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All words are psychic organisms; each has at its core some fundamental human experience and there will be an image of that experience embedded in the etymology of the word. As one traces the way its usage has evolved, a whole organism unfolds.
Edward F. Edinger, The Aion Lectures, Lecture 1, p. 15, 24:34.
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In the woman's animus experience there will be similar factors: first of all the father, then brother, son, lover, husband and companion, all on the personal, acquired level. At the archetypal level may be found the divine guide and source of inspiration, or the evil rapist, or the personification of spiritual meaning, and finally the principle of Logos.
Edward F. Edinger, The Aion Lectures, p. 29.
Jung tells us that the anima and animus in the psyche are composed of three factors: the contrasexual qualities of the individual, the archetypal image, and the person's life experience of the opposite sex. The first two factors are innate. The third, one's life experience of the opposite sex, is acquired, and of course in actual living experience those innate and acquired factors are not neatly discriminated, but are overlapping and intermixing. In the third factor, the experience of the mother and father is overwhelmingly important, but the parents are not the only ones to contribute the acquired characteristics.
Edward F. Edinger, The Aion Lectures, p. 29.
Jung makes the point that the unconscious authority puts an end to such a conflict of duty by creating a fait accompli. All our unconscious, unwilled actions, all our so-called mistakes, are such faits accomplis. Such mistakes may have two different interpretations: for the young, the appropriate interpretation is that the mistake results from a failure of the will, because the young must have ego consolidation, and the emphasis must be on ego responsibility. If a mistake is made by the young, it is proper that they take responsibility for it. For someone in the second half of life, a mistake is properly understood as an act of God, and this is how I think one should understand so-called mistakes in analytic work with patients. They are meaningful acts of God, and in that sense they are not quite mistakes at all; they are interventions from the unconscious that have a purposefulness still to be discovered.
Edward F. Edinger, The Aion Lectures, p. 42.
The Self
Edward F. Edinger, The Aion Lectures, p. 34-6.
There is a logical problem in all of this, because when the Self is defined as the totality of the psyche, the totality includes the ego. How can the ego, a mere part of the whole, stand separate and speak of the totality as though it were something separate from itself? This paradox is built into the human psyche and into the phenomenon of consciousness. It is as though the ego as the son takes over some of the qualities of the Self as the father, and presumes to be a separate entity even while it is still part of the whole.
In the first stage, the ego is still contained in the original unconscious Self. It has not been born yet, so to speak.
In the second stage, it starts to peep out; nevertheless, in spite of the fact that it has some separate existence, the ego's center still remains in the Self, so there is still a predominant state of ego-Self identity, which means that there can be no experience such as that which Jung describes as personality No. 1 and No. 2. Ego and Self would be felt as identical.
In the third stage, the center of the ego has emerged from its containment in the Self, and the ego is now in a position to experience itself as a separate center; the connection between the ego and the Self becomes conscious. What I call the ego-Self axis becomes a connecting link of which one is aware. Of course there would be no awareness of such a link until there is awareness of a duality rather than a unity.
The fourth stage is a hypothetical ideal, an imaginary state with no residual ego-Self identity at all. To the extent that the ego is identified with the Self, which is the state of the vast majority of humanity, unconscious assumptions prevail that the ego carries the qualities of the Self, that the ego is immortal, that it is the center of the world, and that its desires have the imperative of deity. This is not thought consciously of course; consciously, one can be quite civilized and apparently humble, yet still have quite different underlying unconscious assumptions which come into view under special circumstances.
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The major contributors to the anima experience in the man, in addition to the mother, are the sister, the daughter, the lover, the wife and companion. Those are all on the acquired level. Behind those personal experiences will be archetypal factors which will be met as divine guide and source of inspiration, or evil seductress, or a personification of fate or destiny or life itself, and finally the principle of eros.
Edward F. Edinger, The Aion Lectures, p. 29.
Who eats whom?
Edward F. Edinger, The Aion Lectures, p. 41.
Jung then goes on to speak of two alternative psychic catastrophes, one in which the ego is assimilated by the Self, and the other where the Self is assimilated by the ego. Now, "assimilation" is a euphemism for being eaten. Throughout nature, the basic question is who eats whom. If the Self eats the ego, at the worst there is an overt psychosis. If the ego eats the Self which seems like an impossible thing to do since the smaller should not be able to swallow the larger; still Jung does speak of such conditions then "the self . . . becomes assimilated to the ego . . . . [in which case] the world of consciousness must now be levelled down in favour of the reality of the unconscious." (par. 47)
If the ego devours the Self, then we have the rationalistic inflation that is so predominant in which the ego assumes itself to be the totality. In such a case, the antidote must be that the powers of the ego be levelled down in favor of the reality of the unconscious. In the previous situation, in which the Self assimilates the ego, the contrary is called for: all the conscious virtues attention, conscientiousness, patience, adaptation must be mobilized to the maximum degree. Jung continues in paragraph 48:
The real moral problems spring from conflicts of duty. Anyone who is sufficiently humble, or easy-going, can always reach a decision with the help of some outside authority. But one who trusts others as little as himself can never reach a decision at all, unless it is brought about in the manner which Common Law calls an "Act of God" . . . In all such cases there is an unconscious authority which puts an end to doubt by creating a fait accompli.
Jung goes on in paragraph 49 to say that such a fait accompli, an action of uncontrollable natural forces, is from a psychological standpoint much better thought of as the will of God than as the result of natural or instinctual forces, because, he says:
If . . . the inner authority is conceived as the "will of God" . . . our self-esteem is benefited because the decision then appears to be an act of obedience and the result a divine intention.
Jung does admit that this point of view can be used as a convenient way of escaping ego responsibility, but this criticism is justified only when one is "knowingly hiding one's own egoistic opinion."
Loss of Religion
Edward F. Edinger, The Aion Lectures, p. 40ff.
Jung's discussion of the experience of the Self in this chapter pertains to individuals who have lost their religious projection. It will not have any meaning for people whose religious projection is still intact.
Inflation is one of the problems Jung speaks of in the ego's encounter with the Self. In paragraph 44 he says:
The more numerous and the more significant the unconscious contents which are assimilated to the ego, the closer the approximation of the ego to the self, even though this approximation must be a never-ending process. This inevitably produces an inflation of the ego, unless a critical line of demarcation is drawn between it and the unconscious figures. But this act of discrimination yields practical results only if it succeeds in fixing reasonable boundaries to the ego and in granting the figures of the unconscious the self, anima, animus, and shadow relative autonomy and reality (of a psychic nature).
Fixing reasonable boundaries to the ego is an important feature of practical analysis. For instance, it is commonplace to hear such remarks as, ''I made this mistake, I had that reaction,'' when in fact these events are products of the unconscious. Jung gives an example of this in his Houston interviews. The young interviewer asks him why a patient selects a particular symptom and Jung jumps on him with a vengeance: "He doesn't select; they happen to him. You could ask just as well when you are eaten by a crocodile, how you happened to select that crocodile; he has selected you!"
The ego does not choose its symptoms; it is a victim of the particular symptom that the unconscious throws up. The symptom is like a crocodile that grips and possesses one. This is most important to realize. This is how we fix reasonable boundaries to the ego: we don't grant to the ego power and responsibility that don't properly belong to it. That would be inflation.
Jung's discussion of inflation continues with its perils:
No more than a flight of steps or a smooth floor is needed to precipitate a fatal fall . . . . This condition [inflation] should not be interpreted as one of conscious self-aggrandizement. Such is far from being the rule. (par. 44)
Inflation is far more subtle than that. It is a completely unconscious, unscrutinized presupposition almost universally held, that there is no such thing as an autonomous psyche beyond the ego; anyone who talks in public about the autonomous psyche is suspected of being a little crazy. Although this state of unconscious inflation is practically universal, one generally does not get into trouble with it. It is astonishing that the vast majority of people can live quite happily in a state of inflation. It is a natural condition unless the individuation process is activated; then one is held to account.
