Author Topic: Ego/Self as Part/Whole  (Read 10558 times)

Sealchan

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Ego/Self as Part/Whole
« on: April 08, 2011, 06:48:49 PM »
In complex adaptive systems and other related fields there is a fundamental concept, or rather intuitive axiom, that it is useful to consider a phenomenon as being a whole and as having parts.  Such phrases as "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" key into this simple concept.  We can free apply this notion to a whole range of phenomenon from natural systems to works of art (when we analyze what a part of the art piece means in the whole of the work). 

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_psychology...

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The overarching goal of Jungian psychology is the attainment of Self through individuation. What is the self? Jung defines it as the "archetype of wholeness and the regulating center of the psyche."

So Self is a word that references the whole of the psyche as a system.  There is also an archetype that we call "the whole" or "wholeness".  This restates what I said above about the part/whole being an intuitive axiom which is another way I have of saying an archetype (or you could call it a qualia of intuition).  We could say then that part is part of the archetype of the whole.  The whole collects all parts together and represents them under one "referant". 

Is the Self a part of the whole psyche or does it refer to the whole psyche?  Based on the above it would seem to be the latter.

Is the Self a complex like the ego or is it the sum of all inner complexes?  If we say that the psyche is composed of complexes that are ordered by individual experience, instintual drives and archetypal patterns, then the Self refers to all the archetypes and all the complexes that have formed in response to them and to the other factors within a given individual. 

The ego then is a part of the psyche.  The center of the ego is in consciousness.  Therefore, the center of the Self only differs from the center of the ego because the Self includes all of the unconscious parts of the psyche as well as the conscious ones.  similarly, the ego is part of the Self.  We could logically deduce that the center of the consciousness part of the Self is the ego. 

So what is consciousness from the view of this depth psychological application of the intuitive archetype of part/whole?  In my way of understanding, consciousness is simply the strongest flow of libido in the psyche.  That flow, over time, orders the psyche.  The strongest prevailing order in the psyche is that which best organizes memory.  By organizing memory the organizer gets reinforced.  The more memory that is organized the broader the scope of the ego.  The better able the memory can be applied to anticipate and successfully resolve instinctual needs as the events of the world occur, the more robust is the ego. 

Jung proposed the transcendent function as a function of the psyche to lead the ego back to the psychic center which is the Self.  In my way of thinking it is the action of the conscious function of intuition that applies the archetype of wholeness (based on what inner brain stucture I don't have a guess for) that produces the symbol that represents the center of the wholeness of the psyche.  The transcendent function then is simply intuition seen as having a goal of centering the ego in the broader psychic landscape (the Self).

Having postulated a function of intuition why would Jung postulate a separate transcendent function?  I think this is because he could not claim as precisely as I do what intuition is given my connection of intuition to brain structure and function.  Jung's definition of intuition left much to be desired because it was so much oriented towards the unconscious as to make it a sort of catch all for any cognitive truth making perception that didn't have a center in the sensory world.  In the context of personality intuitives had a certain way of knowing that didn't necessary equate to the notion of a transcendent function.  But for me I see the transcendent function as a subset of acts of the intuitive function.  Now whenever we cogitate we will draw on cognitions with ties to all of the functions.  It is I think a necessary evil that we suppose that a single thought is purely a result of a single conscious function.  This is the same as the personality as a whole being typed as preferring a certain conscious function.  We all use all four conscious functions on a regular basis.  So what does it mean that we might have a preferred function of consciousness?

To me it is like a statistical thing...the more you look at specific cases/moments/acts the more it appears we are always using all four conscious functions.  But if we look at ourselves as a trend over time, then I think our hierarchy of functional preferences emerge and more or less reflect our personality on a broad scale.  That is, we need to see how the memory is organized over the course of the lifespan of the personality such that libido tends to flow in an orientation better suited to one conscious function versus another.

Now I suspect that the archetype of wholeness was applied intuitively when Jung proposed the four functions of consciousness as a way to divide the whole of cognitive functioning into a discrete set of parts.  Symbols of wholeness are known to prefer to divide a whole into four parts.  It may be that this division is a mapping of the visual field as a set of two pairs of oppositional colors (the color opponent process: red-green, yellow-blue).  Given that this visual field whole is hard-wired in this way may provide a cortical-functional template for other brain regions to organize themselves.  Perhaps, by having words for colors we concentrate this set of two pairs of opposites into a "conceptual" intuition (where precise definition "thinking" of language helps to promote this type of whole-part relationship). 
This would work without having a culture that consciously knows the color opponent process theory.  The color opponent process since this is merely the result of a collective process that is not trying to categorize a whole but to analyze a part of nature.  The act of perceiving a whole as a set of two pairs of opposite types or of just four different types is an intuitive perception and as such is experienced as a bald fact that suddenly occurs to the knower.

So the ego is the center of the principle memory organizing, libido channel in the psyche.  I imagine that as such the ego is the strongest single complex in the psyche although not a complex that has mastery over the whole field of the psyche.  So if the psyche is cast as an inner landscape there are light places where the ego holds sway and there are dark places where other complexes have the dominance.  I also think that the ego might be seen in dreams as a great river that usually we have to cross.  The ego, aligned as it is with the greatest order and libido in the psyche, is not necessarily also completely self-controlled.  The ego is as much controlled by the flow of lidido as it is the relative master of ordering that flow.  The difficulties inherent in crossing the river may reflect the saying that I seem to love so much "our greatest strength is also our greatest weakness".


Matt Koeske

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Re: Ego/Self as Part/Whole
« Reply #1 on: April 10, 2011, 06:59:20 PM »
Is the Self a part of the whole psyche or does it refer to the whole psyche?  . . .

Is the Self a complex like the ego or is it the sum of all inner complexes? . . .  

The ego then is a part of the psyche.  The center of the ego is in consciousness.  Therefore, the center of the Self only differs from the center of the ego because the Self includes all of the unconscious parts of the psyche as well as the conscious ones.  similarly, the ego is part of the Self.  We could logically deduce that the center of the consciousness part of the Self is the ego.  

So what is consciousness from the view of this depth psychological application of the intuitive archetype of part/whole?

Sealchan, on one hand I wonder if you are not reinventing the wheel here a bit, and on the other hand (where you deviate from conventional Jungian constructions of ego and Self), if you might be better off contextualizing your ideas in some kind of dialog or critique of Jungian thought.  There is a pretty sizable history of discussion of these concepts and a great deal of debate in the Jungian world.  Some of what you propose is "classical", perhaps especially in the Neumannian vein of Jungianism.  But where your approach is classical, there are many "post-Jungian" critiques that have provided counterpoint.

Where you deviate from more classical Jungianism is in your attribution of a much grander role for the ego in the psychic system.  But where you promote such an ego role, I'm inclined to wonder what you make of the great amount of Jungian (and psychoanalytic) thought that is quite ego-critical and ego-minimalizing.  More on that below.


In my way of understanding, consciousness is simply the strongest flow of libido in the psyche.  That flow, over time, orders the psyche.  The strongest prevailing order in the psyche is that which best organizes memory.  By organizing memory the organizer gets reinforced.  The more memory that is organized the broader the scope of the ego.  The better able the memory can be applied to anticipate and successfully resolve instinctual needs as the events of the world occur, the more robust is the ego.

Is there really any evidence the ego/consciousness organizes memory or even that "consciousness is simply the strongest flow of libido in the psyche"?  Here you are deviating from not only Jungian but also Freudian thought (that compared consciousness to the tip of the psychic iceberg).  What is your argument against this tradition in depth psychology of locating "the strongest flow of libido in the psyche" in the "unconscious"?

It has certainly not been my experience, nor has it accorded with my observations of others, that consciousness orders memory.  I see very much the opposite in the phenomena of psyche.  Ego has little power to determine how memory is constructed.  Dreams are a prime example.  The ego doesn't make them and doesn't even need to pay attention to them or be able to remember them.  Something entirely non-egoic is organizing memory in the dreaming process.  We see the same evidence of non-egoic organization in complexes and mental diseases.  That is, these "pathological" constructions are characterized by compulsions (like Freud's notion of "repetition compulsion", not to mention all the psychoanalytic defense mechanisms, neurotic "hysteria", parapraxes, and actings out).

I have never met a person who seemed to have "organized their memories" or somehow determined the shape and function of their psyches.  Not only do depth psychologies and brain sciences not favor that position, the large spiritual traditions of the world both in the present and throughout recorded history favor a greater organizing force or divine Other "determining" or directing the "souls" of humans.

I do agree with you that the ego holds a special and important position in the human psyche.  But I don't think that position is one of determination or even centrality.  It isn't a position of power . . . perhaps in a way similar to soldiers on the front line in a battle.  Yes, they are the one's engaging the "enemy", the ones pulling the triggers, and the ones getting killed.  But they are the mechanism of the orders given to them from behind the scenes.  They might even have some degree of "free will" to disobey those orders, but if they do the results could be disastrous, either for them or for others (or both).  These front line soldiers don't have power and don't determine strategy or dictate outcomes of engagements/missions on a high level.  "Theirs not to make reply,/Theirs not to reason why/Theirs but to do and die" [from Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade"].

The front line feels important and immediate.  It is life and death.  But the identity of a soldier is the product of its creation by a system of training and education and construction.  This is militarily necessary so that when a soldier enters battle s/he is capable of behaving "like a soldier" and not like an individual self-interested agent with "free will".  The soldier is not really in a position to make large ("organizational") strategic decisions, specifically because of its environment of immediacy and engagement.  The soldier must trust his or her well-being to a large system of orders and ordering.

It's a hyperbolic example, but I think the ego is similar.  It entrusts its well-being to the identity constructions and organization of a system of ordering that it does not have immediate or significant determination of.  We can call the organizing principle here the "superego" or "rules of thumb" or "life lessons" or "learning from experience".  We defer to them to guide us through both familiar and new situations and "engagements".  As these engagements unfold, the "front-line ego" wins its victories and suffers its losses . . . and it brings back this information to the "strategists" of the personality: the superegoic laws and life lessons that determine strategic action from behind the scenes.  Where a strategy seems to work (promoting egoic success or survivability/status/power/wealth attainment) it will be employed again.  Where a strategy seems to fail, the strategy or the situation might be avoided (unless of course a repetition compulsion keeps pushing one back into the situation or strategy as if to destroy the ego once and for all).  In other words, we don't even have very much say in the choice and organization of our ego strategies.  We are more creatures of habit than creatures of choice.

I don't think we even have the capacity to "save ourselves" as egos . . . which is perhaps why religions typically promise "salvations" and other reorganizations of selfhood from a divine Other or a spiritual organizing principle that tells us who and how to be.

I just now read your other related post on the ego complex.  I understand your argument better in some ways in that iteration than in the one in this thread.  But I still have the same fundamental disagreement.  Ultimately, I feel you are allowing a subjective impression (perhaps even a fantasy) to obscure your observation of the data or psychic phenomena which must serve as the basis for any viable theory of the ego and its relationship to the whole psyche.  In my observation and analysis of these data, the ego doesn't amount to such an organizationally powerful entity.  This is actually something that I believe I stand along with the majority of psychoanalytic and Jungian thinkers on.  I think then that the burden of argument is on you here.  That is, I think you need to establish logic and evidence for why the ego might be so organizationally powerful in spite of the fact that most others in this field interpret the data otherwise.

Thus far, you have stated this opinion, but it is not something to breeze by so casually.  It is not a given by any means.  My suggestion, therefore, is to focus your creative and analytical efforts on establishing this pillar of your theory.  I admit that I can't intuit a logical way to do this, but I therefore look forward to hearing your argument.
You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way.

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Sealchan

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Re: Ego/Self as Part/Whole
« Reply #2 on: April 11, 2011, 06:47:08 PM »
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Thus far, you have stated this opinion, but it is not something to breeze by so casually.  It is not a given by any means.  My suggestion, therefore, is to focus your creative and analytical efforts on establishing this pillar of your theory.  I admit that I can't intuit a logical way to do this, but I therefore look forward to hearing your argument.

I fully admit that I will post an intuition almost as it is coming out of my head, so I appreciate your response.  I know that one of the biggest mistakes I make is in not anticipating that my perfectly well-tied together little theories will appear as such to others.  The main problem I find is that when I think them I am in the middle of giving birth and don't have time to worry about what it looks like!   (-)laugh(-)

So I will use your response as a way to clarify.  I too have felt that I seem to want to make ego consciousness much more prominent in the psyche than Jungians do.  However, in my own mind I think that I am also annihilating the ego as a separate entity in other ways.  I think that I am trying to un-reify the ego and make it appear in the almost reductionistic context of neural activity...neural activity that need not be conscious. 

Anyway I had to take a nap during my lunch break today, so I hope I can make a better case for what I am saying in the days to come.   I also don't know if I can connect my ideas to specific Jungian community lines of thought so well as my reading is coming along slowly but surely...


Sealchan

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Re: Ego/Self as Part/Whole
« Reply #3 on: April 12, 2011, 05:06:29 PM »
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Sealchan, on one hand I wonder if you are not reinventing the wheel here a bit, and on the other hand (where you deviate from conventional Jungian constructions of ego and Self), if you might be better off contextualizing your ideas in some kind of dialog or critique of Jungian thought.  There is a pretty sizable history of discussion of these concepts and a great deal of debate in the Jungian world.  Some of what you propose is "classical", perhaps especially in the Neumannian vein of Jungianism.  But where your approach is classical, there are many "post-Jungian" critiques that have provided counterpoint.

This is more than I can know as my reading is limited.  I couldn't begin to bring this kind of context to my thinking.

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Is there really any evidence the ego/consciousness organizes memory or even that "consciousness is simply the strongest flow of libido in the psyche"?  Here you are deviating from not only Jungian but also Freudian thought (that compared consciousness to the tip of the psychic iceberg).  What is your argument against this tradition in depth psychology of locating "the strongest flow of libido in the psyche" in the "unconscious"?

I see the Jungian definition of ego as self-evident but, at its heart, circular.  This is probably necessary in the context of attempting to categorize psychic contents from a perspective of self-reflection.  But I'm trying to make the mind-body connection in my perspective so I have stated the proposition that the contents of the psyche that we experience (that we are conscious of) and that we self-referentially refer to as ourselves or our ego in some direct way, correlates to where the greatest amount of libido lies.  So Jung's definition doesn't really explain anything, it sets as a kind of definitional reference point for a whole intuitive language to help explain, I think as you have said, phenomenal aspects of the experience of consciousness. 

Taking Jung's distinction between the personal and the universal unconscious...

From wikipedia

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The personal unconscious includes anything which is not presently conscious, but can be. The personal unconscious is made up essentially of contents which have at one time been conscious but have disappeared from consciousness through having been forgotten or repressed. The personal unconscious is like most people's understanding of the unconscious in that it includes both memories that are easily brought to mind and those that have been suppressed for some reason.

...to the above I would add all those things that were conscious while being learned, but have passed to the unconscious as things that have been learned and habituated...

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Not to be confused with habit, habituation refers specifically to a type of non-associative learning in which repeated exposure to a stimulus leads to decreased responding.[1] The learning underlying habituation is a fundamental or basic process of biological systems and does not require conscious motivation or awareness to occur. Habituation enables organisms to distinguish meaningful information from irrelevant background stimuli.

Habituation can refer to a decrease in behavior, subjective experience, or synaptic transmission. The changes in synaptic transmission that occur during habituation have been well-characterized in the Aplysia gill and siphon withdrawal reflex.

One aspect of consciousness is that it tends to ride the wave of learning.  When we have to pay attention to something that is relatively new, like riding a bike or driving a car, we have our consciousness owned by that process.  Later we can very selectively and efficiently pay attention to just what we need to and with little of the affect that may have accompanied the first hours of this sort of new activity, we can now experience little or no affect when performing this task. 

Some aspects of our reality we may not learn so much as learn to avoid and therefore we repress.  I have no doubt that it requires energy to repress items so the organization of the psyche comes to avoid those areas of reality so that we can avoid expending this effort.

So here, using some basic Jungian and cognitive science definitions, I have outlined an energy consumption dynamic that connects mind to brain and makes the case that what is conscious and how memory is ordered go hand-in-hand and how the presence of consciousness seems to be central to that process.  Once a skill is learned, that is, that new order is established in the brain, I see this as ego owned territory.  If that skill is a skill of avoidance then there is a territory ripe for an autonomous complex to consume and a territory that the ego must invest energy to maintain.  Most people who manage to function in the world with a degree of happiness that allows them to not require psychological intervention evidence a successful ego strategy that accomplishes this within the context of the world and culture they live in.  The autonomous complex, defined in the same process of learning that the ego-consciousness participates in, claims a minority territory in the psyche although it will own the territory it claims. 

To me this shows that consciousness, riding on the mechanism of the brain, is present wherever psychic order is being established (skill learning or reality avoiding).  The ego uses the brain to do this and presumably the more that is learned the more that is "owned" by the ego-consciousness even if it falls back into the personal unconscious as "friendly" habituated knowledge.  Once the individual matures, this friendly territory becomes the predominant territory through which lidibo flows.  Therefore, in the adult the ego-consciousness order (extending into the friendly personal unconscious) is the ruling order in the psyche.

This is not to say that the process of skill learning is conscious or is under the control of the ego, or the process of memory or a whole host of related processes is directed by the consciousness of the individual.  I understand that the human body and the human brain utilizes much more energy than the brain supporting consciousness does, so overall the minority of energy used in the body is used by consciousness.  But I would hesitate to chuck all of these non-conscious mechanisms of cognition or of related biological and physical systems into Jung's personal or even collective unconscious... 

...To be continued...

Sealchan

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Re: Ego/Self as Part/Whole
« Reply #4 on: April 12, 2011, 06:06:22 PM »
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I do agree with you that the ego holds a special and important position in the human psyche.  But I don't think that position is one of determination or even centrality.  It isn't a position of power . . . perhaps in a way similar to soldiers on the front line in a battle.  Yes, they are the one's engaging the "enemy", the ones pulling the triggers, and the ones getting killed.  But they are the mechanism of the orders given to them from behind the scenes.  They might even have some degree of "free will" to disobey those orders, but if they do the results could be disastrous, either for them or for others (or both).  These front line soldiers don't have power and don't determine strategy or dictate outcomes of engagements/missions on a high level.  "Theirs not to make reply,/Theirs not to reason why/Theirs but to do and die" [from Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade"].

In a dream if there is a battle composed of multiple combatants facing off in opposing armies, then I would see this as a view of the psyche on a level more granular than the ego-complex.  The ego is the general and the army and the soldiers are small divisions (what I've called potential personality centers).  These masses are subject to ownership by either the ego kingdom or the alien autonomous complex.  When dreams present images such as this the patterns I've noticed are:

1.  The armies are roughly matched in strength
2.  The members within each army are largely undistinguished
3.  The members between the two armies are nearly interchangable
4.  This part of the dream involves the dreamer as observer

I think that the lowering of libido available to consciousness probably comes when the conscious attitude butts heads with a repressed autonomous complex and in that psychic territory the forces are well-balanced and the front line demarks a metaphorical borderline.  If the dreamer becomes the soldier and stays behind the lines, then the dreamer is "safe".  If the dreamer moves to cross the line as a soldier, then they carry a small node of consciousness into the territory of the autonomous complex and away from the order established by consciousness.  In fact this is the only way that the "ego" can cross the line.  Otherwise, since the ego is the whole army, if the whole army succeeded in advancing then you would have the ego-consciousness claiming new territory.  But this, I suspect, is not the sort of thing you would ever dream about, this is the sort of thing that wouldn't register in a dream because it is does not represent a polarization of energy that isn't immediately resolved like a more localized conflict of two complexes would be. 

The dream is, like ego-consciousness, focused on the greatest libidic flow which was pumped and primed by the events of the day that to some extent may have forced the ego into repressed territory.  This is especially true if one considers dreams as a time when the ego's usual source of libido, the events of the physical and collective world, is unplugged and you have only the inner instinctual drives fueling psychic activity.  The ego's ability to hold its territorial borders becomes very shaky until the dreamer wakes up and the ego's batteries are recharged.  So in dreams this puts the ego into an inherent disadvantage and it finds itself suddenly no longer surrounded by its faithful soldiers.  In this sense dreams do not so much provide an accurate representation of the ego's true strength in the psyche.  But the diminished capacity of the ego-complex in dreams provides a potential context to retune the ego to a better alignment against inner instinctual needs.   

Sealchan

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Re: Ego/Self as Part/Whole
« Reply #5 on: April 13, 2011, 04:18:44 PM »
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Thus far, you have stated this opinion, but it is not something to breeze by so casually.  It is not a given by any means.  My suggestion, therefore, is to focus your creative and analytical efforts on establishing this pillar of your theory.  I admit that I can't intuit a logical way to do this, but I therefore look forward to hearing your argument.

I think that where I am coming from is that what I honor most about the idea of ego is that it is ME.  And so it is with this personal perspective, rather than one atuned to any academic culture, that I approach these whole discussions.  I've spent a lot of time in life learning and working and growing and paying for my learning, etc...as we all have.  So as much as I am ready to consider the reduction of mind to matter as part of the equation, I also think that whatever we want to call the ego must be the result of all of this lifelong effort...otherwise, what ego is going to be engaged with a psychology that doesn't reflect that personal sense of having "come this far"?  When it comes to understanding the ego, one must understand how personal meaning and self-love/interest develops.  This is what I try to outline when I have posted about a science of subjectivity. 

I should also say that I am an admittedly iconoclastic scholar.  Also, my own "thinking" process is such that I incubate intuitions based on my reading and dreaming and thinking and then I find a public outlet to express these concentrated intuitive thoughts.  Never before have they seen the light of day except in internal debates within my own mind.  So your critique doesn't surprise me.  But I cannot answer to how I have expressed myself as this is the process I have to work with.

I'll need anyone who is willing to listen to simply challenge me as you have in order for me to direct my thoughts towards anything other than my own internal agenda.  Already my responses to your responses above have helped me to literally discover the connections I would make to my own ideas.  Without someone to talk to about these things, I have no way of knowing what I know or believe in any depth.  It is, perhaps, an example of how little control my ego has over its own knowledge.  And maybe this is a good way to address the discrepancy between my view and how you compare it to most Jungian thinking regarding the power of the ego.

I don't think that the ego has the power to do anything it wants.  I don't even think the ego knows what it is going to do next much of the time.  But I do think that whatever is new about the mind/brain that develops in the womb and especially after birth in the brain/mind of an individual, that allows them to walk and talk and chew gum, that allows them to pass exams, drive cars and have a relationship...that that is a development of an order that was not there before.  And to the extent that order evidences a particular strategy that relates to the personal story of one's life, I say that is all about the ego.  What the person thinks, even if they are wrong, is of themselves, that is part of the psychology of the ego.  Even if that thinking is just 1% of the actual activity or literal physical energy consumption taking place, that is all ego because if we are going to define the ego as the center of our consciousness then that is, to me, the only thing that makes sense.

Where I think I am going, however, might be towards a dualistic metaphor for consciousness with a particle and a wave component.  The wave component is the idea that what we are conscious of is what is most energic in the psyche/brain.  This would fit with a lot of brain scan data (the idea that you can ask a subject to perform some task and expect that the activity in the brain reflects that against a typically less active background).  The particle component is along the lines of my territory metaphor...that psychic activity takes place against a virtual spatial background and the ego, as a wave, moves across that land (land beneath the waves?) and leaves behind a realm that passes back into unconsciousness...but changed into a configuration that makes revisitation friendly or not.  And I think it only fair to lay claim to the friendly territory in the name of the ego.  At least there you can validate the work of the individual toward bringing themselves to where they are in life.  If the individual has ever experienced the exertion of effort or the delay of gratification they will probably balk at a psychology that dismisses that.  I don't think you mean in any way to dismiss the individual's integrity, but I think Jungian psychology starts off in the direction of dealing with psychological issues and their manifestation and has not concerned itself so much with the character and quality of psychological processes when they are not in conflict.  I think that there is much more normal psychological functioning than abnormal and Jungian and Freudian psychology bank on the abnormal for their evidence.

Jung's theory of personality types is the most I have seen Jung produce about a theory of ego psychology that is not involved in a psychic disturbance.  To the extent that I have read I have found very little cross reference, even in psychological types, that details how the various psychological functions work and how they each individually impact working with the collective unconscious.  Admittedly I have read only a small portion of Jung's own writings and even less of those of other Jungians.  But I was even disappointed with Psychological Types' lack of explanation.  I think in that work Jung was mainly working out the difference between introverted and extroverted at the time and as he was pioneering these ideas who could blame him?  But I have intimations that there is so much more to be explored here.  I have found conscious functioning to be an indispensable dimension of dream interpretation.


Matt Koeske

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Re: Ego/Self as Part/Whole
« Reply #6 on: April 26, 2011, 03:52:21 PM »
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:
Quote
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.
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Sealchan

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Re: Ego/Self as Part/Whole
« Reply #7 on: April 26, 2011, 06:01:24 PM »
Thanks for your response.  It was interesting especially to get a kind of summary of the Red Book. 

I am certain that my ideas need some further differentiation.  I also know that my own method of academic exploration is idiosyncratic in that I have largely followed my own nose rather than aim to complete a more collectively-oriented range of study.  I also read slowly, but carefully, and I struggle as we all do with finding the time to pursue this passion among the other passions and necessities.

For me a fundamental issue is that we struggle all of our lives to learn and grow and adapt and for me that is all about the ego.  It can't be small because in my phenomenology it isn't.  It is my life.  Now my life isn't necessarily some kind of massive DVD storage that I can access any part of at will.  And I wouldn't call it a disciplined kingdom ruled by an omniscent dictator with total control either.  But I would call it an order that grows over time, that proves itself more and more adaptable just as the individual it belongs to can become more and more adapted and experienced over time.  And I might say that this process is partly involuntary...that is, your ego is along for the ride and doesn't so much always have to know what it is doing to make progress along the way. 

And I also have high suspicions regarding the Self.  I think I would probably say that most Jungians seem to worship the Self as some kind of God-like alien power of the psyche that the ego must bow down and worship.  For me it is two sides of the same coin.  The more stubborn the ego is in trying to attain...something, the more and more it will find another Self to pursue.  Perhaps that is why my description of the ego seems inflated, because I fairly freely see little difference between ego and Self.  But if ego is the current status and the Self is the future goal, even if it never reached, who can say which is more important:  where you are (ego)? or where you are going (Self)?  In the context of a physically instantiated psyche, I don't see any room for two separate systems, but really just one with a dualistic phenomenology.

I think that in dreams we are almost always finding ourselves dancing around the Self as center.  There is no real distant horizon to reach, no rainbow's end to discover.  Like a rainbow the Self is the projection of the ego, or the ego a puppet of the Self, it doesn't really matter which way you look at it.

Sealchan

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Re: Ego/Self as Part/Whole
« Reply #8 on: April 28, 2011, 04:50:33 PM »
Some axioms my brain felt like serving on this line of thought:

Ego is the Self's ability to take on the separative role of just one personality center.

Self is the ego's ability to sum over (connect/add/combine) multiple personality centers. 

The ego is the ideal of the current state of the psyche and its orientation as part to a whole.

The Self is the ideal of the whole state of the psyche and its absolute perspective as the whole (as is God or Universe).

The ego is embedded in time as a complex and as a living dynamism.

The Self is outside of time, an eternal concept, and is a kind of catch-all for psychic activity as a whole.

The Self cannot be imaged, only the Whole in relation to the Part can be so an image of the Self is defined in terms of the ego which is always a part.

There is no final wholistic, absolute perspective.

Matt Koeske

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Re: Ego/Self as Part/Whole
« Reply #9 on: May 05, 2011, 05:06:56 PM »
Sealchan, you make a lot of good points.  I think your concept of ego sounds similar to the psychoanalytic/developmental Jungian notion of the small-s self.  I find that position much more arguable.  That "self" is not exactly the same as Jung's classical Self (although it is written with the small-s at least in the English translations of Jung's CWs).  For the sake of convenience, I will use the big-S Self for Jung's and the classical Jungian definition and the small-s self from the psychoanalytic/developmental Jungian position.

Also, my own definition of Self differs in some (not all) important ways from both the classical and the psychoanalytic.  I use the big-S mostly to differentiate it from the more ego-like small-s self of the psychoanalytic/developmental school.  In the classical Jungian school, the Self is associated with the God image, and it is granted numerous mystical/numinous traits and considered a larger Other to the ego.

Still, even in the classical position, the Self is conflated with the ego at times.  This is especially the case with the hero archetype.  At times Jung suggests that the individuated ego become like the Self (at other times, he more clearly differentiates the two constructs).  But I am more radical on this point than Jung.  For me it is the (valuating) hero that is a piece of identity or an attitude the ego can employ, but the Self remains wholly Other.  The Self is never something the ego can become, only that which the ego can relate to.  And the "measurement" of our psychic health has a lot to do with the quality of this ego/Self relationship.

In Neumann (as I suspect you know) and continuing with Edinger, there is the concept of the ego-Self axis that is similar to my relational model.  But I find the ego-Self axis concept at times muddy and fraught with various classical Jungian problems.  The very idea of an "axis" as a kind of third entity between ego and Self seems an unnecessary complication to me.  There is no more an axis (phenomenologically speaking) than there is between any self and other in any relationship.  The word "relationship" is perfectly adequate in itself.

In classical Jungianism the most important point (regarding the issues in our discussion) is that the ego not identify with an archetype.  That is considered "inflation", and it is marked by the ego forming a false self or believing itself to be something it is not.  For instance, as (in classical Jungian thought) archetypes are often experienced as powerful and numinous or like gods, identification with an archetype would be like the psychotic delusion that one is a god or has a god's power or other special attributes.  That is commonly called "archetypal inflation".

But the other kind of inflation in classical Jungianism is the heroic inflation or what is more commonly called "egoic inflation", in which a kind of "egomania" develops.  The ego believes it has absolute power over the psyche, that it has risen up and conquered the autonomous psyche by bringing light to its darkness . . . or that it has, by force of will, brought order to what was previously only psychic chaos.  This denial of the autonomous psyche is also considered delusional and may be characterized by the identification with a "mana-personality" that is like a wizard with powers over nature (as Jung describes it in the Red Book, this mana or power over nature/chaos is called "magic").

It is this kind of egoic inflation that some of the languaging of your model tempts.  I don't think or feel that you are thus inflated.  In fact, to me it feels like there is a disconnect between your general (and quite humble) approach to psychology and dreams and your theoretical construction of an ego with such power and centrality.  But it may just be an issue of semantics.  Or, as above, you may just have a notion of ego that is more like the psychoanalytic self (which is not really an inflated construct).

My main concern in trying to understand your theory is that you verge on denying or at least unjustifiably devaluing the significance of the autonomous psyche . . . and perhaps that you conflate a feeling of egoic centrality (during consciousness) with an objective egoic centrality.  To the degree that this accurately represents your position, I think you not only have to contend with decades of classical Jungian literature that argues otherwise, but you must also explain (away) the more contemporary findings of cognitive science that has time and again demonstrated (scientifically) that human "egoic" perception is incredibly distorted and limited (relative to our subjective impression of "consciousness" and centrality).  I see cognitive science and neuroscience as very clearly showing that our sense of consciousness/awareness is a very small fraction of the actual cognitive activity going on in the brain (let alone the structure or dynamic of that cognitive activity).  And of course, dreams are the most obvious example of how little waking consciousness may have to do with "selfhood" (as we do not "create" dreams by conscious will nor can we very well determine how they play out).

To paraphrase a quote from Jung: we do not think our thoughts; our thoughts think us.  The "ego" that Jung saw as inflated and somewhat deluded is the ego that believes it thinks its own thoughts.  This is the Jungian tradition that I follow in.  And I am a bit more extreme on this point even than Jung was (as I feel both my own experience and modern cognitive science has only compounded the original depth psychology position that consciousness is only the very tip of the iceberg of psychic activity).

In my own dream work and inner Work in general, I have time and again experienced "ego-displacement" by the autonomous psyche.  I gave up feeling like I could exert much control (as it would serve the ego) over my psyche long ago.  And like Jung, I feel that the cardinal and primary lesson of individuation or self-awareness is that the ego is not in charge of thinking thoughts but is an expression or emergence of the thoughts that are autonomously thought by the psyche as a whole.

This is not only my observation and the conclusion of my own psychic investigations, but it has become the foundation of a value system for me.  It is the basis of what I call valuation and the central preoccupation of "the Work".  A more religious person would call it faith, and that isn't entirely wrong, but for me this value system is no more a religious faith than science or the scientific method is a religious faith to scientists.  Scientists utilize the scientific method, not because they are true believers in its supernatural Truth, but because the scientific method allows for consistent measurable results and produces testable/falsifiable theories.  I see a parallel goal in the Work and in science, because both are oriented to the object or other.  The idea is to know that object/other as accurately and throughly as possible.  Much of this process (especially in psychology) is a matter of removing egoic perceptions from the object (i.e., unfounded assumptions, constructions, and other subjectivities that have more to do with the habitual operation of our cognitive process than they do with the object/other).  In investigations of the object/other, the ego is the element that must be (as much as possible) dissolved away.

If we look back at premodern scientific theories that were flawed, it is almost always the habitual egoism or projection of egoic consciousness that got in the way.  E.g., the earth is the center of the solar system/universe.  Why?  Because it seems to be.  Because it is so central and familiar to our sense of ourselves.  Egoism is only a margin of error in science . . . and I have come to feel (much like most mystics of history) that it is also mostly a margin of error in "spirituality" and "self-consciousness".

But that is not at all to say that the ego is unimportant either in itself or as an organ of the psyche.  It is only when trying to understand what is other (i.e., non-ego) that ego becomes only a margin of error.  Additionally, where one would like to psychologically investigate the phenomenon of the ego and figure out what it really is, it becomes essential to understand what it is not.  That is, to determine what is autonomous psyche.

Of course, as we approach our own subjectivity, it seems at first impossible to differentiate the I from the Not-I.  One has to proceed more or less scientifically and systematically.  Dreams, again, are a great source of data in this effort . . . but so are other compulsions, habits, complexes, and relatively "unconscious" thoughts, fantasies, and behaviors.  Here the history of modern psychology illuminates the way.  The implied project of this "depth psychology" is the differentiation of ego from non ego in the cognitive process.  That was the starting point of late 19th century psychologists (of which Freud is the most prominent, but not the earliest, example).


But I don't mean to make a kind of strict "quasi-materialist" differentiation between an entity called the ego and an entity called the Self.  I believe the psyche is, in its operation, a relatively fluid and singular system.  Making the ego/Self differentiation is largely metaphorical . . . but its the kind of metaphor-making that scientific thought needs in order to look at its object of study with greater clarity.  Even though neuroscientists generally associate our sense of consciousness ("ego") with the prefrontal cortex, i.e., a part of the brain, not the whole brain . . . we are nowhere near being able to say that the prefrontal cortex (or some specific section of it) is the machine behind the ego.  Personally, I suspect that the ego or sense of self we experience, our subjectivity, is not based in a large tract of brain real estate, but is more of an emergent flicker supported by the entire cognitive process.  That is, I suspect the ego is almost entirely "psychological" and that it emerges from the coordination of numerous "more-physical" processes and from the dynamic flow of information these processes generate and organize.

I see the ego in the phenomenon of working memory.  Perhaps the I is initially an object interacting with other objects where the interaction is governed by a predisposed intuitive physics.  Pleasure and pain and other sensations happen to this I . . . and unintentioned reactions to these stimuli also happen to the I.  A point of identity emerges around these sensations and around the emotions and unintentioned thoughts that converge upon a point.  My stance is actually quite Buddhisty in that I see identity (all that converges at this point) as a kind of illusion that is built up to facilitate the interaction of numerous autonomous psychic events.  But always, the I is conditioned by these "others" and by relationality.  Relationship and otherness "tell" the I what it is.  The I is what it is related too . . . and eventually, out of these relationships, identity scripts form.  "I am like X, but unlike Y".  "I am that thing that believes Z and disbelieves A."  "I am that which, when B happens, does C."  Very, very simple elements or quanta . . . but they accumulate into something like a novel or encyclopedia.  And where some kind of theme can be seen to emerge from this work, it can be named.  It is "I".  And what is this "I"?  It is the compilation of all these scripts and the way they fall into a hierarchy of priorities and values.

At least, that is the I of the pre-individuant or perhaps the relatively "normal" and well socialized individual.  But not infrequently, this scripted self breaks down because the others/Others that construct it are not getting along with one another.  Too many cooks in kitchen, too many masters of the household.  And the principle masters are society/the environment and Self/genetic uniqueness and its expression through experience.  Where we fail to satisfy the masters of society, we are made to suffer.  Our status is low, and the lower the status the higher the anxiety level.  The anxiety level is based in the Self, in what we need fundamentally in order to function adaptively.  The genetic predispositions that define our uniqueness are not infinitely flexible.  They have limitations.  Where we try to ignore these or can't satisfy them, we will suffer anxiety and diminished libido.

Of course, anxiety or no, the ego doesn't usually have a good idea of what "it" (i.e., the psyche) needs to be satisfied and functional.  It knows what society says it should be (superego) and how the seemingly successful are or act.  But the ego has only limited insight into the Self, which is much more subtle than environment . . . and really much more Other to the ego.  Society places relatively strict definitions on what the ego should be, while the Self has very flexible restrictions that can only be felt pre- or non-linguistically (i.e., as affects and unintentioned thought qualities).  I even suspect that the Self doesn't really begin to assert its full uniqueness until adulthood beckons (i.e., late adolescence).  Or at least before then our capacity to language the Self's affects is very unsophisticated and can't be differentiated from egoic desires (which are typically for fortification).

In constructing the concept of ego so "small", I do not mean to deny that when we self-reflect, we can gain access to a fairly substantial and complex sense of self.  And this sense of self relies on and indirectly perceives aspects of the Self, the autonomous psyche . . . and it tends to perceive them as a subset of I.  But I believe that under closer examination, these autonomous and foundational aspects of I that contribute to the sense of self can be shown to be largely if not entirely un-determined (by consciousness/ego).  Their appropriation for a fleetingly conscious sense of self is a habitual mechanism of self-consciousness, a kind of simplification.  It is not that "I am all that".  Rather, "All that is what I am".  In other words, objectively that is "me", but subjectively or egoically, I do not determine that.  It is presented to me.

I could go on and on with arguments for why I feel the ego is best understood as a "less-central" and "smaller" psychic organ than it commonly seems to us (before deeper investigation), but I think I've said enough to give the flavor of my concern with the ego-prominence of your theory.  It's definitely a complicated and fascinating subject, and one that is well worth discussing.  The "Truth" of what the ego is, is very far from what we know.  There is an immense amount of relevant psychic data to process and analyze.  I freely admit that my "theory" of the ego is merely a loose working hypothesis.  It means little to me as theory/paradigm or some kind of final explanation.  I don't consider it "known" or "solved" . . . but I think I have a decent grip on the data.  That is, the data heavily favor the idea that the ego as object is far, far "smaller" and less self-determined than the ego as subject.  There is a kind of "optical illusion" about our subjectivity that is not born out as valid under objective analysis.

Best,
Matt
You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way.

   [Bob Dylan,"Mississippi]