Glossary: Ego

The center of the field of consciousness; the “I” of consciousness. The ego is just one complex among many but it’s very important as it organizes all other contents in the conscious. It's based on the archetype of the Self (the central complex of the total person, both conscious and unconscious); however, the ego is the central complex only of the relatively tiny, conscious part of the psyche. Can be the cause of many problems but necessary for individuation; a weak ego is too “small” to serve as a container for unconscious contents but a strong ego is able to both hold these experiences as well as make the necessary moral choice to undergo the often difficult and even painful experiences required for individuation.

The ego's chief job is discrimination; what is “me” and what is not me? Was that me or was that the persona, or animus, or some other complex? Again, a solid ego is necessary to discriminate the various complexes and relate to them without getting possessed or absorbed into the unconscious.

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. People measure their self-knowledge by what the average person in their social environment knows of himself, but not by the real psychic facts which are for the most part hidden from them. In this respect the psyche behaves like the body, of whose physiological and anatomical structure the average person knows very little too.

- The Undiscovered Self," CW 10, par. 491

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.

- Transformation Symbolism in the Mass," CW 11, par. 391

Through being realized, [the Self] "incarnates" itself, so to speak, in the moral life of the ego. If I had a gift for music like Beethoven's but never discovered or made use of it, it might as well not exist. Only the conscious ego is capable of realizing psychic contents. Even something as great, even divine, as the Self can only be realized by the ego. That is self-realization from a Jungian perspective.

- Marie Louise von Franz, Psychotherapy, p. 8