The Structure of the Psyche
We understand the ego as the complex factor to which all conscious contents are related. It forms, as it were, the centre of the field of consciousness; and, in so far as this comprises the empirical personality, the ego is the subject of all personal acts of consciousness. The relation of a psychic content to the ego forms the criterion of its consciousness, for no content can be conscious until it is represented to a subject.
Aion (1951), CW 9ii, § 1.
The important fact about consciousness is that nothing can be conscious without an ego to which it refers. If something is not related to the ego then it is not conscious. Therefore you can define consciousness as a relation of psychic facts to the ego. What is that ego? The ego is a complex datum which is constituted first of all by a general awareness of your body, of your existence, and secondly by your memory data; you have a certain idea of having been, a long series of memories. Those two are the main constituents of what we call the ego. Therefore you can call the ego a complex of psychic facts. This complex has a great power of attraction, like a magnet; it attracts contents from the unconscious, from that dark realm of which we know nothing; it also attracts impressions from the outside, and when they enter into association with the ego they are conscious. If they do not, they are not conscious.
The Tavistock Lectures: On the Theory and Practice of Analytical
Psychology (1935), CW 18, (1968), CW 18, § 18.
The ego, the subject of consciousness, comes into existence as a complex quantity which is constituted partly by the inherited disposition (character constituents) and partly by unconsciously acquired impressions and their attendant phenomena.
Analytical Psychology and Education (1926/1946), CW 17, § 169.
Since it is the point of reference for the field of consciousness, the ego is the subject of all successful attempts at adaptation so far as these are achieved by the will.
Aion (1951), CW 9ii, § 11.
As a conscious factor the ego could, theoretically at least, be described completely. But this would never amount to more than a picture of the conscious personality; all those features which are unknown or unconscious to the subject would be missing. A total picture would have to include these.
Aion (1951), CW 9ii, § 7.
Most people confuse “self-knowledge” with knowledge of their conscious ego-personalities. Anyone who has any ego-consciousness at all takes it for granted that he knows himself. But the ego knows only its own contents, not the unconscious and its contents.
The Undiscovered Self (1957), CW 10, § 491.
In mental disorder, for instance, you have to start by strengthening the ego. Sometimes it is necessary to say with vigor: “Come on, that’s just a fantasy.” First of all, the fantasy is devalued by this, the ego and the vision are torn apart, a distance is put between them. Sometimes you have to take very drastic measures to bring about the differentiation. So it can be necessary to shout at somebody to wake him up, when he is drifting into a kind of collective sleep, or to grab hold of people and shake them, so that they know who they are. A slap or a shove can work wonders, so that the person feels: “This is me.” There are good circumstances when a good smack, morally or physically, is the most effective way to counter the great fascination of the images.
Children’s Dreams: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936–1940, p. 184.
The personal unconscious is personified by the shadow.
Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955–1956), CW 14, § 128.
[W]e would call it the unconscious, and we distinguish between a personal unconscious which enables us to recognize the shadow and an impersonal unconscious which enables us to recognize the archetypal symbol of the self.
Aion (1951), CW 9ii, § 261.
The shadow is a living part of the personality and therefore wants to live with it in some form. It cannot be argued out of existence or rationalized into harmlessness.
“Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious” (1934/1954), CW 9i, § 44.
[W]hen one tries desperately to be good and wonderful and perfect, then all the more the shadow develops a definite will to be black and evil and destructive. People cannot see that; they are always striving to be marvellous, and then they discover that terrible destructive things happen which they cannot understand, and they either deny that such facts have anything to do with them, or if they admit them, they take them for natural afflictions, or they try to minimize them and to shift the responsibility elsewhere. The fact is that if one tries beyond one’s capacity to be perfect, the shadow descends into hell and becomes the devil. For it is just as sinful from the standpoint of nature and of truth to be above oneself as to be below oneself. It is surely not the divine will in man that he should be something which he is not, for when one looks into nature, one sees that it is most definitely the divine will that everything should be what it is.
Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934. Vol. I (10 February 1932), p. 569.
When you accept the fact of your inferiority, it lives with you; you are it too, but not exclusively. You are not only white, one part is black, but both make the whole man. It is not wiping out the white substance when you accept the black—on the contrary; it is only when you can’t that things go wrong, when there is nothing but white and nothing but black. That is simply neurotic.
Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. I (3 June 1931), p. 391.
By not being aware of having a shadow, you declare a part of your personality to be non-existent. Then it enters the kingdom of the non-existent, which swells up and takes on enormous proportions. When you don’t acknowledge that you have such qualities, you are simply feeding the devils. In medical language, each quality in the psyche represents a certain energic value, and if you declare an energic value to be non-existent, a devil appears instead. If you declare that the river which flows by your house is non-existent, it may swell up and fill your garden with pebbles and sand and undermine your house. If you give such a limitless possibility to nature to work by itself, nature can do what she pleases. If you see a herd of cattle or pigs and say they are non-existent, they are immediately all over the place, the cows will eat up the rose-garden and the pigs will climb into your bed and sleep there! In this way the non-existent grows fat. Meyrink’s Die Fledermäus (otherwise very bad) describes very vividly a world in which are living some extremely poor specimens of people, pale, sad, unhealthy, and getting worse and worse; and then the discovery is made that as they decrease, certain corpses in the graveyard are growing proportionately fat. The thing you have buried grows fat while you grow thin. If you get rid of qualities you don’t like by denying them, you become more and more unaware of what you are, you declare yourself more and more non-existent, and your devils will grow fatter and fatter.
Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928–1930 (28 November 1928), p. 53.
Assimilation of the shadow gives a man body, so to speak; the animal sphere of instinct, as well as the primitive or archaic psyche, emerge into the zone of consciousness and can no longer be repressed by fictions and illusions. In this way man becomes for himself the difficult problem he really is. He must always remain conscious of the fact that he is such a problem if he wants to develop at all.
The Psychology of the Transference (1946), CW 16, § 452.
The shadow is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well. But one must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is. For what comes after the door is, surprisingly enough, a boundless expanse full of unprecedented uncertainty, with apparently no inside and no outside, no above and no below, no here and no there, no mine and no thine, no good and no bad. It is the world of water, where all life floats in suspension; where the realm of the sympathetic system, the soul of everything living, begins; where I am indivisibly this and that; where I experience the other in myself and the other-than-myself experiences me.
“Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious” (1934/1954), CW 9i, § 45.
[T]he more one turns to the light, the greater is the shadow behind one’s back. Or, the more one turns one’s eyes to the light of consciousness, the more one feels the shadow at one’s back.
Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928–1930 (28 November 1928), p. 49.
[W]hen there is a light in the darkness which comprehends the darkness, darkness no longer prevails.
Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955–56), CW 14, § 345.
Light is followed by shadow, the other side of the Creator.
Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962), p. 328.
Since human nature is not compounded wholly of light, but also abounds in shadows, the insight gained in practical analysis is often somewhat painful, the more so if, as is generally the case, one has previously neglected the other side. Hence there are people who take their newly won insight very much to heart, far too much in fact, quite forgetting that they are not unique in having a shadow-side. They allow themselves to get unduly depressed and are then inclined to doubt everything, finding nothing right anywhere. That is why so many excellent analysts with very good ideas can never bring themselves to publish them, because the psychic problem, as they see it, is so overwhelmingly vast that it seems to them almost impossible to tackle it scientifically.
The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious (1916/1928), CW 7, § 225.
[I]t is a therapeutic necessity, indeed, the first requisite of any thorough psychological method, for consciousness to confront its shadow. In the end this must lead to some kind of union, even though the union consists at first in an open conflict, and often remains so for a long time. It is a struggle that cannot be abolished by rational means. When it is wilfully repressed it continues in the unconscious and merely expresses itself indirectly and all the more dangerously, so no advantage is gained. The struggle goes on until the opponents run out of breath. What the outcome will be can never be seen in advance. The only certain thing is that both parties will be changed; but what the product of the union will be it is impossible to imagine. The empirical material shows that it usually takes the form of a subjective experience which, according to the unanimous testimony of history, is always of a religious order. If, therefore, the conflict is consciously endured and the analyst follows its course without prejudice, he will unfailingly observe compensations from the unconscious which aim at producing a unity.
Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955–56), CW 14, § 514.
[T]o be fully aware of the shadow would be an almost superhuman task, but we can reach a certain optimum of consciousness; we should be aware to a much higher degree than we are now.
Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. I (18 February 1931), p. 237.
Self-knowledge is an adventure that carries us unexpectedly far and deep. Even a moderately comprehensive knowledge of the shadow can cause a good deal of confusion and mental darkness, since it gives rise to personality problems which one had never remotely imagined before
Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955–56), CW 14, § 741.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge, and it therefore, as a rule, meets with considerable resistance. Indeed, self-knowledge as a psychotherapeutic measure frequently requires much painstaking work extending over a long period.
Aion (1951), CW 9ii, § 14.
[W]hat is light without shadow? What is high without low? You deprive the deity of its omnipotence and its universality by depriving it of the dark quality of the world. To ascribe infinite evil to man and all the good to God would make man much too important: he would be as big as God, because light and the absence of light are equal, they belong together in order to make the whole.
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Vol. II (20 May 1936), p. 929.
Our shadow is the last thing that has to be put on top of everything, and that is the thing we cannot swallow; we can swallow anything else, but not our own shadow because it makes us doubt our good qualities.
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Vol. II (19 May 1937), p. 1090.
So whatever comes from behind comes from the shadow, from the darkness of the unconscious, and because you have no eyes there, and because you wear no neck amulet to ward off evil influences, that thing gets at you, possesses and obsesses you. It sits on top of you.
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Vol. II (25 May 1938), p.1265.
One realizes, first of all, that one cannot project one’s shadow on to others, and next that there is no advantage in insisting on their guilt, as it is so much more important to know and possess one’s own, because it is part of one’s own self and a necessary factor without which nothing in this sublunary world can be realized.
Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955–56), CW 14, § 203.
This process of coming to terms with the Other in us is well worth while, because in this way we get to know aspects of our nature which we would not allow anybody else to show us and which we ourselves would never have admitted.
Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955–56), CW 14, § 706.
Confrontation with the shadow produces at first a dead balance, a standstill that hampers moral decisions and makes convictions ineffective or even impossible. Everything becomes doubtful.
Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955–56), CW 14, § 708.
We are inflated because we don’t know or because we have forgotten what we are. We substitute our ignorance with gas; modern people are all gas bags inasmuch as they are ignorant of what they really are. We have simply forgotten what a human being really is, so we have men like Nietzsche and Freud and Adler, who tell us what we are, quite mercilessly. We have to discover our shadow. Otherwise we are driven into a world war in order to see what beasts we are.
Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. I (18 February 1931), p. 235.
I have defined the anima as a personification of the unconscious in general, and have taken it as a bridge to the unconscious, in other words, as a function of relationship to the unconscious.
“Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower” (1929), CW 13, § 62.
Every man carries within him the eternal image of woman, not the image of this or that particular woman, but a definite feminine image. This image is fundamentally unconscious, a hereditary factor of primordial origin engraved in the living organic system of the man, an imprint or “archetype” of all the ancestral experiences of the female, a deposit, as it were, of all the impressions ever made by a woman—in short, an inherited system of psychic adaptation. Even if no woman existed, it would still be possible, at any given time, to deduce from this unconscious image exactly how a woman would have to be constituted psychically. The same is true of the woman: she too has her inborn image of man. Actually, we know from experience that it would be more accurate to describe it as an image of men, whereas in the case of the man it is rather the image of woman. Since this image is unconscious, it is always unconsciously projected upon the person of the beloved, and is one of the chief reasons for passionate attraction or aversion. I have called this image the “anima.”
“Marriage as a Psychological Relationship” (1925), CW 17, § 338.
You are not responsible for your constitution but you are stuck with it, and so it is with the anima, which is likewise a constitutional factor one is stuck with. For what we are stuck with we have a certain responsibility, namely for the way we act towards it, but not for the fact that it exists. At any rate we can never treat the anima with moral reprimands; instead of this we have, or there is, wisdom, which in our days seems to have passed into oblivion.
Letter to Ewald Jung, 31 July 1935, Letters, Vol. I, p. 193.
In the Middle Ages, long before the physiologists demonstrated that by reason of our glandular structure there are both male and female elements in all of us, it was said that “every man carries a woman within himself.” It is this female element in every male that I have called the “anima.” This “feminine” aspect is essentially a certain inferior kind of relatedness to the surroundings, and particularly to women, which is kept carefully concealed from others as well as from oneself. In other words, though an individual’s visible personality may seem quite normal, he may well be concealing from others—or even from himself—the deplorable condition of “the woman within.”
“Approaching the Unconscious” (1964), Man and His Symbols, p. 31.
Woman is compensated by a masculine element and therefore her unconscious has, so to speak, a masculine imprint. This results in a considerable psychological difference between men and women, and accordingly I have called the projection-making factor in women the animus, which means mind or spirit. The animus corresponds to the paternal Logos just as the anima corresponds to the maternal Eros.
Aion (1951), CW 9ii, § 29.
Though the effects of anima and animus can be made conscious, they themselves are factors transcending consciousness and beyond the reach of perception and volition. Hence they remain autonomous despite the integration of their contents, and for this reason they should be borne constantly in mind.
Aion (1951), CW 9ii, § 40.
In its primary “unconscious” form the animus is a compound of spontaneous, unpremeditated opinions which exercise a powerful influence on the woman’s emotional life, while the anima is similarly compounded of feelings which thereafter influence or distort the man’s understanding (“she has turned his head”). Consequently the animus likes to project himself upon “intellectuals” and all kinds of “heroes,” including tenors, artists, sporting celebrities, etc. The anima has a predilection for everything that is unconscious, dark, equivocal, and unrelated in woman, and also for her vanity, frigidity, helplessness, and so forth.
The Psychology of the Transference (1946), CW 16, § 521.
One must separate the shadow from the animus or anima. Therefore one of the most important parts of analysis consists in the understanding of the negative aspects of oneself, all the negative qualities one possesses.
Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. II (25 January 1933), p. 890.
The animus does not belong to the function of conscious relationship; his function is rather to facilitate relations with the unconscious. Instead of the woman merely associating opinions with external situations—the animus, as an associative function, should be directed inwards, where it could associate the contents of the unconscious. The technique of coming to terms with the animus is the same in principle as in the case of the anima; only here the woman must learn to criticize and hold her opinions at a distance; not in order to repress them, but, by investigating their origins, to penetrate more deeply into the background, where she will then discover the primordial images, just as the man does in his dealings with the anima. The animus is the deposit, as it were, of all woman’s ancestral experiences of man—and not only that, he is also a creative and procreative being, not in the sense of masculine creativity, but in the sense that he brings forth something we might call the spermatic word. Just as a man brings forth his work as a complete creation out of his inner feminine nature, so the inner masculine side of a woman brings forth creative seeds which have the power to fertilize the feminine side of the man.
The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious (1916/1928), CW 7, § 336.
[T]he animus is not created by the conscious, it is a creation of the unconscious, and therefore it is a personification of the unconscious.
Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. I (11 February 1931), p. 208.
For a woman, the typical danger emanating from the unconscious comes from above, from the “spiritual” sphere personified by the animus, whereas for a man it comes from the chthonic realm of the “world and woman,” i.e., the anima projected on to the world.
“A Study in the Process of Individuation” (1934/1950), CW 9i, § 559.
[T]he “soul” which accrues to ego-consciousness during the opus has a feminine character in the man and a masculine character in the woman. His anima wants to reconcile and unite; her animus tries to discern and discriminate.
The Psychology of the Transference (1946), CW 16, § 522.
A woman possessed by the animus is always in danger of losing her femininity, her adapted feminine persona, just as a man in like circumstances runs the risk of effeminacy. These psychic changes of sex are due entirely to the fact that a function which belongs inside has been turned outside. The reason for this perversion is clearly the failure to give adequate recognition to an inner world which stands autonomously opposed to the outer world, and makes just as serious demands on our capacity for adaptation.
The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious (1916/1928), CW 7, § 337.
Man understands his relation to his anima as being a highly emotional affair, while woman’s relation to her animus is more in the Logos field. When a man is possessed by his anima, he is under peculiar feelings, he cannot control his emotions, but is controlled by them. A woman dominated by her animus is one who is possessed by opinions. Nor is she too discriminating about these opinions.
Introduction to Jungian Psychology: Notes of a Seminar on Analytical Psychology Given in 1925, p. 122.
[T]he integration of the shadow, or the realization of the personal unconscious, marks the first stage in the analytic process, and without it a recognition of anima and animus is impossible. The shadow can be realized only through a relation to a partner, and anima and animus only through a relation to a partner of the opposite sex, because only in such a relation do their projections become operative. The recognition of the anima gives rise, in a man, to a triad, one third of which is transcendent: the masculine subject, the opposing feminine subject, and the transcendent anima. With a woman the situation is reversed.
Aion (1951), CW 9ii, § 42.
No matter how friendly and obliging a woman’s Eros may be, no logic on earth can shake her if she is ridden by the animus.
Aion (1951), CW 9ii, § 29.
Like the anima, the animus too has a positive aspect. Through the figure of the father he expresses not only conventional opinion but—equally—what we call “spirit,” philosophical or religious ideas in particular, or rather the attitude resulting from them. Thus the animus is a psychopomp, a mediator between the conscious and the unconscious and a personification of the latter. Just as the anima becomes, through integration, the Eros of consciousness, so the animus becomes a Logos; and in the same way that the anima gives relationship and relatedness to a man’s consciousness, the animus gives to woman’s consciousness a capacity for reflection, deliberation, and self-knowledge.
Aion (1951), CW 9ii, § 33.
The animus is a sort of film between reality and a woman’s mind, she always talks about things as they should be, so when she says a thing is really so, it is really not so at all. She never realizes how difficult it is to establish the truth about things, she thinks truth is established by saying something.
Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. I (2 March 1932), p. 615.
[T]he animus is meant to be cosmic. It is a function which should widen out the spiritual or mental possibilities into infinite space, as it were, into the infinity of the collective mind. Inasmuch as the animus is expanding into the great unconscious cosmos, he is really in his own element—there he belongs, that is his home.
Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. II (13 December 1933), p. 1228.
[T]he animus when on his way, on his quest, is really a psychopompos, leading the soul back to the stars whence it came. On the way back out of the existence in the flesh, the psychopompos develops such a cosmic aspect, he wanders among the constellations, he leads the soul over the rainbow bridge into the blossoming fields of the stars.
Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. II (13 December 1933), p. 1229.
This function of mediation between the opposites I have termed the transcendent function, by which I mean nothing mysterious, but merely a combined function of conscious and unconscious elements, or, as in mathematics, a common function of real and imaginary qualities.
Psychological Types (1921), CW 6, § 184.
[T]he animus and the mind of a woman are those functions in which the data of the unconscious and of the conscious can be united. Therefore the Logos element would carry the transcendent function in a woman, as the Eros would function in a man; his Eros, his personal relatedness, together with the anima, carry the symbol which unites the data of the unconscious and the conscious, and thus makes the transcendent function possible.
Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. II (29 November 1933), p. 1209.
Eros is a kosmogonos, a creater and father-mother of all higher consciousness.
Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962), p. 353.
Though the shadow is a motif as well known to mythology as anima and animus, it represents first and foremost the personal unconscious, and its content can therefore be made conscious without too much difficulty. In this it differs from anima and animus, for whereas the shadow can be seen through and recognized fairly easily, the anima and animus are much further away from consciousness and in normal circumstances are seldom if ever realized. With a little self-criticism one can see through the shadow—so far as its nature is personal. But when it appears as an archetype, one encounters the same difficulties as with anima and animus. In other words, it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil.
Aion (1951), CW 9ii, §19.
[I]t is easier to gain insight into the shadow than into the anima or animus. With the shadow, we have the advantage of being prepared in some sort by our education, which has always endeavoured to convince people that they are not one-hundred-per-cent pure gold. So everyone immediately understands what is meant by “shadow,” “inferior personality,” etc. And if he has forgotten, his memory can easily be refreshed by a Sunday sermon, his wife, or the tax collector. With the anima and animus, however, things are by no means so simple. Firstly, there is no moral education in this respect, and secondly, most people are content to be self-righteous and prefer mutual vilification (if nothing worse!) to the recognition of their projections. Indeed, it seems a very natural state of affairs for men to have irrational moods and women irrational opinions.
Aion (1951), CW 9ii, § 35.
The anima and animus have tremendous influence because we leave the shadow to them.
Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928–1930 (28 November 1928), p. 53.
[W]hen animus and anima meet, the animus draws his sword of power and the anima ejects her poison of illusion and seduction. The outcome need not always be negative, since the two are equally likely to fall in love (a special instance of love at first sight).
Aion (1951), CW 9ii, § 30.
The animus and anima are unconscious factors which can never completely disappear from discussion; wherever you are, in whatever condition you are, they remain a problem. I could even go as far as to say that without the anima and animus there would be no object, no other human being, because you perceive differences only through that which is a likeness to the differences in yourself.
Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. II (14 March 1934), p. 1357.
[A] content can only be integrated when its double aspect has become conscious and when it is grasped not merely intellectually but understood according to its feeling-value. Intellect and feeling, however, are difficult to put into one harness—they conflict with one another by definition. Whoever identifies with an intellectual standpoint will occasionally find his feeling confronting him like an enemy in the guise of the anima; conversely, an intellectual animus will make violent attacks on the feeling standpoint. Therefore, anyone who wants to achieve the difficult feat of achieving something not only intellectually, but also according to its feeling-value, must for better or for worse come to grips with the anima/animus problem in order to open the way for a higher union, a coniunctio oppositorum [a union of the opposites]. This is an indispensable prerequisite for wholeness.
Aion (1951), CW 9ii, § 58.
I may define “self” as the totality of the conscious and unconscious psyche, but this totality transcends our vision; it is a veritable lapis invisibilitatis [stone of invisibility]. In so far as the unconscious exists it is not definable; its existence is a mere postulate and nothing whatever can be predicated as to its possible contents.
Psychology and Alchemy (1944), CW 12, § 247.
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.
Aion (1951), CW 9ii, § 9.
[O]ne man alone cannot reach the self.
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Vol. II (29 January 1936), p. 787.
The self is merely a term that designates the whole personality. The whole personality of man is indescribable. His consciousness can be described, his unconscious cannot be described because the unconscious—and here I must repeat myself—is always unconscious. It is really unconscious, we really don’t know it, so we don’t know our unconscious personality. We have hints, we have certain ideas, but we don’t know it really. Nobody can say where man ends. That is the beauty of it, you know; it’s very interesting. The unconscious of man can reach God knows where. There we are going to make discoveries.
“The Houston Films” (1957), C. G. Jung Speaking, p. 301.
The self is by definition the totality of all psychic facts and contents. It consists on one side of our ego consciousness that is included in the unconscious like a smaller circle in a greater one. So the self is not only an unconscious fact, but also a conscious fact: the ego is the visibility of the self. Of course, in the ego the self only becomes dimly visible, but you get under favourable conditions a fair idea of it through the ego—not a very true picture, yet it is an attempt. You see, it is as if the self were trying to manifest in space and time, but since it consists of so many elements that have neither space nor time qualities, it cannot bring them altogether into space and time. And those efforts of the self to manifest in the empirical world result in man: he is the result of the attempt. So much of the self remains outside, it doesn’t enter this three-dimensional empirical world. The self consists, then, of the most recent acquisitions of the ego consciousness and on the other side, of the archaic material. The self is a fact of nature and always appears as such in immediate experiences, in dreams and visions, and so on; it is the spirit in the stone, the great secret which has to be worked out, to be extracted from nature, because it is buried in nature herself. It is also most dangerous, just as dangerous as an archetypal invasion because it contains all the archetypes: one could say an archetypal experience was the experience of the self. It is like a personification of nature and of anything that can be experienced in nature, including what we call God.
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Vol. II (3 June 1936), p. 977.
[T]he symbol for the Self4 is an idea of a totality that is not identical with the ego. It is a consciousness which is not exactly our consciousness, a light which is not exactly our light.
Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. I (11 November 1931), p. 445.
Through the self we are plunged into the torrent of cosmic events. Everything essential happens in the self and the ego functions as a receiver, spectator, and transmitter.
Letter to Aniela Jaffé, 22 December 1942, Letters, Vol. I, p. 326.
[E]very light, every fire, comes to an end, and there would be utter darkness, but there is still left the light of the self, which is the supreme light.
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Vol. II (29 January 1936), p. 792.
The self, as a symbol of wholeness, is a coincidentia oppositorum [coming together of the opposites], and therefore contains light and dark simultaneously.
Symbols of Transformation (1912/1952), CW 5, § 576.
During those years, between 1918 and 1920, I began to understand that the goal of psychic development is the self. There is no linear evolution; there is only a circumambulation of the self. Uniform development exists, at most, only at the beginning; later, everything points toward the center. This insight gave me stability, and gradually my inner peace returned. I knew that in finding the mandala as an expression of the self I had attained what was for me the ultimate. Perhaps someone else knows more, but not I.
Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962), pp. 196–97.
The ego stands to the self as the moved to the mover, or as object to subject, because the determining factors which radiate out from the self surround the ego on all sides and are therefore supraordinate to it. The self, like the unconscious, is an a priori existent out of which the ego evolves. It is, so to speak, an unconscious prefiguration of the ego. It is not I who create myself, rather I happen to myself.
“Transformation Symbolism in the Mass” (1942/1954), CW 11, § 391.
Whatever man’s wholeness, or the self, may mean per se, empirically it is an image of the goal of life spontaneously produced by the unconscious, irrespective of the wishes and fears of the conscious mind. It stands for the goal of the total man, for the realization of his wholeness and individuality with or without the consent of his will. The dynamic of this process is instinct, which ensures that everything which belongs to an individual’s life shall enter into it, whether he consents or not, or is conscious of what is happening to him or not. Obviously, it makes a great deal of difference subjectively whether he knows what he is living out, whether he understands what he is doing, and whether he accepts responsibility for what he proposes to do or has done.
Answer to Job (1952), CW 11, § 745.
That tiny thing, that unique individual, the Self, is small as the point of a needle, yet because it is so small it is also greater than great.
Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. I (21 May 1931), p. 358.
The self, in its efforts at self-realization, reaches out beyond the ego-personality on all sides; because of its all-encompassing nature it is brighter and darker than the ego, and accordingly confronts it with problems which it would like to avoid. Either one’s moral courage fails, or one’s insight, or both, until in the end fate decides. The ego never lacks moral and rational counterarguments, which one cannot and should not set aside so long as it is possible to hold on to them. For you only feel yourself on the right road when the conflicts of duty seem to have resolved themselves, and you have become the victim of a decision made over your head or in defiance of the heart. From this we can see the numinous power of the self, which can hardly be experienced in any other way. For this reason the experience of the self is always a defeat for the ego.
Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955–56), CW 14, § 778.
So the Self is part of the collective unconscious, but it is not the collective unconscious; it is that unit which apparently comes from the union of the ego and the shadow. We designate that totality as the Self, where everything conscious is united with everything unconscious, with the exception of those things that reach beyond our limitation in time and space. The Self is in its structure like the collective unconscious, and it is also a non-ego because it is beyond our grasp; it reaches over our heads. We can never say, “I know this Self of mine.” We don’t know it, we can never know it because it is the bigger circle that includes the smaller circle of our consciousness. Just as the Self is a unit in the collective unconscious, so we are units in the Self. And how can we know the whole of which we are only a part?
Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. II (15 June 1932), p. 754.
The forest philosophers didn’t go out into the forests in the beginning to try to find the self. They first live a full human life in the world and then comes the wood life. They are rooted in the world. They never shunned the individual social life, but gathered all the experience from their worldly existence, and then carried it into the wood. And that was the case in Buddha’s own existence; he was a prince, a man of the world, and he had a wife, he had concubines, he had a child—then he went over to the saintly life. I could say just as well that you could never attain the self without isolation; it is both being alone and in relationship.
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Vol. II (29 January 1936), p. 797.
[T]he term self is often mixed up with the idea of God. I would not do that. I would say that the term self should be reserved for that sphere which is within the reach of human experience, and we should be very careful not to use the word God too often. As we use it, it borders on impertinence; it is unlawful to use such a concept too often. The experience of the self is so marvelous and so complete that one is of course tempted to use the conception of God to express it. I think it is better not to, because the self has the peculiar quality of being specific yet universal. It is a restricted universality or a universal restrictedness, a paradox; so it is a relatively univer sal being and therefore doesn’t deserve to be called “God.” You could think of it as an intermediary, or a hierarchy of ever-widening-out figures of the self till one arrives at the conception of a deity. So we should reserve that term God for a remote deity that is supposed to be the absolute unity of all singularities. The self would be the preceding stage, a being that is more than man and that definitely manifests; that is the thinker of our thoughts, the doer of our deeds, the maker of our lives, yet it is still within the reach of human experience.
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Vol. II (3 June 1936), pp. 977–78.
Intellectually the self is no more than a psychological concept, a construct that serves to express an unknowable essence which we cannot grasp as such, since by definition it transcends our powers of comprehension. It might equally well be called the “God within us.” The beginnings of our whole psychic life seem to be inextricably rooted in this point, and all our highest and ultimate purposes seem to be striving towards it. This paradox is unavoidable, as always, when we try to define something that lies beyond the bourn of our understanding.
The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious (1916/1928), CW 7, § 399.
I am unable to envisage anything beyond the self, since it is—by definition—a borderline concept designating the unknown totality of man: there are no known limits to the unconscious. There is no reason whatsoever why you should or should not call the beyond-self Christ or Buddha or Purusha or Tao or Khidr or Tifereth. All these terms are recognizable formulations of what I call the “self.”
“Jung and Religious Belief” (1958), CW 18, § 1672.
[P]eople often say that they can in a measure do what they like, but that the main thing is done by the will of God. God is doing it through them; that is, of course, the religious form of confessing the quality of the self. Therefore, my definition of the self is a non-personal center, the center of the psychical non-ego—of all that in the psyche which is not ego—and presumably is to be found everywhere in all people. You can call it the center of the collective unconscious. It is as if our unconscious psychology or psyche were centered, just as our conscious psyche is centered in the ego consciousness. The very word consciousness is a term expressing association of the contents of a center to the ego, and the same would be the case with the unconscious, yet there it is obviously not my ego, because the unconscious condition is unconscious: it is not related to me. I am very much related to the unconscious because the unconscious can influence me all the time, yet I cannot influence the unconscious. It is just as if I were the object of a consciousness, as if somebody knew of me though I didn’t know of him. That center, that other order of consciousness which to me is unconscious, would be the self, and that doesn’t confine itself to myself, to my ego: it can include I don’t know how many other people.
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Vol. II (22 January, 1936), p. 783.
[T]he self is timeless, and that assembly of facts which characterizes the self has been chosen before time. Therefore, one cannot help having the feeling of being chosen, and that this whole thing is chosen, premeditated. There is no getting away from it: one is embedded in a course of events that is meaningful. Now, if that is not realized consciously, it simply spreads out unconsciously, and instead of the chosen self, realized by consciousness as the choice that has taken place before time, the whole people is chosen; and then you have that funny fact of a people imagining that it has a mission or something like that—that they are God’s own people, chosen by God himself.
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Vol. II (12 February 1936), pp. 827–28.
If we go further and consider the fact that man is also what neither he himself nor other people know of him—an unknown something which can yet be proved to exist—the problem of identity becomes more difficult still. Indeed, it is quite impossible to define the extent and the ultimate character of psychic existence. When we now speak of man we mean the indefinable whole of him, an ineffable totality, which can only be formulated symbolically. I have chosen the term “self” to designate the totality of man, the sum total of his conscious and unconscious contents. I have chosen this term in accordance with Eastern philosophy, which for centuries has occupied itself with the problems that arise when even the gods cease to incarnate.
Psychology and Religion (1938/1940), CW 11, § 140.
4 In the original (English) version of the Visions Seminars, Self is always capitalized.