Jung

by Phil Goss

  This axis has two main functions: first, it enables the kind of access to depth experience as described in this chapter, as well as acting as a channel through which that depth can be manifested in the real lives of people. Second, it allows for the relationship between ego and self to be regulated, so that an organic balance can be sustained between the ‘mover’ (self) and the ‘moved’ (ego). There is a parallel here with the primary carer / infant interaction. Both need each other to provide the reciprocal role in order for the child to receive the care and guidance of the primary carer, while the latter needs the baby to fulfil and represent some vital aspects of themselves in the world.

  The ego–self axis

  When the balance between ego and self is not present, there is a risk that the ego might forget its place and over-identify with self, thus becoming over-inflated and assuming it ‘knows best’ or even has powers that do not belong to it (this can be seen where political leaders become self-aggrandised and tyrannical). Or, where the ego is brittle, contents of the unconscious can flood it and psychosis and delusion can result. One other possibility, which is illustrated in the diagram above, is where ego ignores self, as it is too consumed with day-to-day concerns and the need to uphold the persona in professional and other domains of life. The following case study is an example of what can happen in this situation.

  The man who mistook his lunch for his car keys

  A busy professional man who had ambition and drive in spades, but struggled to really listen to himself, lived with his partner, but they only saw each other in passing during the week. At weekends she had to try hard to get him to stop working and spend some quality time with her. At times, after a typical working day of 12 hours or more, he would fall asleep soon after arriving home, and he had developed a habit of using drugs to give him a quick escape from the frantic lifestyle he was following.

  He had a sense of being pulled in two directions at once. On the one hand, he remained as driven as ever in wanting to get as far as he could, as quickly as he could, in his career. On the other hand, he could feel something in him starting to come loose, as if what he was doing was splitting his sense of self into many parts. He had a recurring image in his head of someone pulling furiously at a gate to try and get it open, and all it seemed to be doing was wrecking it (and the gatepost). It also exhausted and exasperated the person pulling the gate.

  He had also locked himself out of his car twice in the past month. Each time he would be so preoccupied with speaking to someone on his mobile, or anxious not to be late for a meeting, that he would leave his car keys in the ignition, grab the thing nearest to him – a plastic bag with his lunch in it – and, forgetting that the automatic locking system was on, leap from the car. The first time this happened, he did not realize his keys were inside the car until he returned to it later. The second time the realization hit him as soon as the alarm blipped after he got out of the car.

  He knew things were not right but it took a couple of weeks for him to decide to speak to a therapist about what was going on. This was prompted by a dream in which he was rolling very fast down a bowling alley towards some skittles, over and over again. Each time, he careered into the skittles and someone shouted ‘strike!’, and he could see the points clocking up and up on the screen above him. But he just wanted it to stop…

  When thinking about this dream, he did not need much help to realize he needed to pay heed to the part of him that wanted to slow down, a part he had ignored for some time. The image of the man trying to wrench the gate open also gave him pause for thought around what it was he was trying to achieve by being an uber-businessman. It turned out that his heroic efforts were, in part at least, a wish to ‘break free’ from something. While what this was from his past would take time in therapy to explore and address, it was at least clear that there was something more important for him to be able to express than his drive to become the CEO of a large company in record time. In a way, leaving keys locked in the car could be seen as a metaphor for what was ‘key’ in him being locked inside an uncontained ‘drive’ to fulfil a persona image of himself, which was certainly not the full picture of who he was or could be.

  Through the ‘bowling’ dream, the ‘gate’ image and the unconscious placing of his keys in the car, the self had found three different, but allied, ways to finally wake the ego up to what was going on. He was then able to notice the problem and, with difficulty, make adjustments to moderate the impact his attitude to work was having on his health and relationships (e.g. spending an hour or two less at work, and having designated drug-free evenings, focused on his family, whenever he could).

  Ego and its place in the psyche

  As will be clear from the discussion in this chapter, Jung’s notion of ego, though sharing some characteristics with Freud’s version, has a different flavour. In his developmental framework, Jung, like Freud, saw ego as forming in the third or fourth year of life but his emphasis was different because of the presence of self. For Jung, ego arose from, and needed to differentiate itself from, self. Most contemporary practitioners and thinkers in the field would now disagree with both theories, as the consensus now is that ego forms within the first year of life, and one Jungian thinker, Michael Fordham, developed a new schema for understanding the ego–self relationship which took this into account (see Chapter 14).

  Irrespective of the debate over its development, what we are left with is a notion of ego that is strongly tied in with Jung’s view of the relationship between the conscious and unconscious mind. While ego can influence self, the influence of the deeper intelligence of self on ego is a pivotal principle for Jung. The self needs to be listened to and interacted with – and sometimes challenged – in order for individuation and healthy psychic growth to be facilitated, both in the therapeutic encounter and in life more generally.

  Key terms

  Ego: Centre of the conscious mind.

  Ego–self axis: A psychic ‘pole’ or continuum that links ego and self and enables them to communicate and influence each other.

  Numinous: This refers to experiences where we encounter phenomena that are mysterious or awesome. Religious or spiritual experiences can be seen as numinous.

  Self: The centre of psyche, located where conscious and unconscious meet, as well as the whole of, and circumference around, our psychic, physical and spiritual totality.

  Dig deeper

  Casement, A., ‘Self’, in Leeming, D., Madden, K. and Stanton, M. (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion (New York: Springer, 2010)

  Edinger, E., Ego and Archetype: Individuation and the Religious Function of the Psyche (Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1991)

  Jung, C. G., Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Glasgow: Fontana, 1963)

  Jung, C. G., Alchemical Studies, CW13 (London: Routledge, 1966a)

  Jung, C. G., Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, CW7 (London: Routledge, 1966b)

  Jung C. G. (1953), ‘Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy’ in Psychology and Alchemy, 2nd ed., CW12 (London: Routledge, 1968)

  Samuels, A., Shorter, B. and Plaut, F. (eds.), A Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis (London: Routledge, 1986)

  Samuels, A. The Plural Psyche: Personality, Morality and the Father (London: Routledge, 1989)

  Fact-check (answers at the back)

  1 How did Jung’s model of ego differ from Freud’s?

  a Jung thought the ego repressed instinctual material in the unconscious; Freud did not

  b Freud, unlike Jung, thought ego strength was an important aspect for patients to work on

  c Freud thought the ego mediated between conscious and unconscious; Jung did not

  d Jung thought the ego could draw on differing forms of libido, not just psychosexual

  2 Where did Jung describe the self as being located?

  a In the collective unconscious

  b At the intersection of the conscious and unconscious

  c Behind the ego in the personal conscious
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  d Between the ego and the numinous

  3 How does the ego ‘mediate’ with the self?

  a Ego mediates between self and superego, while self does so between id and ego

  b Ego mediates between collective and personal, self between ego and personal unconscious

  c Ego mediates between external reality and self, self between ego and the collective unconscious

  d Ego mediates between self and the numinous

  4 In what way could the place of the self be seen as ‘bipolar’?

  a Self is both the centre and the circumference of the psyche

  b Self is both solid and fluid

  c Self is the opposite of ego

  d When the self fragments, people develop bipolar disorder

  5 Why did Jung think the self carried the numinous?

  a Because it was big enough to carry God around

  b Because it couldn’t stop archetypal influences flooding it

  c Because symbols of the numinous, like gods, were really representations of the self

  d Because symbols of gods belonged only in the collective unconscious

  6 Why did Jung see the self as crucial to the individuation path?

  a It was the centre of the psyche

  b It could help the ego stay on course

  c It provided symbols of the numinous

  d It stopped people getting lost when walking

  7 The ego-self axis is a way of describing what?

  a How ego and self relate and communicate

  b How self provides the axis of the ‘vehicle’ of the psyche for the ego

  c The direction the ego needs to take on the individuation path

  d The vague relationship between conscious and unconscious material

  8 What is ‘compensation’?

  a Where the ego recompenses the self for ignoring its directions

  b Where the self tries to point out to the ego what it is not taking into account

  c Where the ego–self axis rewards both self and ego

  d Where the analysand still pays the analyst when they miss a session

  9 What does it mean where ego ‘over-identifies with the self’?

  a The ego leaves all the work to the self

  b The ego thinks the self is crushing its identity

  c The ego becomes deflated and feels inferior to the self

  d The ego thinks it is the self, and becomes inflated, possibly deluded

  10 Why does the ego have a crucial active role to play in the individuation process?

  a The self needs the ego to respond to it autonomously, and realize it actively in the world

  b The ego has more energy in it than the self, and provides the libido for individuation

  c The self is too inward-looking to be able to make anything happen by itself

  d The ego helps the self to find its path and then follows it down the individuation path

  6

  Ego’s face and back: persona and shadow

  Having described the place of ego in relation to self, we will now look at how ego operates in other ways: how it is represented via the often numerous personas we show to the world; and how the dark, hidden side of ego operates. This second aspect is shadow – the hidden, messier and less pleasant parts of ourselves we would rather other people did not see. We will consider its significant implications for the individuation process. We will also acknowledge where it might hold aspects of our hidden potential, and the implications of working with this area in therapy. To help you grasp both concepts, the chapter includes a couple of case studies and prompt questions for personal reflection.

  Ego: outward looking and inward facing

  As was made plain in the previous chapter, ego is a key player in the psyche. Where it is healthy, ego actively engages with daily life, and manages the many interactions and challenges thrown up by it. Where this is less so – say, where depression and anxiety dominate a person’s world – ego can become very uncertain of its role, and either retreat into an avoidant state or become over-reactive or hyper-sensitive. These defences can then become default ways of engaging with life.

  The quality of ego engagement with self, others and the world will also reflect how the inner dynamics of a person’s psyche are working. In other words, if different aspects at work in the psyche are interacting in an alive and complementary way, then ego will likewise be able to operate in the external environment effectively and comfortably (and it will not if things are unhelpfully conflicted or stuck within). If ego is listening to self, for example, there is more prospect of healthy engagement with the outer world; but if not (maybe because a complex is gripping the psyche), then the ego will probably act this out in their relations to others, say by becoming angry and defensive, or anxious and overly deferential.

  How can we better understand the ways ego responds to the dynamics it experiences from within psyche, as well as from influences arising in its outer relationships and circumstances? Jung’s way of making sense of this was to propose that ego had both an outward-facing aspect and an inward-looking one. It is not difficult to see the possible link between this idea and Jung’s childhood experience of having two versions of himself: his personality’s number one and number two (as described in Chapter 2), one the outwardly directed (or ‘extraverted’ as he would come to term it) version, and the other inwardly directed (or ‘introverted’).

  Jung used the term ‘shadow’ as something of a catch-all term to describe how the darker, hidden side of the ego collects together difficult, under-developed and unpleasant aspects of ourselves and seems to bracket them out of view (most of the time). It is like us, standing on the earth and staring into the night sky, not being able to see the dark side of the moon, and wondering what is hidden there; except, where shadow is concerned, we may not even realize there is anything there to wonder about.

  Spotlight: Shadow and persona in books and films

  There are many examples of this such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s characters of Dr Jekyll (persona) and Mr Hyde (shadow) (Stevenson, 1886). In the film Star Wars (Lucas, 1977), Luke Skywalker represents the heroic, good persona, while Darth Vader symbolizes shadow. Can you think of any other examples of where this split between persona and shadow is portrayed in books and films?

  On the other hand, persona refers to what we can clearly see of a person’s presentation and character, like being able to stare at the full moon through a pair of binoculars. We can see many craters and bumps, lit up by the light of the sun reflecting on its surface. It is how the moon presents itself to us on earth, sometimes as a crescent, sometimes as a half moon, sometimes full (so it has at least three personas, one could say). The following diagram shows how persona and shadow represent outer- and inner-facing aspects of the ego.

  Persona and shadow as key features of ego

  Persona: a version of ourselves

  While ‘persona’ is a relatively straightforward concept to describe, it is important not to oversimplify things by saying that what we can see or experience of another person – in a social, work or other context – tells us the whole story. In the same way, and going back to the image above, what we can see of the moon from a distance does not tell us what it is really like to be on its surface or close up. We might meet one version of a person we know at work or college, for example – where they seem shy and courteous – but we do not know what they might be like with their close family. They might be gregarious and sometimes even rude to those they are more familiar with. As Jung (1953, para. 305) put it:

  ’The persona is a complicated system of relations between individual consciousness and society, fittingly enough a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression on others, and, on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual.’

  Fundamentally, the goal of a persona is to present a version of ourselves that fits the situation we are in; it is like having different sets of clothes for different occasions, varying between th
e casual to the explicitly formal. At times there is something heroic about this capacity (it is ‘I’ alone who manages to do all this), and the persona is seen as having an archetypal connection to ‘hero/heroine’. Where this works well, such as in obvious ways where a public figure or business leader is able to utilize their persona to garner support, the benefits can be clear and measurable. It is also usually possible for us to foster a flexible capacity to switch between personas comfortably as we move between work, family and other responsibilities and activities.

  What are the possible risks that might be associated with persona? Here is a fictionalized case study exploring aspects of this, followed by a reflective activity for you to do.

  Persona as default

  Lisa had been a school teacher for around 20 years. Although the job was demanding, sometimes all-consuming, she loved it and was passionate about providing her pupils with the best teaching and care she could offer. Over time she had developed a style of communication with her pupils that was warm but firm, and which they usually responded to well. She noticed, though, that, on occasion, the ‘warm’ aspect of this could attract an irritated, even angry, response, not only from a pupil but from a colleague she might have a difference of opinion with. She had been told she could be ‘patronizing’ more than once. Lisa worried about this a bit and wondered whether she had got too caught up in her role as teacher, but thought it not something worth getting too concerned about, since she could see how much most people appreciated what she offered them and the school.