Glossary: The Self

The greater being who encompasses the totality of oneself, both conscious and unconscious; the You behind the you. The entirety of one's psyche, from consciousness, to the personal unconscious, to the collective unconscious. The center of one's total being, which regulates one's life through dreams and synchronicities.

The ego shouldn't be mistaken for the Self; the ego is simply the "I" of the personality, the center of consciousness that experiences the world. The ego is simply one complex of many, that arose out of the background of the Self. The ego is to the Self as the individual human being is to the sun. The Self is often experienced by the ego as God.

The self is not only the centre but also the whole circumference which embraces both consciousness and unconsciousness; it is the centre of this totality, just as the ego is the centre of the conscious mind.

- "Psychology and Alchemy", Collected Works, Vol. 12, p. 41

The self appears in dreams, myths, and fairytales in the figure of the "supraordinate personality," such as a king, hero, prophet, saviour, etc., or in the form of a totality symbol, such as the circle, square, quadratura circuli, cross, etc. When it represents a complexio oppositorum, a union of opposites, it can also appear as a united duality, in the form, for instance, of tao as the interplay of yang and yin, or of the hostile brothers, or of the hero and his adversary (arch-enemy, dragon), Faust and Mephistopheles, etc. Empirically, therefore, the self appears as a play of light and shadow, although conceived as a totality and unity in which the opposites are united.

- "Definitions," CW 6, par. 790

The ego cannot help discovering that the afflux of unconscious contents has vitalized the personality, enriched it and created a figure that somehow dwarfs the ego in scope and intensity... Naturally, in these circumstances there is the greatest temptation simply to follow the power-instinct and to identify the ego with the self outright, in order to keep up the illusion of the ego's mastery... [But] the self has a functional meaning only when it can act compensatorily to ego-consciousness. If the ego is dissolved in identification with the self, it gives rise to a sort of nebulous superman with a puffed-up ego.

- "On the Nature of the Psyche," CW 8, par. 430

Experiences of the self possess a numinosity characteristic of religious revelations. Hence Jung believed there was no essential difference between the self as an experiential, psychological reality and the traditional concept of a supreme deity. It might equally be called the "God within us."

- "The Mana-Personality," CW 7, par. 399

The self is our life’s goal, for it is the completest expression of that fateful combination we call individuality.

- "Two Essays on Analytical Psychology", Collected Works, Vol. 7, p. 238