The Self
The center and the whole.
The Self is Jung's archetype of wholeness — at once the center of the total psyche and the whole circumference that contains it, encompassing both consciousness and the unconscious. It is the goal and source of individuation.
- Totality
- Centrality
- Numinosity
- Coniunctio
- Telos
For Jung the Self is the supraordinate ordering principle of the psyche, distinct from the ego (which is only the center of consciousness). In Aion (CW 9ii, §44) he writes that the Self is 'not only the centre but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious.' Because it exceeds consciousness by definition, the Self cannot be grasped directly; it is approached only through its symbols.
Those symbols recur across cultures with striking consistency: the mandala (the circle squared into a quaternity), the divine or royal child, the philosopher's stone (lapis philosophorum) of the alchemists, the union of opposites (coniunctio), and historically — for Western consciousness — the figure of Christ. Jung was emphatic that a complete Self-symbol must also include the shadow; any image of wholeness that excludes evil is psychologically incomplete. Individuation, in his framing, is not perfection but completeness — the conscious assimilation of what one is, including what is dark, contradictory, and not chosen by the ego.
The danger is inflation: the ego identifying with the Self, mistaking borrowed light for its own. The opposite failure is alienation — feeling exiled from one's own depths.