Hi Sealchan,
I apologize for taking so long to reply. Also, I have not yet has a chance to formulate a more extensive reply. I've been very backed up on my correspondence over the last few weeks (both with Useless Science responses and with IAJS debates). For now, I will just say a few general things . . . contextualizations, I guess.
The concern I previously expressed about what seemed like a potential overestimation of the ego in your theory is an issue that was central to Jung's thinking and to classical Jungianism especially. This Jungian idea was expressed in the tendency to downgrade the hero (or as I would have it, the patriarchal conquering hero). In classical Jungian thought, this (conquering) hero was associated with the ego and with the solar myth, the rise and fall or transcendence and descent of the sun . . . the sun that "conquers darkness" (like to Roman Sol Invictus). Jung associated that darkness conquering heroic ego with the ego that "brings illumination" to the unconscious. But at the same time, he saw this as ultimately pathological, and he saw the hero as an ego construction that must "die"/descend/give way to the Self-as-God-image or the larger center of personality.
Jungians to this day have remained skeptical and at least superficially/consciously anti-heroic . . . although I would argue that Jung actually maintained an equivocal position regarding the hero and did not fully reject it as a functional component of the egoic attitude. So, by conventional Jungian conceptualization, your accordance of the ego with significant, rather heroic/conquering significance would be considered a textbook example of "ego-inflation".
The Jungian value system is essentially religious, by which I mean that it values a larger/greater Other over the ego, and it assumes that the path of individuation is ego-humbling as the ego comes into deeper relationship with the Self/unconscious. This process would parallel the relationship a Christian has with God. The Jungian system is meant to uphold "Christian humility".
In some very general ways, I agree with this classical Jungian construction of ego/Self relations, but my approach is even more extreme in its "ego-devaluation" than Jung's, because Jung prescribed a "strong", rather detached ego that could act as an aloof, almost "scientific" observer of the objective psyche/Other. His belief was that a failure to maintain this kind of ego-autonomous detachment from the "unconscious" would lead to "possession" of the "weak ego" by the unconscious (specifically by complexes, "splinter psyches", and/or archetypes.
In other words, Jung prescribed an observer relationship with archetypes and autonomous psychic contents . . . much as a psychoanalyst might "observe" a patient with some degree of concerned detachment. It's a very doctorly model.
But this prescription is curiously defied by Jung's own actions. This is especially clear in the Red Book in which he makes a creative attempt (via what he would come to call active imagination) to engage with his psychic Others and autonomous splinter psyches. But Jung's approach is dissociated, because on one hand, he embarks on the Red Book project as if he were really engaging with these psychic Others . . . but on the other hand, he does try to maintain the observer aloofness he prescribed. His narrator in the Red Book waffles between these stances. It's as if he shows up for the engagements, but all he does is resist and recoil in the actual presence of these others (perhaps in the way that a psychoanalyst might resist engagement with a patient who wants to "know" them . . . or equally, like a psychoanalytic patient who "resists analysis", i.e., does not accept the interpretations and therapeutic efforts of the analyst).
Throughout the narrative of the Red Book, Jung consistently rebukes his anima figure, the "soul". He clearly feels overpowered by her, and some part of him longs to "surrender" to her, but he bucks up again and again and does what he believes is the "manly" thing to do, i.e., he considers her a temptress to be resisted and his own attraction to her a matter of "moments of weakness". He addresses these moments of weakness with very conventional (although perhaps somewhat dated/medieval) Christian penitence.
On the other hand, Jung's reaction to the parade of wise old man and Great Man figures is remarkably different. He is each time seduced by them, but then grows tired of them or begins to see through them. I would argue that the "seductiveness" he attributes to the anima is actually a shadow projection redistributed onto the anima, but which rightfully belongs to his wise old man/Great Man constructions. This is one of the reasons that the anima in his fantasy is often the shadow companion of a wise old man. I.e., they are a fused archetype for Jung, because his anima is only accessible through his fantasy of the wise old man of mystical hero he wants to become. And he wants to become that hero or Great Man without engaging with the anima (which constitutes a major fallacy in Jungian thought).
As Jung works through his wise old men while flirting with but always warding off his anima, he gains "mana" power from seeing-through the limitations of each wise old man. Eventually, he runs into Philemon, who is a wizard (whose wife-anima, Baucis, has completely faded into the background and plays no role), and Jung becomes indoctrinated in Philemon's magic, which has both light and dark aspects (or is both natural/chthonic as well as spiritual/religious). This wise old man Jung fails to see through, and the Red Book concludes with an identification between Philemon and Jung. This identification takes place in a "famous" piece of Jungian arcana called the
Seven Sermons to the Dead. These were published separately (albeit privately) by Jung during his lifetime and were printed also in Memories Dreams Reflections.
In MDR, the Seven Sermons are written as if Jung is the speaker (although he uses the pseudonym Basilides), but in their original form (as the last chapter of the Red Book), Philemon is the speaker. They sound like prophetic Gnostic philosophical prescriptions, and they are used (by Philemon) to conquer "the dead" who "came back from Jerusalem where we found not what we sought". The dead are dissatisfied, and Philemon beats back this dissatisfaction with his Gnostic proclamations.
But it is curious that after the long meandering narratives of the Red Book, here at the very end, the only psychic Others are "the dead" (no longer differentiated and named characters as they had been previously) and they are dissatisfied with (it would seem) "Christlikeness". I feel it is most logical to read this dissatisfaction of the dead as a dissatisfaction of the autonomous psyche with Jung's own attempts at "Christlikeness". I.e., Jung does not redeem or valuate the psychic Other. He does not "redeem" or re-valuate God as Christ supposedly did. Instead he conquers "God", by first turning Him into a horde of poltergeists (the dead), and then assuming the identity of an exorcist and casting them out.
So the Red Book ends in inflation or identification with the mana-personality (Philemon). It's a position of ego-aggrandizement. The ego (as Philemon wizard) masters the Otherness of the unconscious, and this mastery results in a purge. There is another section at the end of the Red Book (just before the Seven Sermons) called Scrutinies in which Jung becomes infused with what I call the Demon and linguistically whips himself for his earlier weaknesses (i.e., his identifications with the shadow). This Demon-possession leads directly to the Seven Sermons and Jung's identification with the Philemon mana-personality.
In other words, there is a great deal of confusion in the Jungian attitude where the heroic ego is concerned. Jung did at least at one point identify with a mana-personality type of ego (similar to the conquering ego you portray), but he later (at least outwardly) rejected this identification as pathological. In his
Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, Jung gives a seemingly non-personal rendition of the whole ego/anima/mana personality relationship that parallels his Red Book narrative but concludes with the acknowledgment that the mana-personality (clearly based on his Philemon fantasy) is a pathological and inflated construction that must be worked through.
Other Jungians have not ventured into this morass as deeply as Jung did, and have instead sided entirely with the heroic-ego-as-inflated/pathological position. But this onesidedness has enabled Jungian thought regarding the hero and egoic inflation to ossify as a dogma which protects deeper examination of a cultural complex.
In summary, the conventional Jungian positions on the heroism of the ego would fundamentally reject your own constructions of egoic power and centrality in the psyche . . . BUT, the grounds on which this rejection would be made are (in my opinion) not adequately understood or thought through by Jungians. I think that some of the reactionary Jungian feelings regarding the archetypal hero are defenses against unresolved Jungian ego-inflation or ego-aggrandizement. The problem of the hero is tabooed in Jungian thought. That is, Jungians are not allowed to see through the totemic dogmas surrounding the hero (and this totemization protects them from their own lingering inflations and lack of knowing . . . as well as a lack of valid initiation or understanding of mysticism). This all makes for a very problematic contextualization of your theories about the ego, which neither accords with Jungian anti-heroism and reactive ego-deflation (i.e., a defensive reaction formation) nor with archetypal mysticism, in which the ego is dissolved or dismembered in order to allow "crossover" to/interaction with the other/spiritual world. The mystical hero can barter a bit in this other world and perhaps rescue a lost soul, but in no way engages in any kind of conquering or colonization. The mystical hero is always only a powerless guest in the other world.
I certainly don't mean to discourage your attempts to theorize the ego construct or to discourage your creative process, which I think you describe very fairly. I think the problem is that my own orientation draws from the two "institutions" I mentioned above: Jungianism and mysticism. I consider myself a Jungian (albeit an outsider-Jungian), and I have devoted much of my time and intellectual energy over the last five years or so (and even fairly consistently since I was about 18 or 19) to studying Jungian thought and contextualizing my own experience within it. But as much as I am a Jungian, I actually favor the mystical disposition and attitude (where the idea of the ego is concerned). Jungianism doesn't go far enough in breaking down and analyzing the ego for my taste. It leaves many psychological mysteries totemized rather than either scientifically or mystically investigated. The ego/Self relationship (that underlies mysticism) is not as simple as "identification with the unconscious is 'bad'". The relationship is much more subtle and complex, and there are many more ways to fail to "be conscious" than Jungians have seemed to recognize.
In his Seminar on the Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, 1922, Jung said:
That is one of the great difficulties in experiencing the unconscious—that one identifies with it and becomes a fool. You must not identify with the unconscious; you must keep outside, detached, and observe objectively what happens.... it is exceedingly difficult to accept such a thing, because we are so imbued with the fact that our unconscious is our own—my unconscious, his unconscious, her unconscious—and our prejudice is so strong that we have the greatest trouble disidentifying.
But this is not a scientifically/psychologically acceptable postulate. That is, it is not founded on clear evidence. It is an interpretation of certain kinds of psychopathology based on Jung's prejudicial and unfounded view that the "unconscious" is
objectively a wild, chaotic Other with often insidious, appetitive intents. I.e., the "unconscious" in some sense "wants" to possess the ego and turn the conscious individual into an unconscious and almost totally dysfunctional, "archetype-possessed" creature. The "unconscious" for Jung is like a psychotic patient who is potentially dangerous. It must be subdued and interpreted and sublimated (through art or active imagination and other such acceptable expressions). But at the same time, Jung's "unconscious" is compensatory to ego consciousness. So active attempts by the ego to control and conquer consciousness tend to backfire and lead to "possession" of the ego by the hero archetype, thereby depriving the ego of its autonomy from the psyche.
It's a convoluted construction that makes relationship with the autonomous psyche very dicey. The way to pursue this relationship functionally is never clearly spelled out by Jung. Ego/Self relations become very convoluted at best and fall into hypocrisy at worst. There is more equivocation in Jung than can be distilled into straightforward sense. My main thrust in responding to you is to say that this whole area is a massively complex minefield that Jung has made a partial map of, although that map also includes some significant errors. But a partial map with a few errors is still a useful text to draw from. It can be studied and understood (it has a kind of logic to it), but it cannot be wholly relied on for guidance. Jung did react theoretically against egoic inflation . . . and also against the kind of egocentrism that he saw in Freud's model. But the Jungian quest to understand the ego and its relationship to the archetype of the hero remains not only unfinished, but arguably aborted. It remains trapped like Odysseus on Calypso's island, wrestling with past dissatisfactions and delusions that are not entirely processed yet.
One cannot dive into this swamp of half-theories and confusing data without a great deal of grounding both in previous literature and in any current, relevant thought. There is no solid foundation on which to build. My own feeling is that scientifically minded patience is warranted here. There is a lot of bean-sorting to do, a very gradual and very thorough analytical differentiation of data. Intuition may leap forward, but here I think we need to know the elements of these intuitions and perform careful forensic work with hermetic focus and perseverance. That is, we have a huge mess, a gigantic train wreck, an extremely bloody crime scene, and we need to be extremely careful not to make things worse or render them even more unintelligible.