that one never brings any reality to birth.¹⁴

There are numerous lesser examples of inflation, which we might call the inflation of every day life. We can identify a state of inflation whenever we see someone (including ourselves) living out an attribute of deity, i.e., whenever one is transcending proper human limits. Spells of anger are examples of inflated states. The attempt to force and coerce one’s environment is the predominant motivation in anger. It is a kind of Yahweh complex. The urge to vengeance is also identification with deity. At such times one might recall the injunction, ‘Vengeance is mine,’ saith the Lord, i.e., not yours. The whole body of Greek tragedy depicts the fatal consequences when man takes the vengeance of God into his own hands.

Power motivation of all kinds is symptomatic of inflation. Whenever one operates out of a power motive omnipotence is implied. But omnipotence is an attribute only of God. Intellectual rigidity which attempts to equate its own private truth or opinion with universal truth is also inflation. It is the assumption of omniscience. Lust and all operations of the pure pleasure principle are likewise inflation. Any desire that considers its own fulfillment the central value transcends the reality limits of the ego and hence is assuming attributes of the transpersonal powers.

Practically all of us, deep down, have a residue of inflation that is manifested as an illusion of immortality. There is scarcely anyone that is thoroughly and totally disidentified from this aspect of inflation. Hence, when one has a close call with death, it is often a very awakening experience. There suddenly comes a realization of how precious time is just because it is limited. Such an experience not uncommonly gives a whole new orientation to life, making one more productive and more humanly related. It can initiate a new leap forward in one’s development, because an area of ego-Self identity has been dissolved, releasing a new quantity of psychic energy for consciousness.

There is also negative inflation. This can be described as identification with the divine victim–an excessive, unbounded sense of guilt and suffering. We see this in cases of melancholia which express the feeling that no one in the world is as guilty as I am. This is just too much guilt. In fact taking on oneself too much of anything is indicative of inflation because it transcends proper human limits. Too much humility as well as too much arrogance, too much love and altruism as well as too much power striving and selfishness, are all symptoms of inflation.

States of animus and anima identification can also be seen as inflation. Arbitrary pronouncements of the animus are a deity talking, and so are the sullen resentments of the anima-possessed man who says in effect, Be what I tell you to be, or I will withdraw from you; and without my acceptance you will die.

There is a whole philosophical system based on the state of ego-Self identity. This system sees everything in the world as deriving from and relating to the individual ego. It is called solipsism from solus ipse, myself alone. F. H. Bradley presents the viewpoint of solipsism in these words:

I cannot transcend experience and experience is my experience. From this it follows that nothing beyond myself exists; for what is experienced is its (the Self’s) states.¹⁵

Schiller defines solipsism rather more colorfully "as the doctrine that all existence is experience and that there is only one experient. The solipsist thinks that he is the one!"¹⁶

3.ADAM AND PROMETHEUS

What follows the state of original inflation is presented vividly in mythology. An excellent example is the Garden of Eden myth which, significantly is called the fall of man. About this myth Jung writes:

There is deep doctrine in the legend of the Fall; it is the expression of a dim presentiment that the emancipation of ego consciousness was a Luciferian deed. Man’s whole history consists from the very beginning in a conflict between his feeling of inferiority and his arrogance.¹⁷

According to the account in Genesis, God put man in the garden of Eden saying: You may freely eat of every tree in the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die. Then follows the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib and Eve’s temptation by the serpent who told her You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So Adam and Eve ate the fruit. Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. God discovered their disobedience and put the curse upon them following which are these significant words. Then the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever’–therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.¹⁸

Plate 1

THE GARDEN OF EDEN AS A CIRCLE

From Très Riches Heures de Jean, Duc de Berry

This is the myth which stands at the beginning of the Hebrew branch of our cultural tradition and it is rich in psychological meaning. The Garden of Eden is comparable to the Greek myth of the golden age and Plato’s original round man. The Garden of Eden has certain features of a mandala with four rivers flowing from it and the tree of life in its center (Plate 1). The mandala-garden is an image of the Self, in this case representing the ego’s original oneness with nature and deity. It is the initial, unconscious, animal state of being at one with one’s Self. It is paradisal because consciousness has not yet appeared and hence there is no conflict. The ego is contained in the womb of the Self (Picture 3).

Picture 3. PARADISE AS A VESSEL from an Italian manuscript of the XV Century.

Another feature indicating original wholeness is the creation of Eve out of Adam. Clearly, Adam was originally hermaphroditic, otherwise a woman could not have been made from him. It is likely that we have here vestiges of an earlier myth in which the original man was definitely hermaphroditic. Undoubtedly this earlier myth was modified by the one-sided patriarchal attitude of the Hebrews which depreciated the feminine component of the psyche, reducing it to no more than a rib of