This Jungian Life

Erich Neumann publicly proposed the concept of the ego-Self (or Self-ego) axis and began to sketch its implications in his 1952 Eranos lecture, "The Psyche and the Transformation of the Reality Planes. Edward Edinger popularized the concept writing, "It portrays the developmental relationship between the ego and the Self, Jung’s term for “the totality of the conscious and unconscious psyche [that] transcends our visions…”  As infants, we embody an original wholeness, or Self-hood, out of which ego (a sense of “I”) gradually emerges. The connection to the Self may be damaged if the ego believes itself the sole source of identity and life or if the ego has been depleted through trauma. In either case, reconnection to the Self is essential to life vitality. A living relationship with the Self can be sought through work with the unconscious: we can attend to our dreams, develop self-reflective capacity, and learn to see meaning and magic in everyday occurrences.  Here’s the dream we analyze: “I was taking part in