The inflation of the ego is brought about by its identification with the collective values.
All states of inflation and possession are accompanied by a restriction of consciousness.
The clearest example of this is the idle fixe, when the ego is overpowered and dominated by a fixed idea, with the result that it ignores essential aspects of reality.
The tyranny of the content by which consciousness is possessed leads to the repression of such elements in reality as are incompatible with the idea that has obtained “possession”; and the ignoring of these factors then results in disaster.
As is demonstrated by a wealth of historical examples, every form of fanaticism, every dogma and every type of compulsive one-sidedness is finally overthrown by precisely those elements which it has itself repressed, suppressed or ignored.
The inflation of the ego is brought about by its identification with the collective values.
What makes this inflation so disastrous, however, is not some intrinsic danger to be found in the nature of the values themselves ; it is rather that, by identifying his personal ego with the transpersonal in the shape of the collective values, the limited individual loses contact with his own limitations and becomes inhuman.
But the individual’s essential non-identity with the transpersonal is in fact the basis of his life.
The uniqueness and individuality of man is realised precisely by the self-differentiation of the creaturely and limited from the unlimited power of the Creator.
In inflation, this basic situation is by-passed, and man becomes a chimera, a “pure spirit” or disembodied ghost.
This constellation, which may manifest itself in the form of dreams of flying or of becoming invisible, often enough has the same ending as the flight of Icarus, which in fact portrays this basic psychological situation in terms of the symbolic language of myth.
The pinions of the inflated ego, which are secured by nothing stouter than wax, cannot tolerate the solvent force of the transpersonal sun on its all too high and giddy flight.
The result is the fall of Icarus into the sea; the ego, which had imagined itself to be immortal, is destroyed by being swallowed up by the unconscious. ― Erich Neumann, Depth Psychology and a New Ethic, Page 42-43
