I. The Ego
Investigation of the psychology of the unconscious confronted me with facts which required the formulation of new concepts.
One of these concepts is the self.
The entity so denoted is not meant to take the place of the one that has always been known as the ego, but includes it in a supraordinate concept.
We understand the ego as the complex factor to which all conscious contents are related.
It forms, as it were, the centre of the field of consciousness; and, in so far as this comprises the empirical personality, the ego is the subject of all personal acts of consciousness.
The relation of a psychic content to the ego forms the criterion of its consciousness, for no content can be conscious unless it is represented to a subject.
With this definition we have described and delimited the scope of the subject.
Theoretically, no limits can be set to the field of consciousness, since it is capable of indefinite extension.
Empirically, however, it always finds its limit when it comes up against the unknown.
This consists of everything we do not know, which, therefore, is not related to the ego as the centre of the field of consciousness.
The unknown falls into two groups of objects: those which are outside and can be experienced by the senses, and those which are inside and are experienced immediately.
The first group comprises the unknown in the outer world; the second the unknown in the inner world. We call this latter territory the unconscious.
The ego, as a specific content of consciousness, is not a simple or elementary factor but a complex one which, as such, cannot be described exhaustively.
Experience shows that it rests on two seemingly different bases: the somatic and the psychic.
The somatic basis is inferred from the totality of endosomatic perceptions, which for their part are already of a psychic nature and are associated with the ego, and are therefore conscious.
They are produced by endosomatic stimuli, only some of which cross the threshold o consciousness.
A considerable proportion of these stimuli occur unconsciously, that is, subliminally.
The fact that they are subliminal does not necessarily mean that their status is merely physiological, any more than this would be true of a psychic content.
Sometimes they are capable of crossing the threshold, that is, of becoming perceptions.
But there is no doubt that a large proportion of these endosomatic stimuli are simply incapable of consciousness and are so elementary that there is no reason to assign them a psychic natureunless of course one favours the philosophical view that all life-processes are psychic anyway.
The chief objection to this hardly demonstrable hypothesis is that it enlarges the concept of the psyche beyond all bounds and interprets the life-process in a way not absolutely warranted by the facts.
Concepts that are too broad usually prove to be unsuitable instruments because they are too vague and nebulous.
I have therefore suggested that the term “psychic” be used only where there is evidence of a will capable of modifying reflex or instinctual processes.
Here I must refer the reader to my paper “On the Nature of the Psyche,” where I have discussed this definition of the “psychic” at somewhat greater length.
The somatic basis of the ego consists, then, of conscious and unconscious factors.
The same is true of the psychic basis: on the one hand the ego rests on the total field of consciousness, and on the other, on the sum total of unconscious contents.
These fall into three groups: first, temporarily subliminal contents that can be reproduced voluntarily (memory); second, unconscious contents that cannot be reproduced voluntarily; third, contents that are not capable of becoming conscious at all.
Group two can be inferred from the spontaneous irruption of subliminal contents into consciousness.
Group three is hypothetical; it is a logical inference from the facts underlying group two.
This contains contents which have not yet irrupted into consciousness, or which never will.
When I said that the ego “rests” on the total field of consciousness I do not mean that it consists of this.
Were that so, it would be indistinguishable from the field of consciousness as a whole.
The ego is only the latter’s point of reference, grounded on and limited by the somatic factor described above.
Although its bases are in themselves relatively unknown and unconscious, the ego is a conscious factor par excellence. It is even acquired, empirically speaking, during the individual’s lifetime.
It seems to arise in the first place from the collision between the somatic factor and the environment, and, once established as a subject, it goes on developing from further collisions with the outer world and the inner.
Despite the unlimited extent of its bases, the ego is never more and never less than consciousness as a whole.
As a conscious factor the ego could, theoretically at least, be described completely.
But this would never amount to more than a picture of the conscious personality; all those features which are unknown or unconscious to the subject would be missing. A total picture would have to Include these.
But a total description of the personality is, even in theory, absolutely impossible, because the unconscious portion of it cannot be grasped cognitively.
This unconscious portion, as experience has abundantly shown, is by no means unimportant.
On the contrary, the most decisive qualities in a person are often unconscious and can be perceived only by others, or have to be laboriously discovered with outside help.
Clearly, then, the personality as a total phenomenon does not coincide with the ego, that is, with the conscious personality, but forms an entity that has to be distinguished from the ego.
Naturally the need to do this is incumbent only on a psychology that reckons with the fact of the unconscious, but for such a psychology the distinction is of paramount importance.
Even for jurisprudence it should be of some importance whether certain psychic facts are conscious or not for instance, in adjudging the question of responsibility.
I have suggested calling the total personality which, though present, cannot be fully known, the self.
The ego is, by definition, subordinate to the self and is related to it like a part to the whole, Inside the field of consciousness it has, as we say, free will.
By this I do not mean anything philosophical, only the well-known psychological fact of “free choice/’ or rather the subjective feeling of freedom.
But, just as our free will clashes with necessity in the outside world, so also it finds its limits outside the field of consciousness in the subjective inner world, where it comes into conflict with the facts of the self.
And just as circumstances or outside events “happen” to us and limit our freedom, so the self acts upon the ego like an objective occurrence which free will can do very little to alter.
It is, indeed, well known that the ego not only can do nothing against the self, but is sometimes actually assimilated by unconscious components of the personality that are in the process of development and is greatly altered by them.
It is, in the nature of the case, impossible to give any general description of the ego except a formal one.
Any other mode of observation would have to take account of the individuality which attaches to the ego as one of Its main characteristics.
Although the numerous elements composing this complex factor are, in themselves, everywhere the same, they are infinitely varied as regards clarity, emotional colouring, and scope.
The result of their combination the ego is therefore, so far as one can judge, individual and unique, and retains its identity up to a certain point. Its stability is relative, because far-reaching changes of personality can sometimes occur.
Alterations of this kind need not always be pathological; they can also be developmental and hence fall within the scope of the normal.
Since it is the point of reference for the field of consciousness, the ego Is the subject of all successful attempts at adaptation so far as these are achieved by the will.
The ego therefore has a significant part to play in the psychic economy.
Its position there is so important that there are good grounds for the prejudice that the ego is the centre of the personality, and that the field of consciousness is the psyche per se.
If we discount certain suggestive ideas in Leibniz, Kant, Schelling, and Schopenhauer, and the philosophical excursions of Gams and von Hartmann, It is only since the end of the nineteenth century that modern psychology, with its inductive methods, has discovered the foundations of consciousness and proved empirically the existence of a psyche outside consciousness.
With this discovery the position of the ego, till then absolute, became relativized; that Is to say, though It retains its quality as the centre of the field of consciousness, it is questionable whether it is the centre of the personality. It is part of the personality but not the whole of; It.
As I have said, it is simply impossible to estimate how large or how small its share is; how free or how dependent it Is on the qualities of this its freedom is limited and its dependence proved in ways that are often decisive.
In my experience one would do well not to underestimate its dependence on the unconscious.
Naturally there is no need to say this to persons who already overestimate the latter’s importance. Some criterion for the right measure is afforded by the psychic consequences of a wrong estimate, a point to which we shall return later on.
We have seen that, from the standpoint of the psychology of consciousness, the unconscious can be divided into three groups of contents.
But from the standpoint of the psychology of the personality a twofold division ensues: an “extra-conscious” psyche whose contents are personal, and an “extra-conscious” psyche whose contents are impersonal and collective.
The first group comprises contents which are integral components of the individual personality and could therefore just as well be conscious; the second group forms, as it were, an omnipresent, unchanging, and everywhere identical quality or substrate of the psyche per se.
This is, of course, no more than a hypothesis. But we are driven to it by the peculiar nature of the empirical material, not to mention the high probability that the general similarity of psychic processes in all individuals must be based on an equally general and impersonal principle that conforms to law, just as the instinct manifesting itself in the individual is only the partial manifestation of an instinctual substrate common to all men.
http://www.the16types.info/vbulletin/content.php/208-Phenomenology-of-the-Self-Jung