Models of the Self Warren Colman In : Jungian Thought in the Modern World. ed. E.Christopher & H.Solomon, London: Free Association Books (2000) Introduction: The self is the centre and the circumference of Jung’s psychology. Its realisation through the process of individuation was, for Jung, the ultimate goal towards which we strive as human beings; indications of its presence can be found in all aspects of human endeavour but especially in religion and mythology. Unlike Freud, Jung did not regard religion and spirituality as illusions or sublimations of some other basic instinctual force. He recognised religion as expressing in itself a fundamental and irreducible need of human beings for purpose and meaning and the recognition of something greater than themselves. It was this ‘something’ that Jung termed the self, taking the term not from its customary usage in Western psychology but from the Hindu notion of the Self or ‘Atman’, that aspect of divine power which resides in every individual as the source of being. This usage sets ‘the Jungian self’ apart from almost all other Western conceptions of the self. These tend to equate the self with ‘the sense of self’ or the capacity to possess a sense of self. This is true of the concept of the self in psychoanalysis, for example, where the concept has been mainly used in America, by followers of Heinz Hartmann’s ego-psychology. Some Jungians feel that Kohut’s view of the self as ‘the centre of the psychological universe’ is similar to Jung’s, albeit he does not refer to its potential connection with the image of the divine. For a detailed elaboration of this view see Jacoby 1985. This, after all, is the ordinary everyday usage of the word: it is what I mean when I refer to ‘myself’ and what I mean when I stop to think about who this little word ‘I’ refers to. In this sense, having a self is equivalent to the development of a capacity to understand the meaning of ‘I’ and is concerned with the experience of subjectivity as a coherent and continuous sense of being a particular person. Jung regards this as the personal self, which he refers to as the ego. It is the self of which we are conscious and, as such, forms a content of consciousness as well as being its centre. By contrast, the Jungian self is always that which transcends consciousness, that which is greater than what I take to be ‘my self’. Jung’s thinking on the self is full of complexities, paradoxes and uncertainties, many of which are inherent in any attempt to discuss something which, by definition, transcends human comprehension. It is perhaps inevitable that he used ‘the self’ to refer to several different but overlapping conceptions just as ‘the God-image’, which Jung regarded as indistinguishable from the self, has a potentially infinite range of meanings. There are various ways of categorising these different usages (e.g. Redfearn 1985; Gordon 1985). In this chapter, I shall outline three aspects of the Jungian self: the self as the totality of the psyche, the self as an archetype and the self as a personification of the unconscious. I then consider how some of the conflicts in the subsequent development of Jungian thinking can be understood in terms of the differing emphasis given to these different aspects of the self. Finally, I propose a fourth way of thinking about the self as the process of the psyche. Contrasts and comparisons: the self is not myself Jung was ahead of his time in recognising the shifting and multiple nature of ego consciousness. He saw the ‘ego-complex’ (that which I take to be me, my personal identity) as only one amongst many complexes or ‘sub-personalities’, any of which could invade or disrupt the conscious mind or even act independently of it The term ‘sub-personality’ has been used by Joseph Redfearn in his book My Self, My Many Selves (Redfearn, 1985). Redfearn’s work is a comprehensive elaboration of the multiplicity of the self in terms of the shifting identifications of ‘the I’ and its relation to ‘the Not-I’.. Jung’s psychology is therefore well in accord with recent trends towards ‘de-centering’ or ‘deconstructing’ the self. The difference is that Jung goes further, reaching towards some overarching view of a self which encompasses and can potentially unite the multiplicity within it. Jung would also have recognised the arguments of social constructionism and discourse theory that the self is a socially constructed fiction maintained via a complex web of interweaving social narratives. Only he would have said that this was what he meant by the persona. The persona (from the mask worn by actors in Greek drama) is the face that we put on for the world. It is how we appear to others and, sometimes, to ourselves. But it is not who we truly are. (CW6: para 370). Thus Jungian psychology takes issue with social constructionism when the latter maintains that there is no self beyond social appearances. The closest parallel to Jung is the concept of ‘self-actualisation’ in humanistic psychology, particularly associated with Abraham Maslow . This is certainly close to Jung’s concept of individuation and Maslow’s description of ‘peak experiences’ undoubtedly refers to experiences of psychic wholeness such as Jung describes, as well as those described in the literature of spirituality and mysticism. These experiences, though, are best thought of as intimations of a wholeness which ultimately transcends them. The Jungian self thus refers not only to what is actualised but includes all that which is not actualised and never can be actualised. The Self as the Totality of the Psyche As a totality, the self can only be partially represented in consciousness, either through experiences of wholeness or through symbolic images which represent a wholeness greater than oneself. This does not necessarily mean that experiences and feelings of wholeness actually are ‘the whole person’. Since the self includes the unconscious as well as the conscious mind, and the unconscious is by definition unknown to consciousness, the greater part of the self must remain forever unknowable. Even though we may become conscious of hidden aspects of ourselves, even though we might realise considerable aspects of our potential, the unconscious (in Jung’s conception of it) is like an inexhaustible reservoir, a living stratum that continually regenerates itself and is therefore infinite. Furthermore, the unconscious also includes the archetypes, fundamental structuring factors of the psyche that underlie conscious experience but can never themselves become conscious. We do not know the archetypes - we only know the multiple representations of them in consciousness. To remain true to the hypothesis of archetypes, we must remain true to their ultimately irrepresentable nature: that is, we must always keep in mind that what we see are images. Perhaps it is like looking at a movie screen: if we try to see where the images come from, we are blinded by the light of the projector and see nothing. Jung regards the symbolic representations of totality which appear in consciousness as indistinguishable from the God-image. This is not to say that all such representations appear in the form of ‘God’, nor that ‘God’ and ‘the self’ are the same thing - something that psychology is not in a position to establish in any event (CW9ii: para 308). What Jung does claim is that religious imagery is concerned with the symbolism of psychic wholeness and that religious aspirations are identical with the goal of individuation. He particularly cites the image of Christ who represents ‘the whole man’ that each of us might become. ‘In the same way that Christ represents a personality greater than the average man, Christ, as a symbol, represents something greater than the average ego - the self.’ (Samuels 1985: 98; CW11: para 414). However, since the defining feature of the self as a totality is that it is infinitely greater than the ego, any symbol which is greater than the individual may be a symbol of the total self (CW11: para 232) For example, a woman whose life had previously been severely restricted in various ways told me of a dream in which she released a genie which grew to enormous size, filling the entire horizon. I saw this as an image of her unrealised self: the genie has enormous power, far beyond that of its master, the ego, and yet it is in the service of the ego and can only do what the ego commands. This is a clear example of how a symbol of the self may nevertheless represent a part self. A symbol of totality would actually have to encompass not only the genie but also its master, and perhaps the lamp as well. We might even take the entire story of Aladdin as a symbol of the self: the cave, the evil old man, the princess and her father could all be seen as archetypal aspects of an individual personality so that we might have to consider the story as a whole to get a sense of the total self. Ultimately, symbols are always indications of a reality beyond themselves. So, for example, when Jung spoke of his experiences with mandalas saying ‘in them I saw the ultimate’ (Jung 1963: 222), he did not mean that the mandala itself expresses the ultimate but that his contemplation of mandalas enabled him to see ‘the ultimate’ through them. Someone else might see only a mandala. Symbols depend on a relationship between the object and its perceiver. As in physics, the observer influences the observed and the observed influences the observer. The same problem of how to represent the irrepresentable has been a consistent theme in Western philosophy and theology since before the time of Christ I am indebted to Karen Armstrong’s A History of God (1997) for most of the information in this and the following paragraph. The Jewish philosopher, Philo, first distinguished between God’s ousia, his unknowable essence which lies beyond our reach, and his energia, his activities in the world. Philo’s project was to reconcile the abstract, eternal and immobile divinity of Aristotle - the Unmoved Mover - with the God of the Jews who was very much an actor in human affairs. Later in their formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity, the Cappodacian Christians also took up Philo’s distinction, arguing that God has one ousia but three hypostastes - the exterior expression of God’s internal - and unknowable - nature. Thus the Trinity is actually not God Himself but merely the only way that God can manifest himself to our human comprehension. Similarly, the Gnostics regarded the God of Creation as a lower God or demiurge, behind whom stood a series of higher levels of being before the true God himself could be reached. In the Kabbalah, this higher God is called En Sof ‘that which is infinite’. This inner aspect of God is so hidden, so impersonal and inconceivable that he is not even mentioned in the Bible (Scholem 1941: 12). Many religious thinkers and mystics such as Dionysius the Aeropagite, Maimonides and Meister Eckhardt have argued that since God is unknowable he can only be defined negatively by that which he is not. Meister Eckhardt distinguished between the God of the Trinity and the unknowable Godhead whom he called ‘Nothing’. This echoes Jung’s suggestion that the self does not exist as such. All these distinctions refer to the impossibility of achieving any representation of ‘the thing in itself’ which is, in any event, not a ‘thing’ (therefore it is ‘no-thing’). If we regard God’s ousia, ‘En Sof’ and the Godhead as referring to an infinite totality, then all representations of it are necessarily partial. Negative theology attempts to school the mind out of its habitual tendency to form images and concepts which it then takes for reality by making it attempt to think the unthinkable. In this way, it may be possible to go beyond the limits of thought to an experience in which ‘this’ and ‘that’ dissolve in ‘that which is and is not’. Zen koans utilise a similar method. In mystical experience, the distinctions between partial and total, conscious and unconscious, subject and object cease to have any meaning. There is no longer a state in which I, the subject, am conscious of something (the object); rather there may be a state of boundless infinitude which the subject/object dualism of language that structures our normal consciousness is unable to capture. This would be an experience of the self’s capacity to unite the opposites which constitute its structure or, to put it the other way, that the opposites which structure the psyche are united in the self. Although such experiences are rare, even for those who dedicate their lives to the spiritual discipline of achieving them, partial experiences of wholeness and moments in which the unity of all things is glimpsed are not unusual. These moments offer an intimation of wholeness, an incontrovertible inkling of a psychic totality that remains forever out of reach and unknowable. The Self as an Archetype It is confusing that Jung refers to the self as both the totality and an archetype within the totality, albeit the central one. Fordham, in a careful examination of the way Jung talks about the self, points out the contradiction between these two usages (Fordham 1987: 1-33). For if the self is the totality of the psyche including all the archetypes, how can it also be one of them? Furthermore, as an archetype, the self cannot be the totality since it excludes the ego which perceives it and is structured by it. Nevertheless, the symbolic images which represent the self in consciousness are clearly archetypal and therefore presumably structured by the archetype which they represent - i.e. the archetype of the self. This is where the notion of archetypes as discrete entities ‘in’ the psyche begins to break down. Archetypes are better thought of as modes of experiencing, tendencies to experience the world and ourselves in particular ways. This enables us to recognise the dual nature of archetypes: they generate particular symbolic images but these images also refer to particular psychic functions. The image of the hero, for example, refers to the struggle to achieve psychic separateness, particularly in relation to the mother. When a particular archetype is ‘constellated’, that is when a particular psychic function needs to be undertaken or developed, the psyche ‘throws up’ the relevant symbols that galvanise the conscious mind towards action. These images may occur spontaneously - in dreams, for example - but there may also be ‘ready made’ images in the culture which assume a particular fascination and importance for the individual at specific points in their development. From this, we can see that archetypal symbols of wholeness (indicators of ‘the archetype of the self’) may occur more strongly in fragmented individuals than in more integrated one. They are generated by the compensatory function of the unconscious which acts to balance the conscious situation. While it is paradoxical to think of ‘the archetype of the self’ as somehow separate from or contained within the self, it is possible to think of archetypal processes directed towards wholeness and of a ‘central archetype’ whose centring functions involve the organisation and integration of the psyche as a whole. Symbols of psychic wholeness therefore function to draw the individual towards wholeness and, especially, towards becoming more centred. For the closer one is to the centre, the more panoramic one’s view of the periphery and the less one is thrown around by the oscillating turmoil of psychic life. Eventually, perhaps, one arrives at ‘the still point of the turning world’, an image of the self par excellence. In his later work, Jung also came to think of the self as the archetype of the ego. He seems to have recognised that the sharp distinction between ego and self could not always be maintained since the more individuated one becomes, the closer the conscious ego approximates to psychic wholeness (albeit this is an ever receding goal). The self is also akin to consciousness in that both can be described as a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere - a description originally applied to God. While the ego is the totality of consciousness (‘I’ am in everything I experience), the self is the totality of conscious and unconscious and, in the same way, is omnipresent. This suggests that the archetype of the self can be thought of as the archetype of subjectivity - i.e. as a basic principle which underlies the experience of a subjective self out of which the ego gradually develops. This line of thinking has recently been developed by Polly Young-Eisendrath whose work I discuss later in this chapter. The Self as a Personification of the Unconscious Jung recognised that the archetypal figures that appear in dreams, mythology, fairy tales and other symbolic systems such as alchemy or the tarot were personifications of psychic functions. It is therefore not unreasonable to assume that some archetypal figures, especially those concerned with leadership in some way might be personifications of the totality of psychic functions - i.e. the self. Just as the king represents the whole nation, so the King or Lord or God might represent the whole psyche. But here we see the paradox of part and whole creeping in again: the King not only represents the people, he is himself one of them, albeit a particularly powerful one. Jung often sees the relationship between King or God figures and one of their subjects as symbolic of the relationship between the self and the ego. But then it becomes hard to sustain the notion that the King is a personification of the whole self since what we see are two parts in relation to one another that together make up the whole. There is a blurring here so that ego/conscious is seen in opposition to self/unconscious and in this way the self takes on the guise, not of totality, but of a personification of the unconscious. The clearest example of this is in Answer to Job (CW11: para 560-758) where Jung takes Job’s conflict with Yahweh as a metaphor for the relationship between the ego and the self. However, Yahweh is more like a personification of the elemental powerhouse of the unconscious while the ego represents the puny but essential forces of consciousness. Yahweh is presented like an omnipotent infant who cannot contemplate any check to his own importance and becomes consumed with world-shattering rages when his own wishes are thwarted. The self is thus seen as identical with the primitive, undifferentiated unconscious, full of raw potential which needs to be refined by the ego, here represented by Job’s challenge to his almighty God. Jung sees Job as forcing God to recognise - and justify - his own injustice, thereby bringing about an increase in consciousness, represented by the birth of Christ. This has led to a model, developed by later Jungians such as Erich Neumann and Edward Edinger, in which ego development is seen as a progressive emergence and differentiation from the self (equated with the unconscious). This makes it especially difficult to hold onto the way that the ego is at the same time part of the self and, furthermore, in the course of development becomes more like the self through greater assimilation and realisation of unconscious contents. This leads Edinger to assert an ‘ego-self paradox’ by which the ‘dialectic between ego and self [leads] paradoxically to both greater separation and greater intimacy’ (Edinger 1960: 18). This apparent paradox can be unpicked if we distinguish between self as totality and self as unconscious. Through the individuation process, greater consciousness naturally produces greater intimacy with assimilated psychic contents precisely because there is also a greater separation from unconsciousness. The more separation from unconsciousness there is, the greater the awareness of self. In addition to their paradoxical part/whole nature, there is a further difficulty with symbolic personifications of the self: they produce a misleading attribution of subjectivity. This can result in a failure to distinguish between personified symbols of the self and the unknowable reality to which they refer. Edinger gives a clear example of this when he argues that since the self includes everything that we are, the self also accepts everything that we are (Edinger 1960: 10). This is rather like saying that the periodic table accepts all the elements because it includes them. It begs the question as to whether the self can have this kind of personal, emotional subjectivity or whether this view is a sort of anthropomorphic ‘category mistake’ on the part of the ego. This issue is also strongly echoed in theological controversies about the nature of God. Is God remote, impersonal and ineffable like Brahman and the Unmoved Mover or is He a personal God, like the Judeo-Christian God who has a personal, emotional relationship with his creation (cf. the ego)? If God is too remote, we become unable to relate to him at all. Yet if he is too personal, there is a danger that we (the ego) attribute to God (the self) our own human attributes and thereby reduce the awesome infinitude of the All. Even for Jews and Muslims, the Christian idea of a God-man was a step too far: the attribution of human form to the divine infinitude was regarded as blasphemy. The three aspects of the self I have considered are held together in Jung’s thinking by the overall sense of the self as ‘the greater personality’. For example, he describes it as ‘a more compendious personality’ that takes the ego into its service (CW11: para 390). Jung regards the development of this kind of relativity and humility as crucial to the process of individuation: the ego must renounce its arrogant omnipotence and recognise its dependence on forces greater than itself. This view is certainly in accord with the self as a greater totality of which the ego is only a small part. It also recognises that the greater part of that totality resides in the unconscious and it is the task of the ego to acknowledge unconscious archetypal forces and to bring into consciousness the potential inherent within them. Perhaps most important of all in this view of the self are those occasions in which the self seems to speak to us, when we hear ‘the inner voice’ or feel ‘the will of God’, a greater power possessed of far greater knowledge and intelligence to which our own small conscious purposes must bow. It is easy to see how such experiences promote a view of the self as possessing personal subjectivity. However, they may more accurately be construed as messages in personified form, messages that indicate the existence of a larger overall organisation and purpose that encompasses the ego: the archetype of the self. In the subsequent development of Jung’s thought, the accentuation of these different aspects has produced several conflicting models. Much of the controversy has been played out in a series of furious debates about the role and nature of the self in infancy. Jung himself had little interest in infancy and childhood, perhaps because he regarded that phase of life as belonging to the Freudian territory from which he had become an exile. As later Jungian analysts have turned their attention to the first half of life, they have taken differing views on whether, and in what way, the self is present from the beginning of life and/or only emerges in the course of development. The three developments I shall now consider roughly correspond to the three models I have outlined: the mythological approach (represented by Neumann and Edinger) which emphasises self as unconscious; the biological approach developed by Michael Fordham, whose concept of ‘the primary self’ is a model of the self as a pre-existing totality the constructivist approach, represented by Polly Young-Eisendrath and Louis Zinkin, who, in slightly different ways, concentrate on the archetype of the self as the organising principle underlying personal subjectivity. Jung and Neumann: Primary Union Neumann, who most closely follows Jung, believed that the infant exists in a state of primary undifferentiated union with the mother who ‘carries’ the infant’s self in projection. In this model there is a symbolic equation between unconscious, self and mother. The mother represents the self to the infant who is like a dependent ego carried in the maternal matrix of the unconscious self. As ego consciousness grows, so the child gradually separates from the mother (and later, the father) through a series of archetypal conflicts. Neumann sees the world’s great myths, particularly hero myths and creation myths as symbolic depictions of the development of consciousness on both a collective and an individual level (ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny) (Neumann 1954). This theory represents the self as being similar to what Kleinian analysts refer to as ‘the good internal object’. The mother initially acts as a container, which later becomes internalised. This aspect of the mother is particularly well suited to represent the self since container symbols are amongst its most characteristic symbols, such as the castle, the city and especially the alchemical vessel or vas, in which symbolic transformations take place. The mother’s womb contains the infant as the self contains the ego, surrounding it on all sides, while the mother’s breast, like the self (and the unconscious) is the source of all its nourishment and is itself a circle symbol par excellence. Symbolic linkages between mother, self and unconscious are therefore particularly strong and it is hardly surprising that the mother features as a particularly powerful symbol of the greater totality and our dependence upon it. This is a good illustration of the way that archetypal representations are often fused so that one image can represent many archetypes just as one archetype can be represented by many images. (Freud called this ‘over-determination’). Only in the course of later development do the archetypes of self, mother and child differentiate out from each other in the way they are perceived by the conscious mind. Fordham: The Primary Self Michael Fordham approached the study of the self in infancy from a completely different point of view and, as a result, was sharply critical of Neumann’s approach. His background and interest was in the Cambridge empirical school of biology - worlds apart from the German mythological Idealism of Neumann. Fordham was interested in the analysis of actual children and took an empirical approach to what could actually be observed in their behaviour as well as their fantasies. He particularly objected to the implication that the infant has no autonomy and is merely a function of the psychology of the parents. In his view, the child is an active and separate individual from the start. In recent years, child development studies have amply confirmed Fordham’s view that the mental capacities of infants had been grossly under-estimated. It is therefore idealistic, romantic and sentimental to believe that infants exist in a state of primary union and have no self of their own. Fordham’s approach takes the infant as primarily a biological organism, a psychosomatic entity, rather than a symbolic or social being. These elements are not denied but are understood within an overall conception of psychic development that parallels the unfolding processes of biological development from the simple fertilised egg to the complexity of a fully developed human creature. Fordham uses ‘self’ in terms of an organism’s capacity to initiate psychic and somatic activity. Fordham’s interest is therefore primarily with the total self and, in particular with its earliest form which he termed the primary self. He proposes the existence of a primary psychosomatic integrate which contains everything that the self will become in potential. The primary self is ‘a blueprint for psychic maturation from which the behaviour of infants may be derived’ (Fordham 1976: 11). The primary self ‘deintegrates’ when it meets environmental triggers that produce a ‘readiness for experience’. Such readiness is typified by the new born infant’s rooting for the breast. When a deintegrate is ‘met’ by the environment, an experience takes place and the self ‘reintegrates’ with the new experience included in it. This rhythmic alternation between deintegration (going to meet the world) and reintegration (returning to the self) continues throughout life. Fordham’s model allows for the unending development of a self of increasing complexity and sophistication out of the most rudimentary elements. It also enables us to understand how increasing differentiation of psychic elements and discrimination of environmental experiences develops in parallel with increasing levels of integration. The integrated adult self is therefore (ideally) like a symphony orchestra: many different parts operating in a co-ordinated way to produce a richly layered, complex texture of meaningful sound. The model also allows us to understand a) dis-integration, where the parts do not cohere and some instruments are either silenced or busy ‘blowing their own trumpet’ in disregard of the whole, and b) failures of development where the self does not deintegrate sufficiently and the personality remains stunted, unable to form the internal experiences out of which a meaningful relation to the world can develop. Fordham suggested that infantile autism could be understood as the most extreme example of such a failure to deintegrate. Zinkin and Young-Eisendrath: The Constructivist Critique Where Fordham starts from the innate activity of the infant, constructivists start from the intersubjective interaction between mother and infant. Thus, Louis Zinkin, Fordham’s colleague in the London Society of Analytical Psychology, objected to the notion of a primary self that was pre-given. He pointed out that there never is a point prior to interaction with the environment when some undifferentiated entity could be said to exist: ‘one would have to go back to the earliest beginnings of the universe to find ... the intellectual necessity ... of an original undifferentiated state’ (Zinkin 1987b: 177 ). Therefore, he argued ‘there never is an objective entity which corresponds to [the primary self]’ (Fordham & Zinkin 1987: 142). In fact, Fordham agreed that the primary self ‘has no date’ and confirmed that he was talking about ‘cosmic experiences extending to the limits of space and time’ (Fordham & Zinkin 1987: 143). An apparently hard-nosed scientific concept has suddenly become, at the same time, a highly mystical one. The dialogue between Fordham and Zinkin echoes the Zen Buddhist question ‘What is the face of the Buddha before you were born?’ The primary self is the original Buddha face. Once again we find that we are brought up against the limits of what is thinkable. For these reasons, Zinkin believed that ‘the self only comes into existence through interaction with others’ (Zinkin 1991: 6) and that it was meaningless to speak of a self that exists prior to the infant having any conception of ‘myself’. In other words, the self is constructed, not by the individual in isolation but through an interactive field out of which ‘the individual’ emerges. At the risk of oversimplification we might say that Neumann puts the self ‘in’ the mother, Fordham puts it ‘in’ the infant and Zinkin puts it in between mother and infant These views may also be combined. For example, Hester Solomon (1997; 1998), while adhering closely to Fordham’s view of the primary self, has sought to demonstrate that Jung’s notion of the self in transformation is both primary and relational. . Polly Young-Eisendrath, an American Jungian with a strong interest in re-aligning Jungian thought with post-modern trends in philosophy and psychology, is also a firm adherent of a constructivist position. She is particularly opposed to the tendency to attribute subjectivity to the self as if it is a person, and to reify the self as if it were a substantive entity. She identifies these tendencies as stemming from the epistemological errors of ‘realism’ and ‘essentialism’ as a result of which ‘we may sound as though we can know the unknowable in saying the Self has intentions, views and desires’ (Young-Eisendrath 1997a: 162). Instead, she emphasises the aspect of archetypes as predispositions to particular forms and images of psychic functioning. Following the philosopher, Rom Harré (also an influence on Zinkin) she has identified what she calls ‘the invariants of subjectivity’. These are coherence, continuity, a sense of agency and affective relational patterns. Since these are universal features of subjectivity, within a wide range of different ways of thinking about and experiencing a personal self, she concludes that they must be archetypal. Therefore, she suggests that, especially in his later work, it was Jung’s own intention to present his concept of Self as a universal predisposition to form a unified image of individual subjectivity. This predisposition arises out of a transcendent coherence, that unity of life that is not personal and may be called God, Tao, Buddha Nature, a central organising principle (of the universe) or other names. (Young-Eisendrath 1997b: 54) Since the form that individual subjectivity takes is that which Jung calls the ego, Young-Eisendrath is arguing that the self is the archetype of the ego. As such, it is not the totality, far less a personification of the unconscious, but an abstract principle of organisation and coherence which structures human subjectivity as it is constructed ‘in a context that includes culture, language, and other persons’(Young-Eisendrath & Hall 1991: xii). Young-Eisendrath and Zinkin emphasise different aspects of the same overall project: both stress that the archetypal self cannot be divorced from the personal self and that the personal self is acquired through mutual interaction, not a given that arises in and of itself. However, where Zinkin is interested in the detailed dialogue that takes place between mother and infant, Young-Eisendrath takes a more abstract, philosophical approach and has been able to re-align constructivist thinking with Jung’s view of the self as an archetype. For neither of them is the self-as-totality a relevant consideration. Self as Process In this concluding section, I want to begin to sketch out a view of the self which is both totality and archetype, both organising principle and that which is organised. In this view, the self is best understood as the overall process of the psyche. That is, it is not simply an organising principle within the psyche but is better thought of as the organising principle of the psyche. Similarly, Rosemary Gordon refers to the self as a structure within the psyche whereas I think it would be more accurate to describe it as the structure of the psyche (Gordon 1985: 269) There is no principle or archetypal structure which is in any way separate from that which it is organising. The structure is inherent in itself - the self is both a tendency towards organisation (the process of individuation) and the structure of that organisation (the self as archetype). In other words, the psyche is self-structuring and the name for that process is the self. What misleads us is our tendency to isolate elements of thought into ‘contents’: then the self-as-archetype becomes a ‘content’ ‘within’ the psyche-as-the-total-self, creating an artificial paradox. If we think of the self as the process of the psyche, this paradox disappears. This also avoids the tendency that has dogged religious thought and has cropped up again in Jungian psychology: the tendency to hypostasise the self as a ‘thing’ to be known. In her post-modern ‘campaign’ against reification, realism and essentialism in Jungian psychology, Young-Eisendrath is a direct descendent of Philo, the Cappodacians and all negative theologians. In fact, she does indeed draw on another kind of negative theology: the Buddhist doctrine of ‘no-self’ which was itself originally a corrective against the Hindu tendency to concretise Atman as a substantive self. Following a hint from one of Jung’s letters, she refers to the self as an ‘empty center’ around which the personality is organised (Young-Eisendrath and Hall 1991: 61). I have developed this view elsewhere in relation to the ‘heart of the mystery’ in Hamlet. ( Colman 1998). However, Brahman (and Atman as its individual aspect) is also, properly conceived, not a discrete entity but something that pervades everything. In a Hindu parable, Brahman is compared to salt dissolved in water. It cannot be seen nor can it be distinguished from the water in which it is. It is thus everywhere and nowhere. This may seem to be an essentialist view, as if there is a definable essence of being which is Brahman. But here the essence is inseparable from the element in which it is found - lived existence. It is as if the self is not an experience and certainly not a content of experience but rather the taste of experience, its quality. Robert Pirsig has made ‘Quality’ the centre of a philosophical system, supraordinate to the subjective reality of mind and the objective reality of matter. He equates Quality with Tao which, in turn, Jung equates with the self. (Pirsig 1974) Brahman is that which ‘cannot be spoken in words, but that by which words are spoken ... What cannot be thought with the mind, but that whereby the mind can think.’ (from theUpanishads: quoted in Armstrong 1997: 40). If we apply this to the self, we might say that the self is not subjectivity but the condition by which subjectivity is possible. It is not myself, nor the experience of myself but the very possibility of my having self-experience. This, I think, is what Jung means by the larger personality that is the self. It is a recognition that our self-organisation is not bounded by our self-awareness but is the overall purpose and organisation of our existence as human organisms. If there is anything which qualifies as archetypal, surely this is it. This way of thinking is also, surprisingly close to developments in Darwinian biology and the burgeoning field of consciousness studies. This linkage is particularly interesting since two of the key proponents in this field, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, are vigorously atheistic and reductionist, apparently the very antithesis of the Jungian zeitgeist. In his book, Consciousness Explained, Dennett (1991) proposes an explanation of consciousness based on what he calls ‘the Multiple Drafts Model’. This model is strikingly post-modern in that it eschews the existence of any single point at which consciousness takes place in favour of a multiplistic, de-centered view of both consciousness and the self. He argues that we must rid ourselves of the homuncular fantasy in which neuro-physiological processes are somehow all directed towards and served up to a ‘Central Meaner’ who receives ‘inputs’ from sensory data and the body in ‘the Cartesian Theatre’ of consciousness. Rather he suggests the brain is like a serial processor in which multiple versions of events, meanings, emotional and sensory states and language co-exist in such a way that it is not possible to distinguish any boundary between those that become conscious (‘mental’) and those which do not. Consciousness is therefore a field which is in continual flux, rather like Jung’s view of the psyche as a multiplicity of complexes. Rather than the self as an ‘inner person’ (homunculus), Dennett suggests, like Young-Eisendrath, that the self is an abstraction. Furthermore, it is one which, in rudimentary form, is attributable to all life forms: even the lowliest amoeba must make a distinction between ‘me’ and ‘the rest of the world’ [not-me]: This minimal proclivity to distinguish self from other in order to protect oneself is the biological self, and even such a simple self is not a concrete thing but just an abstraction, a principle of organization. (Dennett 1991: 414) This seems to me to recognise that all organisms are driven by an overall sense of purposive intelligence that is beyond the conscious mind. It is simply that in human beings, the self is inevitably of a far more complex kind and, appropriately, its contemplation inspires awe. So, while the self may not possess subjectivity, it becomes unremarkable to attribute to it an overall purposive intelligence with coherent intentions and ‘needs’ that transcend consciousness. How else could we function at all? We have only to consider the complex functioning of our internal organs (and our brains most of all) to see this. Why should we expect the psychic aspect of ourselves to be constructed any differently? This is the basis for Jung’s teleological view of the psyche as a holistic system of purposive self-regulating functions. Conscious realisation of the processes at work in ourselves may well make us feel humble and small and offer a rebuke to the hubris of the ego, but must also provide that deep-rooted, inalienable reassurance of what Winnicott calls ‘going on being’. We do not need to know how we do it, we just discover that we are doing it. While I was working on this paragraph, I received a letter from an ex-patient telling me how she had been hi-jacked at gunpoint and fully expected to be raped and killed. She attributed the fact that neither had happened mainly to an inexplicable feeling of wholeness, calm, and inner confidence that she experienced as she faced death head on. As a child, she had been devastated when she realised that no-one, not even her mother, could prevent her from dying and she had suffered from fears of dying ever since. The strange thing, was, she told me, that as she was driven for several hours at gunpoint into the middle of nowhere, she felt, for the first time, a certainty that she would go on breathing and that her body was capable of sustaining her. It must have taken the presence of death as an external reality to shock her into an experience of the self. Dennett applies the same kind of thinking to the construction of a personal self. As he puts it, we find ourselves ‘spinning a self’ just as the spider finds itself spinning a web. We do not know what we are doing or why we are doing it; it is as if it is doing us. Dennett proposes the construction of the self as an example of what the biologist Richard Dawkins has called the ‘extended phenotype’ - extended effects of genetic activity through which a creature’s environment is altered. Examples include spiders’ webs, beavers’ lakes and the stone shells created by caddis flies (Dawkins 1982). There is a very close parallel here to Fordham’s argument for the primary activity of the self. Fordham, too, argues that the infant is able to ‘create’ aspects of its environment by its own activity. Extended into the intersubjective view, we might say that all of us act on each other to promote the development of our individualised personal lives which are therefore part of the extended phenotype of the human organism. I suggest that ‘the self’, like God, is an image of this process. The God-image appears to be the source of our existence but it is also the result of the processes it represents. The God-image is the image, not of the self that is spun (myself), but of the process by which it is spun - that through we live and breathe and have our being. As individual subjects, we are subject to the self. If the self is the process of being human, it follows that the self is in everything we are. This view also offers a reconciliation of the part/whole paradox. The thrust of Dennett’s philosophical critique is against the conception of a conscious agent who somehow exists in the Cartesian Theatre of consciousness, observing and making decisions separately from the processes of awareness through which It exists It seems to me to beg the question to refer to such a Cartesian agent as either ‘he’ or ‘she’. How does it know that it is gendered in the first place??! References Armstrong, K. (1997) A History of God. London: Mandarin. Colman, W. (1998) That within which passes show: Hamlet and the unknowable self. Harvest Vol 44:1, 7-23. Dennett, D. (1991) Consciousness Explained. London: Penguin Books. Dawkins, R. (1982) The Extended Phenotype. Oxford: W.H.Freeman. Edinger, E. (1960) The ego-self paradox. Journal of Analytical Psychology, Vol 5:1, 3-18. Fordham, M. (1976) The Self and Autism. London: Heinemann. ——(1987) Explorations into the Self. London: Academic Press. Fordham, M. & Zinkin, L (1987) Correspondence between Louis Zinkin and Michael Fordham. In Zinkin, H., Gordon, R & Haynes, J. (eds.), The Place of Dialogue in the Analytic Setting: The Selected Papers of Louis Zinkin. (1998) 133-148. London & Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley. Gordon, R. (1985) Big self and little self. Journal of Analytical Psychology. Vol 30:3, 261-271 Jacoby, M (1985) Individuation and Narcissism. The Psychology of the Self in Jung and Kohut. London: Routledge. Jung, C.G. (1963) Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Reprinted: Glasgow: Fountain Books, 1977. Neumann, E. (1954) The Origins and History of Consciousness. Reprinted, London: Karnac Books, 1989. Pirsig, R (1974) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. London: The Bodley Head. Redfearn, J. (1985) My Self, My Many Selves. London: Academic Press. Samuels, A (1985) Jung and the Post-Jungians. London: Routledge. Scholem, G.G. (1941) Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. New York: Schocken Books. Solomon, H. (1997) The not-so-silent couple in the individual. Journal of Analytical Psychology, Vol 42:3, 383-402. ——(1998) The self in transformation: the passage from a two to a three-dimensional world. Journal of Analytical Psychology, Vol 43:2, 225-238. Young-Eisendrath, P. & Hall, J. (1991) Jung’s Self-Psychology. A Constructivist Perspective. London & New York: The Guildford Press. Young-Eisendrath, P. (1997a) The self in analysis. Journal. of Analytical Psychology, Vol 42:1, 157-166. ——(1997b) Gender and Desire: Uncursing Pandora. Texas: A & M University Press. Zinkin, L. (1987a) The hologram as a model for analytical psychology. In Zinkin, H., Gordon, R & Haynes, J. (eds.), The Place of Dialogue in the Analytic Setting: The Selected Papers of Louis Zinkin. (1998) 116-134. London & Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley. ——(1987b) Correspondence (Response to a previous comment by James Astor). Journal of Analytical Psychology Vol 32:2, 177. ——(1991) Your self: did you find it or did you make it. Unpublished Unpublished paper for discussion at the Analytic Group of the Society of Analytical Psychology, 4th November.. Similarly, we need to get away from the idea of a self ‘in’ the unconscious or anywhere else for that matter. So, for example, when Fordham says the self deintegrates and reintegrates, we might see the self as deintegration and reintegration. Indeed, Fordham states that ‘a deintegrate is endowed with and continuous with the self’. This means that parts of the self are endowed with the qualities of the self since, as I indicated earlier, the self is the quality of experience. Louis Zinkin uses the analogy of the hologram to refer to the way that parts of the self are not distinct from the whole self but rather are merely different forms that the self takes. In the hologram, the whole image is present in every part of it since the image is a function of wave patterns that form the holomovement. Zinkin concludes that Movement is primary and the appearance of forms as they emerge from the movement is secondary. ..... It would be better understood if the movement of the psyche in individuation is taken as primary, not the structures such as the archetypes , the ego and the self or the unconscious, which are only comparatively stable and autonomous forms (Zinkin 1987a: 124) I want to take this just a little bit further and suggest that the self is the holomovement. Therefore the whole self is present in every part of it. It is omnipresent from the very start. Furthermore, since it is never a discrete entity, there is no need to postulate starting from a self-contained system, as Fordham does in the hypothesis of the primary self (Fordham & Zinkin 1987: 138). The nascent individual may be a system but it is perpetually in interaction with other systems, and itself made up of myriad part-systems down to the level of the genes and further down to their atomic constituents, until the search for origins disappears once more into the nothingness of the unthinkable and becomes infinite. The self emerges out of this primary wholeness and develops towards a discriminating consciousness capable of asking from whence it came. Our individuation involves us becoming distinct and discrete individuals to the point at which we can confront the universe from which we have sprung as discriminated but intrinsically connected parts of it. Then, if we can grasp it, we might once again know the experience of wholeness at a different level: at the level of consciousness, the highest level of differentiation known to us. At this level, we might become differentiated enough to perceive our interconnection and oneness with the universe. Notes: PAGE 27