In the discussions of laymen, this is more or less the entire gist of analytical psychology, the depth psychology created by Carl Jung following his break with Sigmund Freud in 1913. This byline is also what has made Jung so important for the so-called 'new age' movement. How many self-help books written by those self-proclaimed gurus and mystics paraphrase this statement on the cover jacket: 'Let go of the ego, find your true self!'
If only it were that simple. This take is far too elementary: seasoned clinicians and developmental Jungians would frown at such a simplistic treatise. Certainly the broad aim of analytical psychology is to promote healthy development of the personality by exploration of the contents of the unconscious, both personal and primordial (primordial being the collective unconscious, the stratum of the psyche that accounts for ideas and images Jung believed to be beyond personal experience alone). It is during these plunders that one confronts the autonomous complexes beyond their conscious awareness, such as the shadow of the ego and all the fears and uncertainties that come it. The healthiest outcome is for the ego to relinquish its desire for authority over the psyche and to recognize that there are objective powers within the mind that it has no true jurisdiction over other than the capability of experiential integration, so a balanced awareness of conscious and unconscious contents can occur.
In truth this script does not differ dramatically from our byline above. And there can be no doubt that the ego's battle with the unconscious is the primary cause of neurosis. For instance, an individual with an ego that identifies too much with a persona (the mask an individual presents to the world) will beckon tough retaliation from the energies of the unconscious. Or the individual may consolidate power for their ego and withdraw from the world, unable to present a strong face to reality until they are willing to relinquish the seat of power within. I suspect (though this is probably not always the rule) that cases of total identification to the persona are more likely in extraverted individuals, whereas introverts more often play by the power principle (the need to keep the ego in a feeling of superiority and safety). Whatever the case may be, it is the ego that must make sacrifices in order to take the plunge towards individuation. And that is precisely why a strong and healthy ego is so important in development. For a strong, healthy ego belongs to an individual aware of their limitations, aware of what they must let go, but acutely aware of the tools that their ego style brings them. It is a strong, healthy ego that can successfully confront the unconscious.
Jung's vision of the unconscious being a veritable sea of unknown complexes and images, with the ego being a mere island amidst it all, was probably floating around in his head a while before he and Freud agreed had their less than amicable parting. But Jung's flavoring of the process of individuation with alchemy and gnosticism only became part of his public work much later in life. The mythical colorings of those works is where we get the stereotype that Jungians claim ego=bad, unconscious=good. But in Two Essays in Analytical Psychology, which Jung began working on during the First World War, he takes a much more cautious view of unconsciousness. At this time Jung was not far from his days as an empirical researcher and clinician at the Burgholzli. So perhaps its not surprising that his prose is much less mythopoeic and rather more pragmatic. Jung specifically claims only those who truly must embark on such an odyssey into the depths of their own souls are those who should attempt it; all others would be better off with different methods of therapy. For those who take the journey into the self unprepared, madness or suicide are possible results. For the archetypes reflect both the good and bad of humanity, and an ego insufficiently prepared to handle the reservoir of mankind will pay dearly for their journey. Indeed, Jung himself barely survived his confrontation with the unconscious following his break with Freud. It was his writings during this period that created his masterpiece, the Red Book.
NOTE: It seems that not all Post-Jungians agree with Jung's assertions about individuation being reserved for late life. Indeed, individuation is a process that is never truly completed, and some individuals may go have waves of confrontations with their unconsciousness throughout the lifespan.
I am not denying that the ego's defenses and desire for authority are a primary cause of neurosis. Of course they are. But what I am saying is that a healthy, strong ego is one that is aware of its shortcomings and boundaries, because then the ego is willing to loosen its grip on the reins of the mind. What I would like to do here is to paint a portrait of the ego not all too different the hero motif so often associated with it, but from a unique perspective. After each stage the ego passes through in the confrontation of the unconscious, it is given new tools, new armory if you will, to integrate with itself to continue the odyssey. In this first part, I am going to discuss the ego's quarrel with the shadow, mainly from the perspective of a sect of Jungian studies most interesting to me: personality typology.
Just what is this thing we call the ego, anyways? Certainly in our everyday lexicon it has something of a negative connotation. "He's so egotistical" or "She's got a massive ego." Such statements probably emerged less from the Jungian perspective than from ego psychology, a branch from the Freudian tree concerned with the defenses the ego uses to keep itself afloat. Indeed, the ego refers to different things depending on the discipline. In classical psychoanalytic terms, the ego is the seat of consciousness pitted between the repressed wishes of the id and the lofty demands of the superego. The classic image of such troubles is below:
Below is a schematic of Jung's vision of the mind. In many ways it is a summation of his voluminous contributions to psychology. Personally I feel it is a beautiful icon of science (if you consider analytical psychology a science; I do but this is a discussion for another day). I get the same feelings looking at this model that I do when I consider the utter simplicity of Darwin's theory of evolution, or the improbable triumph that is Einstein's relativity. This is simply good science, and while demands for empiricism in the depth psychologies will always be found wanting, Jung's work in describing the psyche is a product of unprecedented inductive reasoning matched only by intellectual giants like those mentioned a few sentences back.
In this model the ego separates itself from the self, as we described. This happens throughout the first half of life. Unhealthy circumstances can lead to pathological situations, such as an ego too weak to separate itself, thus imploding back on the collective psyche. This is what we know as schizophrenia, where, according to Jung, the psychotic has completely surrendered to the power of the archetypes. Another possibility is an ego that tries to deny unconscious energy- not at all uncommon in today's world- and demand total control. But the psyche is a self-regulating system, and for every action their is an equal reaction. In Jung's mind, neurosis was not the result of repressed wishes, but rather attempts by the psyche to balance itself, or to cause what Jung calls enantiodromia. Neurosis then is the opportunity for transcendence. Indeed, once when he learned a client of his had a breakdown he proclaimed, "Thank God, he became neurotic!" In analytical psychology, to hit walls in life is to stumble upon an opportunity, and this is what makes it so alluring. If psychoanalysis, with its aims to goad people into letting walls crumble and admit their secret intentions, is the fall, than analytical psychology is almost assuredly the redemption.
The first step towards individuation, the process of truly becoming a unique personality, not just a face in some social collective, but rather a soulful individual in tune with their personal and collective psyche, is to confront the shadow. The shadow represents all that we despise and fear about ourselves. But this is not merely a collection of subjective complexes, repressed sins and undesirable traits; the shadow is also an inverse of our own personality, a murky mirror of the ego style, therefore containing reflections of our dominant functions. The tertiary function, which teeters between unconscious and consciousness, is the opposite of the secondary function in the ego. So if one's auxiliary function was extraverted intuition, then their tertiary function will be introverted sensing. The fourth, final, inferior function is deeply rooted in the unconscious. It is the opposite of the dominant function. Therefore the shadow has a personality diametrically different from our conscious self, containing all the character traits that we despise. Therefore we tend to project our shadow onto other people, condemning them for what we hate so much about ourselves.
An individual that learns to healthily integrate their weaker psychological functions into their ego will certainly be at an advantage to accepting the shadow; they will travel as a more complete being, a new sword in hand. Cultivation may also allow them to properly differentiate between the parts of their shadow are from the personal psyche, and what aspects are from that lower stratum, the collective unconscious.
The shadow is not something that, in typological terms, cannot even fully be met until middle-age, because the inferior functions do not truly develop until later in life. This is one of many reasons why Jung felt the process of individuation happened during the time of 'mid-life crisis', and was not something he generally would have recommended to a lad my age. That said, and as we referred to earlier, I think the ability to look into the depths might oscillate over the lifespan, for chaps my age certainly have periods of neurosis or where they hit a wall. During this time, I think we are still able to have confrontations with the unconscious; perhaps not as complete or dramatic as one that might occur later in life, but still profound nonetheless. After all, how else could one even begin to comprehend not just their shadow, but their soul-image: the anima or animus? That, we will discuss next time.
I am not denying that the ego's defenses and desire for authority are a primary cause of neurosis. Of course they are. But what I am saying is that a healthy, strong ego is one that is aware of its shortcomings and boundaries, because then the ego is willing to loosen its grip on the reins of the mind. What I would like to do here is to paint a portrait of the ego not all too different the hero motif so often associated with it, but from a unique perspective. After each stage the ego passes through in the confrontation of the unconscious, it is given new tools, new armory if you will, to integrate with itself to continue the odyssey. In this first part, I am going to discuss the ego's quarrel with the shadow, mainly from the perspective of a sect of Jungian studies most interesting to me: personality typology.
The Ego: Freud vs Jung
Just what is this thing we call the ego, anyways? Certainly in our everyday lexicon it has something of a negative connotation. "He's so egotistical" or "She's got a massive ego." Such statements probably emerged less from the Jungian perspective than from ego psychology, a branch from the Freudian tree concerned with the defenses the ego uses to keep itself afloat. Indeed, the ego refers to different things depending on the discipline. In classical psychoanalytic terms, the ego is the seat of consciousness pitted between the repressed wishes of the id and the lofty demands of the superego. The classic image of such troubles is below:
I needn't explain too much here, since this is probably an image we are all pretty familiar with. It is the repressed instinctual drives of the id and the high expectations of the superego (said to be formed by imagoes of the parents) that cause neurosis in the psychoanalytic scheme. This classical triad was created by Freud in 1923, when he revised his previous topographical model of the unconscious into what he called the structural model. Freud's daughter, Anna Freud, would go on to described the unconscious defenses of the ego, which became just as important to pinpoint for the psychoanalyst as the wishes of the id. Father Freud often referred to the ego as (colorfully paraphrasing) a poor sap desperately trying to control the reins of a speeding horse.
Jung's idea of the ego was a little different. The ego is the center of consciousness, as it is in psychoanalysis, but it's role is not that of mediator. Rather, the ego spends the first half of existence differentiating itself from the vast sea of the psyche- we can refer to this as the self. This is normal- provided there is no psychopathology that disrupts the process. But the entropy caused by opposite forces is fundamental to Jungian philosophy. In other words, for all the pulling away the ego does, there are equal reactions that come from the unconscious.
The Ego Styles: Psychological Types
The ego itself carries the capacities we often associate with cognition: memory, perception, language, etc. Jung also said that the ego-consciousness was organized in certain attitudes and functions. For some, libido (in analytical psychology this refers merely to psychic energy, rather than to sexual energy specifically) is directed outwards, towards the object (people and things), whereas in others the libido is directed inwards, through the ego first. This, in Jung's definitions, is the difference between extraversion and introversion. In addition to the attitude-type, the ego is also organized by functions for decision-making and information-gathering. The rational, decision-making (or judging) functions are known as thinking and feeling. The irrational, information-gathering (or perceiving) functions are called sensation and intuition.
One of these functions tend to be the dominant style in a person's consciousness, with an auxiliary function of the opposite dichotomy (so from perceiving function to a judging function, or vice versa) also making a significant contribution. Indeed, in some people I think the dominant and auxiliary functions are essentially of equal strength; it may be needless to differentiate between their rank. In this case I think they tend to vie for dominance, or the extraverted of the pair tends to appear in the person's persona, while the introverted function rules at home. That reminds me of a second point: traditionally, it is believed that of the two functions, one is introverted whereas the other is extraverted. This also means that the actual functions themselves differ depending on their attitude (e.g. Introverted Thinking is different from Extraverted Thinking). With this in mind, and with a pair of judging and perceiving functions doing the majority of conscious organization, there is the possibility of sixteen different ego styles.
The psychological types are what Jung is most known for outside of archetypes. They were also used to created the famous Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which was followed up by the Keirsey Temperament Sorter. There is a whole terminology created that goes into their discussion. For instance, one who primarily uses Introverted Intuition as well as Extraverted Feeling would be called an INFJ in Jung-Myers terms. This means that they are Introverted (since their dominant function is directed inward), Intuitive (since their irrational function is iNtuition, not Sensation), Feeling (since their rational function is feeling, not thinking), and Judging (since they interact with the external world with their judging function, Extraverted Feeling). In addition, David Keirsey, an american clinician inspired by the Jung-Myers model, further segregated the 16 types into uniform groups of 4, based on the ancient idea of four temperaments. They are the SP Artisans, the SJ Guardians, the NF Idealists, and the NT Rationals. It is interesting because this quadrilateral symmetry mirrors the symmetry seen in Jung's quadrant of functions. Keirsey's system more reflects a sociological model; that is, how the types interact with one another to form a society. When we speak of the cognitive functions specifically, we are generally (though not always!) talking more so about the inner workings of the individual. This is not always the case, as you can apply the cognitive functions or whole ego styles to groups and organizations. But I generally find the temperaments to be more useful for this.
This is all rather complicated, and Jung (who seems to have been a strong introverted intuitive, and probably an INFJ in Jung-Myers terms; he types himself as a thinker rather than a feeler, but his writing as always struck me as more the work of an INFJ than any kind of NT Rational) never went tremendously in-depth with mapping out all this. Indeed, when in a 1959 interview he was asked to type himself, he mentioned what he felt were his two dominant functions, while stressing the fluidity of these things, and refused to spell out any concrete type other than one could use the information he gave to "make the diagnosis." Jung generally despised theories regarding to psychology, because he (correctly) viewed the mind as too irrational to be properly crystallized. He stressed that the psychological types should only be used as a compass, and as a statistical norm, but that individuals were just that- individuals- and that mean was only the mean. This makes typology very useful for describing human behavior in a post hoc fashion (such as review of historical events), but not necessarily helpful- in fact at times dangerous- for therapy. think Jung might have feared what he had with his typology. It is criticized, and rightfully so, for simplifying the psyche to narrow terms. It is often used for pigeonholing people in organizational psychology, but worse: there is no end to the amount of people on forums and blogs that misuse personality typology as a way to celebrate their current state and to explain away all their problems as mere consequences of their ego style alone. Thus typology can quite literally act as an unhealthy ego-boost, ignoring real analysis by sweeping everything under the rug of a four-letter label. This is not to say that personality types are not useful for explaining some things and erasing misconceptions about being different from other people. Indeed that is one of its greatest strengths. But it is important to remember that personality, in the view of analytical psychology, is not something one is born with alone, but is rather something that one achieves. A starker view is offered from adherents of the enneagram system, a different typology origination from middle-eastern brotherhoods that I suspect Jung would have been fascinated in. In enneagram theory, one's default personality is a sickness to be cured from.
The ego cannot be lulled into thinking its dominant style is full expression of the self, but rather accept its shortcomings and take the plunge into the unconscious world. As we will see, personality typology is actually quite useful for this process.
The Ego's Plunge
Below is a schematic of Jung's vision of the mind. In many ways it is a summation of his voluminous contributions to psychology. Personally I feel it is a beautiful icon of science (if you consider analytical psychology a science; I do but this is a discussion for another day). I get the same feelings looking at this model that I do when I consider the utter simplicity of Darwin's theory of evolution, or the improbable triumph that is Einstein's relativity. This is simply good science, and while demands for empiricism in the depth psychologies will always be found wanting, Jung's work in describing the psyche is a product of unprecedented inductive reasoning matched only by intellectual giants like those mentioned a few sentences back.
In this model the ego separates itself from the self, as we described. This happens throughout the first half of life. Unhealthy circumstances can lead to pathological situations, such as an ego too weak to separate itself, thus imploding back on the collective psyche. This is what we know as schizophrenia, where, according to Jung, the psychotic has completely surrendered to the power of the archetypes. Another possibility is an ego that tries to deny unconscious energy- not at all uncommon in today's world- and demand total control. But the psyche is a self-regulating system, and for every action their is an equal reaction. In Jung's mind, neurosis was not the result of repressed wishes, but rather attempts by the psyche to balance itself, or to cause what Jung calls enantiodromia. Neurosis then is the opportunity for transcendence. Indeed, once when he learned a client of his had a breakdown he proclaimed, "Thank God, he became neurotic!" In analytical psychology, to hit walls in life is to stumble upon an opportunity, and this is what makes it so alluring. If psychoanalysis, with its aims to goad people into letting walls crumble and admit their secret intentions, is the fall, than analytical psychology is almost assuredly the redemption.
The first step towards individuation, the process of truly becoming a unique personality, not just a face in some social collective, but rather a soulful individual in tune with their personal and collective psyche, is to confront the shadow. The shadow represents all that we despise and fear about ourselves. But this is not merely a collection of subjective complexes, repressed sins and undesirable traits; the shadow is also an inverse of our own personality, a murky mirror of the ego style, therefore containing reflections of our dominant functions. The tertiary function, which teeters between unconscious and consciousness, is the opposite of the secondary function in the ego. So if one's auxiliary function was extraverted intuition, then their tertiary function will be introverted sensing. The fourth, final, inferior function is deeply rooted in the unconscious. It is the opposite of the dominant function. Therefore the shadow has a personality diametrically different from our conscious self, containing all the character traits that we despise. Therefore we tend to project our shadow onto other people, condemning them for what we hate so much about ourselves.
An individual that learns to healthily integrate their weaker psychological functions into their ego will certainly be at an advantage to accepting the shadow; they will travel as a more complete being, a new sword in hand. Cultivation may also allow them to properly differentiate between the parts of their shadow are from the personal psyche, and what aspects are from that lower stratum, the collective unconscious.
The shadow is not something that, in typological terms, cannot even fully be met until middle-age, because the inferior functions do not truly develop until later in life. This is one of many reasons why Jung felt the process of individuation happened during the time of 'mid-life crisis', and was not something he generally would have recommended to a lad my age. That said, and as we referred to earlier, I think the ability to look into the depths might oscillate over the lifespan, for chaps my age certainly have periods of neurosis or where they hit a wall. During this time, I think we are still able to have confrontations with the unconscious; perhaps not as complete or dramatic as one that might occur later in life, but still profound nonetheless. After all, how else could one even begin to comprehend not just their shadow, but their soul-image: the anima or animus? That, we will discuss next time.
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