Self in Jungian psychology

 ( Jungian ) 

Under the Self's guidance, a succession of archetypal images emerges, gradually bringing their fragmentary aspects of the Self increasingly closer to its totality.Jolande Jacobi, The Psychology of C. G. Jung (London 1968) p. 40 The first to appear, and the closest to the ego, would be the shadow or personal unconscious – something which is at the same time the first representation of the total personality, and which may indeed be at times conflated with the Self.Barbara Hannah, Striving towards Wholeness (Boston 1988) p. 25von Franz "Process" pp. 182–83 Next to appear would be the Anima and Animus, the soul-image, which may be taken as symbolising the whole Self.C. G. Jung, Alchemical Studies (London 1978) p. 268 Ideally however, the animus or anima comes into play in a mediating role between the ego and the Self.von Franz "Process" pp. 193, 195 The third main archetype to emerge is the Mana figure of the wise old man/womanJ. Jacobi, The Psychology of C. G. Jung (London 1946) p. 115 – a representative of the collective unconscious akin to the Self.C. G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (London 1996) pp. 183, 187

Thereafter comes the archetype of the Self itself – the last point on the route to self-realization of individuation.Jacobi (1946) p. 118 In Jung's words, "the Self...embraces ego-consciousness, shadow, anima, and collective unconscious in indeterminable extension. As a totality, the self is a coincidentia oppositorum; it is therefore bright and dark and yet neither".C. G. Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis (London 1963) p. 108n Alternatively, he stated that "the Self is the total, timeless man...who stands for the mutual integration of conscious and unconscious".C. G .Jung, "Psychology of the Transference", Collected Works Vol. 16 (London 1954) p. 311 Jung recognized many dream images as representing the self, including a stone, the world tree, an elephant, and the Christ.On this last, see "Christ, a Symbol of the Self" in Collected Works Vol. 9ii, p. 36ff. He explicitly says, " Christ exemplifies the archetype of the self." italics

In everyday life, aspects of the Self may be projected onto outside figures or concepts such as the state, God, the universe or fate.Anthony Stevens, On Jung (London 1990) p. 41 When such projections are withdrawn, there can be a destructive inflation of the personality – one potential counterbalance to this being however the social or collective aspects of the Self.von Franz, Process, p. 238.

In 1947 Michael Fordham proposed a distinct theory of the primary self to describe the state of the psyche of neonates, characterised by homeostasis, or 'steady state' in his words, where self and other (usually the mother) are undifferentiated. It predicates that there is no distinction between the internal and external world, and there are as yet no different components in the internal world. Fordham derived his hypothesis partly from the Jungian concept of the archetype of the self, and the psychoanalytic idea of internal 'objects'. The primary self, taken as the original totality of each person, with its 'archetypal' tendencies to develop aspects, such as language, complexes etc., enters into relation with the external world through a continuous dual process of de-integration and re-integration, a process said to be characteristic of the first half of life.