Quest for the Self, Part 2

In Quest for the Self, Part 1 I talked about Murray Stein's book Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction. It's an easy-to-read summation of what the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung found concealed in the depths of the human psyche, during a long lifetime of investigation. Namely, Jung found that we all carry in the unconscious portion of our minds prefabricated images of reality that he termed "archetypes," among which the preeminent one is that of the Self. Other archetypes include that of the Mother, the Father, and the Hero.

The Self is the taproot and guiding force of Jungian "individuation," the process by which we become more and more consciously complete as human individuals. This individuation process has as its ultimate goal the conscious realization of the Self archetype.

In the first stage of consciousness, we as infants experience a "participation mystique" in which we have not yet become aware that we are distinct from everyone and everything in our environment. Then, during the ensuing second stage, we learn to differentiate external persons and objects from ourselves — and right off we begin outwardly projecting the contents of our inner unconscious mind, clustered around the universal archetypes. For example, we project the complex surrounding our Mother archetype out upon our own mother.

This second-stage emphasis upon differentiation and projection continues through most of our early adulthood, during which the main task facing us psychologically is to develop our ego as the center of our conscious identity, and along with it our persona as the mask we wear for purposes of social acceptability and inclusion. The second stage will often culminate in projecting our inner image of a perfect mate of the opposite sex — in a man, this image is called the Anima; in a woman, the Animus — out upon the person we fall in love with, marry, and have a family with.

It is the nature of Anima/Animus projection that it also underwrites all of our capabilities for enthusiasm and enchantment, and ideally we never fully outgrow the second stage of conscious development.

Yet our conscious development typically goes on to a third stage, one in which we stop projecting our unconscious contents out onto specific people and things. Instead, we begin to project our images of ideals out upon abstract entities. Such an abstraction carrying our inner archetypal projections is our idea of God, who as Our Father in Heaven receives the projection of our inner Father archetype. God can also be the recipient of our nurturing Mother archetype, when it is likewise projected abstractly outward; in my faith, this is the role of Mary, the Blessed Mother of God.

The third stage of consciousness is necessary for us to gain a capability for allegiance and fidelity, as they apply not only to ideas about God and religion but also to secular ideas such as our country, its military forces, its flag, our favored political party, etc. It is no wonder that for many Americans, allegiance to the United States of America and fidelity to God's word are part and parcel of the same worldview. This is why so many are insistent on keeping the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.

To my mind, Jung's ideas also explain why Americans of a traditionalist religious view are so emphatically against gay marriage and would like to see the Constitution amended to outlaw it. The combination of Stage 3 consciousness, as it relates to the importance of allegiance and fidelity, with Stage 2 consciousness as it emphasizes projecting one's inner opposite-sex ideal out upon an eligible mate and undergirds our capability for zeal is a potent one.


Jung held that never going beyond Stage 3 is not at all uncommon. Yet there is a fourth stage of consciousness, and a fifth. (There may even be a sixth and a seventh. I'll talk about the possible sixth and seventh stages in a later post in this series.)

Stage 4 consciousness has a bright side and a dark side; it can be, Jung admitted, downright dangerous. The fourth stage of conscious development is characterized by a seeming end to the erstwhile proclivity to project the energy of our inner archetypes out onto persons and things, whether they be concrete and specific (Stage 2) or abstract and general (Stage 3).

Instead of disappearing entirely, though, projections of unconscious images and complexes now have as their (secret) target the person's own ego. Even so, our center of conscious awareness is strangely not aware that it is, in effect, being elevated to the status of a god.

When we project, for example, our Father complex out upon our actual, physical father, we invest him with a godlike can-do-anything quality. At some point, usually during our teen years, we become disabused of this mythic identification, often to the point where Dad is now seen as unable to do anything right. But if our consciousness develops into Stage 3, we quickly come to project the same omnipotent, omniscient Father attributes onto our idea of God.

Then, if and when Stage 4 arrives, there is a tendency to think there is, after all, no God. We become atheistic, secular, relativistic, and "modern" in our outlook. In reality, Jung knew, what is happening is that we become our own God. The archetypes once projected out onto the Deity are now being stealthily redirected toward our own ego.

That's not necessarily bad, since for Jung the word "ego" doesn't have to have its usual undesirable connotations. The bright side of this stage of conscious development is, Stein writes, that "it is a real achievement when projections have been removed to this extent and individuals take personal responsibility for their destinies ... The person who has achieved the self-critical and reflective ego characteristics of Stage 4 without falling into megalomaniac inflation has done extremely well in developing consciousness, and is highly evolved in Jung's assessment" (p. 185).

In my estimation one of the prime exemplars of Stage 4 consciousness at its best is the late astronomer Carl Sagan, of Cosmos fame.

But the dark side of Stage 4 is the potential for "megalomaniac inflation" that Stein alludes to. An attitude of "If I want to do it and figure I can get away with it, it must be okay" can result from no longer seeming to have a God or gods to answer to. Another part of the unconscious mind, the Shadow, may take the opportunity to exercise its "seductive persuasions" upon the ego, which can be "easily led to indulge in the shadow's lust for power and its wishes to gain control of the world" (p. 184). At the extreme, this can lead an individual to sociopathic behavior.

Even if inflation of unconscious energies into the realm of the unbridled ego doesn't always go that far, Stein says, "many people cannot bear [Stage 4's] demands. Others consider it evil. The fundamentalisms of the world insist on clinging to Stages 2 and 3 out of fear of the corrosive effects of Stage 4 and of the despair and emptiness it engenders." Despite the fact that Stage 4's brighter aspect can further the psychological health and wholeness of some individuals, there is for others the possible "trap ... that the psyche becomes hidden in the ego's shadow" (pp. 184-185).


Thus, the first four stages of conscious development. Then there may arrive a Stage 5. This stage is what Stein refers to as "postmodern," in the sense that the "modern man's" anomie, meaninglessness, and lack of spiritual center, typical of Stage 4, gives way to an ability to take the once-hidden potencies of the unconscious mind — the archetypes — and bring them under mental scrutiny and into conscious acceptance. Stein writes of this stage:

To approach the archetypal images and to relate to them consciously and creatively becomes the centerpiece of individuation and makes up the task of the fifth stage of consciousness. This stage of consciousness produces another movement in the individuation process. The ego and the unconscious become joined through a symbol. (p. 186)

Specifically, Jung is referring here to one or more of the universal symbols of the Self such as the mandala (see picture at right). The Cross of Christ at left is a version of this same universal symbol.

In my previous post, Quest for the Self, Part 1, I mentioned that some years ago I was heavily invested in studying the recent scientific ideas about the "edge of chaos." Scientists first discovered that "chaos" is a big part of the natural order of things. Systems such as the weather are inherently unpredictable, beyond the next few days, because they are chaotic. Tiny perturbations can change their destinies in ways impossible to follow or predict.

Then there is the "edge of chaos," a regime where abrupt, unpredictable change is married to the graceful preservation of the novel forms thus engendered. This is where the "tree of life" symbolically grows, as novelty and stability are both imperatives of evolution.

I compared the continuum ranging from order to chaos, centered as it is on the fecund, life-giving edge of chaos, to an axis Jung drew into a diagram he made of the hierarchy of wholeness in the human psyche. One one side of this axis Jung placed Christus (Christ) and on the other, Diabolus (the Devil). In the middle, where I'm saying the "tree of life" grows, Jung placed the symbol of Serpens, the serpent.

The serpent-symbol, of course, is an ambiguous one to Christians. On the one hand, Jesus tells us to be "wise as serpents" — for serpents are ancient symbols of instinctual wisdom. On the other hand, it is in the guise of a serpent that the Devil tempts Eve and then Adam in the Garden of Eden. How appropriate, then, that the serpent-symbol is to the Christus-Diabolus line what the edge of chaos is to the order-chaos continuum.

The "tree of life" is another version of the tree as Self-symbol. In fact, Christ's cross is sometimes depicted as a tree.

Chaos, meanwhile, can be taken to symbolize the forces of the unconscious mind, just as order represents ego-consciousness. Jung's desideratum is to make one whole out of these two halves of the psyche. He wrote [per Stein, p. 189]:

Conscious and unconscious do not make a whole when one of them is suppressed and injured by the other. If they must contend, let it at least be a fair fight with equal rights on both sides. Both are aspects of life. Consciousness should defend its reason and protect itself, and the chaotic life of the unconscious should be given the chance of having its way too — as much of it as we can stand. This means open conflict and open collaboration at once. That, evidently, is the way human life should be. It is the old game of hammer and anvil. Between them the patient iron is forged into an indestructible whole, an "individual."

The "patient iron" must be beaten at least until we arrive at last at Stage 5 of consciousness, it seems. In this stage we begin to take the serpent seriously as, in its paradoxicality, constituting yet another vital symbol of wholeness — as does the "tree of life," as does the "edge of chaos."

Yet we cannot seem to get to this point unless we risk Stage 4 of the individuation process, with its attendant danger of losing our way and giving the ego over to the diabolical machinations of the shadow!