Digesting Jung: Food for the Journey - Inner City Books

56 The Self-Regulation of the Psyche
tached, and about which it revolves very much as the earth revolves
round the sun—thus we come to the goal of individuation. 41
So long as the self is unconscious, it corresponds to Freud’s superego
and is a source of perpetual moral conflict. If, however, it is
withdrawn from projection and is no longer identical with public
opinion, then one is truly one’s own yea and nay. The self then functions
as a union of opposites and thus constitutes the most immediate
experience of the Divine which it is psychologically possible to
imagine. 42
Like any archetype, the essential nature of the Self is unknown
and possibly unknowable, but its many and various manifestations—archetypal
images—are known to us, in one form or another,
as the content of dreams, myth and legend. Jung says it all:
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 (archenemy,
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. 43
Psychologically, uniting the opposites involves first recognizing
them in whatever conflict we are engaged in, and then holding the
tension between them. The extent to which we are successful in this
difficult and often lengthy endeavor—the degree of wholeness we
experience—can be called a manifestation of the Self, or, if one
prefers, the grace of God.
41 Ibid., par. 405.
42 “Transformation Symbolism in the Mass,” Psychology and Religion, CW 11,
par. 396.
43 “Definitions,” Psychological Types, CW 6, par. 790.