Explorations into the Self

Michael Fordham

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429913426
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This rewarding work is the product of sustained observation of and reflection on phenomena arising out of three broad topics in the field of analytical psychology. Firstly it analyses and evaluates the ambiguity in Jung's definitions and metaphors about the self, while at the same time expounding the theory of the self as a dynamic system, evolving through deintegration and reintegration processes during early infancy and childhood. Secondly it investigates the relation of the ego to the self, giving notable consideration to psychoanalytic work. Finally the presence of the self, behind or within both the religious and the alchemical experience, is explored. Fordham's innovative and original view of the self further extends our understanding of its dynamics and helps to establish some sense of the complementariness as well as differences between Jung and Klein.

Part One

Empirical foundation, hypoth and theories

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Chapter One

The self in Jung’s works*

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This first chapter is lengthy and somewhat heavy going – not perhaps the one to start interesting a reader anxious to obtain a concise understanding of what Jung meant by the self However, I consider it vital to go into his method, his use of observational data and his abstraction of them. As will be seen, his discovery of the self grew out of his opening-up of a new dimension of the psyche: an inner world of almost unlimited dimensions. It was from there that the self emerged.

At the time Jung was pioneering the field almost alone, but since then the self has come to occupy the interests of many others and especially psychoanalysts to whose publications I shall frequently refer. They differ from Jung’s radical understanding and so special attention needs to be given not only to Jung’s conceptions but also to the empirical foundations on which they rest.

Jung’s writings are extensive and it is easy to overlook important contributions on any particular topic. Therefore in the original version of this chapter, published in 1963, here much revised,* I attempted to avoid errors by using the indices in the Collected Works to sample and extract passages on the self. These were recorded on cards and then indexed alphabetically under subject headings. Thus the tendency to select quotations and distort summaries to suit the writer’s convenience, was, if not eradicated, at least kept in check. Furthermore, by using this sampling technique it was possible to decide what Jung said once and what he said repeatedly, to which statements he gave weight and which were intuitions thrown out in passing. The method was found to have another advantage; it became easier to notice when different formulations were the result of a major or a minor change in his views.

It was claimed that what was recorded in that paper gave the main trends in Jung’s developing concepts of the self. Two incompatible definitions emerged and I now believe that they derive partly from his method of investigation. That gives me an opportunity to start considering the place of abstraction in Jung’s presentations, in the context of his method of procedure.

Jung’s Method of Investigation

It is doubtful whether Jung ever developed a theory of the self. For instance, in The Undiscovered Self (Jung, 1957) he states: “Since self-knowledge is a matter of getting to know the individual facts, theories are of very little help” (Jung, 1957, p. 249). This statement and others like it are curious in a number of respects. It may for instance be questioned whether a theory that does not illumine “individual facts” is performing its proper function. The statement is surprising also since he consistently held that his theoretical position depended upon clinical data. The following passage, though written in 1917, is characteristic of his scientific method and he refers to it again and again:

My habit in my daily practical work is to confine myself for some time to studying my human material. I then abstract as general a formula as possible from the data collected, obtaining from it a point of view and applying it in my practical work until it has either been confirmed, modified, or else abandoned. If it has been confirmed, I publish it as a general view-point without giving the empirical material. I introduce the material amassed in the course of my practice only in the form of example or illustration (Jung, 1917, p. 294).

Alongside the abstracting process of scientific deduction he employed amplification. He collected parallels from myths, legends and other ethnological material at his disposal. That material he first used to elucidate clinical matter but, as time went on, myth, legend and the subject of religion increasingly became the main focus of his study. The theory of types grew out of clinical observations, that of the collective unconscious from his studies in mythology. In the latter he could not possibly fail to notice the ubiquity of the mythological motifs in different cultures and also in their history.

Once he had formulated his basic conceptions he could then use them as a frame of reference; his concept of the collective unconscious especially enabled him to give meaning to the imagery he had collected from innumerable sources and as a result he could amplify his clinical material to make sense out of irrational data – apparent chaos. Thus he could illuminate numerous aspects of human behaviour whether individual or collective. There can be no doubt that, however individual the self may be ultimately, it is also a general phenomenon and Jung actually shows it to be so. So wherein lie his doubts about the use of theory?

In 1912 Jung published the Psychology of the Unconscious. There, in the chapter “Concerning two kinds of thinking”, he distinguishes between directed thinking which leads to coherent logical patterns and undirected thinking which is controlled, as later became apparent, by the archetypal forms in the unconscious: it is thinking in metaphorical imagery which is loosely called symbolic. It may at first appear chaotic because the images amplify and overlap each other thus confusing organized thought processes which may then become defensive and so are of “very little help”. Since Jung contends that this “undirected” activity of the psyche, not controlled by the ego, is important and objective, he approaches attempts at replacing it with abstract conceptual statements with caution. Therefore he can say (Jung, 1951a, p. 33): “It is not the concept that matters; the concept is only a word, a counter, and it has meaning and use only because it stands for a certain sum of experience”. Here and in other places he shows his distrust of abstraction: “Once metaphysical ideas have lost their capacity to recall and evoke the original experience they have not only become useless but prove to be the actual impediments on the road to wider development” (ibid., p. 34). The same applies in metapsychological theorizing. It would appear that Jung refers to theories and classifications that become defensive or masquerade as “science” to hide their autonomous sterility.

In the question just cited, Jung refers to “the original experience” and that needs further attention. An important feature in Jung’s exposition is his contention that theories are the equivalent of myth-like elements. To demonstrate this he gives a list of primitive equivalents of his thesis “On psychic energy” (Jung, 1928a, p. 67), and elsewhere amongst other examples he reminds us of Robert Meyer’s discovery of the theory of the conservation of energy which took place more by inspiration than by logic (Jung, 1943, p. 67). The same might be said of Kekule’s visions which by abstraction made the discovery of the benzene ring possible. Examples could be multiplied but to no further purpose.

The interlacing of theory and primitive image, first presented in “Two kinds of thinking”, became a feature of Jung’s exposition: he uses myth to keep the imaginal experience alive and models or other forms of abstraction to contain, translate or explain them. Thus he struggles to ensure that the abstract propositions do not become divorced from their relation to metaphorically expressed structures of the mind.

It may be useful to consider an example of Jung’s way of interlacing myth and model. In the chapter on “Death” in “Psychology of the transference” (Jung, 1946, p. 256ff), he expounds alchemical metaphors about a dropsical state of the king and queen. These he interprets, i.e. explains, as depicting the tendency for inflation to occur when assimilating unconscious contents. Then continuing with the alchemist’s statement he says that the process can lead to death. However, “The alchemists assert that death is at once the conception of the filius philosophorum a peculiar variation of the Anthropos . . .”. This filius philosophorum Jung then amplifies by drawing a parallel with the Gnostic Christ and continues: “This ‘son’ is the new man, the product of the union of the king and the queen though here he is not born of the queen; but king and queen are themselves transformed into the new birth.”

Translated into the language of psychology the mythologem runs: “. . . the union of the conscious mind or ego-personality [the king] with the unconscious personified as the anima [the queen] produces a new personality [the self] compounded of both” (ibid., p. 264). Here he deploys his theory of two kinds of thinking thereby recognizing that his abstract concepts and myth are analogous.

It must be said, however, that theories have advantages over myths in scientific studies: they do jobs of the kind that the theory of the collective unconscious performed for Jung; furthermore, they can lead into areas where we are ignorant, can orientate those who think, can become a means of communication, can explain observations and are the stuff of good interpretations especially in their transformative capacities. Evidently theories modify, usefully, the primitive phenomena from which, at the same time, they are abstracted. I shall contend that the two conceptions of the self found in Jung’s works, stem from the interlacing of primitive experience and the abstractions from them.

Since Jung has apparently two ways of conceiving the self, it may be enquired whether there is an inherent objection in his writings to that state of affairs. It would seem that he sometimes thought not, but in 1913 he developed his theory of types to account for the different positions of Freud, Adler and himself; each theory seemed then to cover adequately the same observations. He developed his position later at great length in Psychological Types (Jung, 1921). He did indeed seem to support the idea that contending theories are, at one level, desirable. Yet all the same, it may be reflected, by introducing into the often acrimonious discussion between Freud and Adler a theory of types, Jung clearly tried to resolve the supposed incompatibility that was so apparent in the early conflicts amongst psychoanalysts. That will also be my aim in this chapter when considering Jung’s two formulations on the nature of the self.

I am persuaded that Jung’s method of presentation stems from his attempt to find ways of expressing the wholeness of the self. In doing so he ran up against the lack of adequate language for so doing. Scientific discourse relies too heavily on abstract theorizing about well-defined data and seeks to exclude the symbolic metaphors through which the unconscious finds expression. So in his later exposition he relied more and more on paradox especially using those found in alchemy.

His attitude would also seem to have stemmed from the notion of the psyche being at once the subject and the object of cognition. That is a proposition which derives from the possibility of making the abstraction from primitive thought a subject for investigation as Jung himself demonstrated in his “The theological disputes of the ancient church” to be found in Psychological Types.

So it is eventually a question of what matter is chosen for investigation and it follows that the very abstractions Jung made can themselves be a matter for study. This argument looks circular but I would rather consider it as an attempt to envisage the spiral resulting from the interacting relation between the conscious mind, the unconscious and differing layers of consciousness.

I will add a further comment on Jung’s periodic warning about the danger of theories. It was not only the emptiness of metaphysical proposition that has already been noted but also his accusation that Freud made a dogma out of his sexual theory of the libido. For such reasons as well as the frequent confusion in the literature, I will consider what aids we have to orientate ourselves amongst the more abstract forms of mental activity.

Having selected a subject matter for study, such as dreams or active imaginings and having decided that it is the less personal or even impersonal contents of these to which we wish to pay attention, we may then wish to organize them or draw conclusions about them.

If we are very uncertain about how to pursue these objectives, we can construct a proposition for instance that such data are not to be considered as the result of personal developmental processes. We can further seek to explain them by considering them as the expression of inherited tendencies. Both propositions can act as stimulants to further investigation but they lack support and can not be proved under prevailing conditions of knowledge – when that is so, they are to be classed as hypotheses.

But if evidence accumulates so that enough support is gained and if no other proposition carries equal weight, then the proposition at first assessed as an hypothesis becomes up graded and gains the status of a theory. I am not putting forward more criteria for deciding whether a proposition is to be considered as one or the other, all I want to establish is that there are ideas which may help in orientating ourselves. Nor am I considering the proposition that it is more important to show that the theory or hypothesis cannot be disproved.

Another way of proceeding to organize the data of experience is to construct models. These are less abstract and more pictorial than either hypotheses or theories. They are nearer to metaphors but are more complex in their structure than that which most metaphors express. They are abstract and generalized pictures of mental or other elements in the psyche and as such may be more helpful than their abstract equivalents.

The last instrument to consider is definition, especially since Jung paid much attention to the need for it and devoted a section of Psychological Types to formulating ones that he thought significant – there are fifty-seven of them. Their positive function is to make a proposition sufficiently definite for it to be used or manipulated. Their negative valence is that they exclude from the field of investigation everything that is not in the definition and so they can become excluding and defensive. However, the proper objective of definition is to exclude irrelevant data and so further the process of clarification – their defensiveness has that advantage.

It may be asked, and it is asked: why do you want to abstract? why not be content with describing? There are a number of considerations relevant to that question:

1. If description were to be complete, it would be extremely cumbersome and, however detailed, would be incomplete.
2. There is therefore a need to organize and generalize and explain the data by containing or penetrating them so as to gain greater understanding how the elements in the data of experience operate and come into being.
3. There is a need to evaluate what is described.
4. By abstracting and so getting a distance from the data, it is possible to define a way to make new experimental discoveries.

All these “rules” for considering the abstracting process are instruments of the conscious mind and in as much as directed thinking is in operation they orientate, but they can also be used against the expressions of undirected thinking which manifests the “unconscious”. In revenge, the “unconscious” can penetrate any of the instruments by making them into undesirable and unintended dogma.

Other methods for handling abstractions have been devised by psychoanalysis in their metapsychology and other abstruse techniques have been devised by Bion. It is not necessary to do more than note that they exist since they would unduly complicate my argument.

There is a tendency amongst analysts to try and make our science conform to the less penetrating natural sciences, but that will not serve my purpose. There is a psychology of facts just as there is a psychology of theories, hypotheses and models. Jung took up the subject of facts when he considered the sensation type which relied on the perception of facts, but because he linked it up with typology the conception was still-born.

The tendency of scientists to assume that their psychology does not enter into their labours is on the wane, and that gives space for analysts to put forward what they know without minding when told that what they do is not “scientific”. Science depends upon imaginative leaps just as much as on detailed observation and experiment. Basically it is a discipline that endeavours to increase knowledge, knowing that ultimate knowledge is beyond its reach – a statement that will be qualified later on. That, however, is the significance of that philosophy of science which asserts that a scientific hypothesis will be taken as provisionally valid if it can not be disproved.

Clinical Experiences

Many years ago, in his first publication (1902), Jung recorded his study of a hysterical medium. Towards the end of his investigations, the young woman developed visions of world forces which became a mystical system. To express her experiences she used concentric circles divided by two diameters into four parts. Although today the diagram is unmistakab...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part One: Empirical Foundation, Hypotheses and Theories
• Part Two: Ego and Self
• Part Three: Religion, Mysticism, Alchemy
• Bibliography
• Index