Now I can digest a good metaphor very easily...and Matt, does this qualify as one of your shortest posts?
Cue Twilight Zone theme
. I know, I'm kind of freaked out, too! I will fail to duplicate this rare performance here, I'm afraid.
I don't follow everything you write here, so I apologize if I end up displacing or misinterpreting your ideas. But it's an interesting subject and one that falls between our somewhat divergent paradigms, so I will proceed and do my best.
How about the Ego is the most energic activity in the Self? Or tying this into Eric Kandel's (In Search of Memory) explanation (up to what I have read and extrapolated from it) for how short and long term memory work, Ego is the most persistent (most energic over time) excitation (implies also inhibition) of short-term memory and the resulting engagement of changes in long-term memory that result.
Depending on what you mean by "energic", I would agree. I think energic is a misleading term, though. It would be more accurate to say "most energy-consuming". Or, as the evolutionary psychologists might say, most "energy expensive" cognitive trait. That idea also meshes with neuroscience as far as I recall. I.e., "ego" as something very likely related to the prefrontal cortex, is a big time energy hog (which perhaps makes the reparative/regulative process of dreaming all the more significant).
So, psychologically speaking, the ego (and attention demanded by it from the Self/whole psyche) requires a great deal of energy to run. It is therefore arguably very inefficient. It may even be the epitome of the "kludge-like" way our brains have evolved and are organized. The so-called "Accidental Mind" that neuroscientist David Linden describes in his excellent primer of the same title.
You have been keen in your theorizing to focus more on the "specialness" of the ego's function, whereas I (who tend to feel the ego is already prone to inflated descriptions and exaggerated importance) find the most interesting aspect of egohood its limitations, illusions/delusions, inefficiencies, and lack of robustness. This is actually an area in which my thinking parallels that of modern psychoanalysts and developmental Jungians. That is, the ego is a cognitive organ that needs the kind of attention (from the brain/body/Self) that an infant needs from its mother. Egohood typically resounds with "infantile" qualities and limitations. But I diverge from the psychoanalytic schools in the (more classically Jungian) feeling that the ego can "grow up" and develop into less of a Self-dependent child and more of a facilitating partner of the Self.
The very energy/resource expensive ego, despite its expense and limitations, would appear to be selected by evolution, though. Of course, developmentalists would argue with that, but I feel pretty strongly that human egohood and its underlying brain functions were successful mutations for our species. Either way, like the elephant's trunk, the human ego is very much a product of its environment. It is shaped for human sociality the way an elephant's trunk is shaped for gripping tree trunks and lifting food up to the elephant's mouth.
I don't really understand the way you are connecting short- and long-term memory with egoic function . . . but I have previously expressed a belief that the ego is very much restricted by short term or working memory operations. That is, the "conscious" ego or sense of thinking/processing we are aware of and try to direct is working memory constrained. Many thoughts "just come to" the ego out of long-term, associative memory. It doesn't manufacture them in the way it can manufacture the focus of thoughts in various circumstances. I am personally more inclined to see these long-term memory "provisions" as coming from a psychic area/process that is closer to what Jung meant by "the unconscious". I.e., it is autonomous. Even if the conscious ego "calls" for a memory, that memory doesn't always appear or appear intact or accurately. Consciousness is dependent on something "other" in the mind/brain to provide it with memories and thoughts that can then be manipulated like geometric building blocks in working memory.
In other words, I am entirely opposed to the idea that the ego is some kind of air traffic controller of thought telling all the thoughts where they need to go, actively organizing the mental system. I'm not sure if your theory leans that way, but it sometimes seems to to me. And that would be a place where we diverge. My position is much more consistent with the cognitive science and neuroscience I've read (although I claim no expertise whatsoever in those fields) that focuses on the many illusions of perception and cognition and limitations to conscious thought that characterize our cognitive process. It is an area in which Jungianism and neuroscience could find a bit of conciliation.
I think one distinction to make here is whether Ego is a system, an order, or is it a relative quality of some psychic activity in general as I have suggested in my memory explanation. From a wikipedia summary of Daniel Dennett's views (I need to re-read his Consciousness Explained) I think he ties in consciousness to what is remembered (as does Gerald Edelman Remembered Present). So how memory works in the brain is likely fundamental to understanding the Ego/Self dichotomy.
I agree that the function of memory in the brain is fundamental to understanding an ego/Self dichotomy, but I'm not sure I follow your abstract possible characterizations: system, order, or relative quality of some psychic activity in general. For me, despite my willingness to bandy the term ego (or Self for that matter) about, when I speak of the ego, I am knowingly and decidedly speaking of a metaphor for a psychic process, or a placeholder name for a set of related psychic processes. And that metaphor is based primarily in phenomenological observation (as opposed to localization) that may have little or nothing to do with the physical brain functions that enable the egoic process in the psyche.
So, the three categories you try to decide among all seem potentially descriptive of the ego (although also a bit too vague to really tell us anything about the ego that is not fairly obvious from the nature of the metaphor itself). Is the ego a system? Sure. Phenomenologically, it is a consistent array or program. Is ego an order? Yes, of course, because it is not random and chaotic. It specifically orders (or perceives/interprets the ordering of) the perception of thought by using a system of filters, reductions, symbols, and other representations. The relative quality of some psychic activity category is not clear to me. That is a loose enough descriptor to cover all kinds of psychic processes that I would not consider egoic.
I also don't see the ego as likely to be strictly localized in the brain . . . although it is a reasonable hypothesis to assume it draws significantly from the specifically human neocortex. But evolution is rarely innovative. It usually retools aspects of preexisting designs. So I don't think there is an "ego gene". But I do feel it is valid to talk about, describe, and study the ego psychologically, even if we know we are working with a metaphor or place holder concept, a variable.
I suspect that ego (and the evolution of the ego) is tied in with human sociality in a way that is ultimately inextricable. It is a social psychic organ, not a personal or individual one. That is, despite the "egotism" and significant self-centeredness that we typically associate with the ego, I see the ego as really a product of relationship and socialization. This idea would be compatible with those theorists who suspect that human intelligence or "consciousness" arose from evolutionary increases in the capacity for social intelligence. And I do lean toward that theory myself.
The more interesting question to me is: is the ego an emergent phenomenon, a kind of software that developed and develops in each person anew in order to take best advantage of the evolutionary hardware of the brain? Actually, I feel very confident that the ego
is an emergent phenomenon, so the question then is really: "how emergent is it?"
The developmental Jungians have had a number of things to say about this (although they often call the ego the small-s self and sort of blur the ego/Self differentiation that classical Jungianism suggests). I tend to feel there is more to innateness and biology than these developmentalists do. The ego is not merely an amazing coincidence that happens in every human being only as a product of socialization. On the other hand, I also shy away from any kind of notion that there is an "archetype" or blueprint for the ego. My hunch is that the relative consistency of the ego from one person to the next is the product of the specifications of a complex system (the human brain) that operates with a consistent dynamic (the Self principle) in a fairly controlled environment (human society). The seemingly vast differences in human societies across cultures and eras is, I feel, much less diverse than it seems to us . . . because we are such cultural specialists. We notice these fine differences and make very big deals out of them, but human cultures are much more consistent then they are different from one another. As "anthropologists", we have to struggle to remove our culture-centric goggles in order to better understand the behaviors of the species.
That is what sociobiology and evolutionary psychology are striving to do. But they remain underdog perspectives in an intellectual culture still dominated by social constructivism and emphasis on cultural differences.
What is conscious and, therefore, what is associated with Ego is whatsoever drives memory.
I may misunderstand you here, but I have to completely disagree if I read this sentence verbatim. Ego does not drive memory, and there is no evidence I can think of to support such a position. I.e., we don't consciously make our memories. And our tools or perception are extremely limited and rather shoddy. We simply aren't equipped consciously to make, store, organize, and reorganize our memories. That is a fantastically complex task, and there is no indication whatsoever that consciousness bound by working memory is capable of such complex and intentional organization.
I don't even think ego is all that responsible for perceiving the things that make it into memory. Much of what is remembered slips untouched by the ego and only reappears to it "from within" (as in dreams).
In general, though, I'm not even sure memory is something that is "driven". That is, memory shows various signs of being a self-organizing system without a central processor. The "decisions" of memory construction are made on extremely minute (i.e., synaptic) levels . . . what I've been referring to as memory quanta. Well, memory quanta are larger (and more phenomenological) chunks . . . perhaps large enough for us to identify them as coherent information bits. Synaptic firings are much, much "smaller".
I am inclined to see the egoic sense of selfhood as a product of such complex emergences and self-organizing systems. Again, what we are and the way we think have a kind of "accidental" quality to them. I think we attribute far greater levels of design, simple organization, and control to our conscious minds than are really present there. Confabulation, rationalization, attributions of order to non- and semi-ordered things . . . because the reduction of complex things into simpler things allow us to endow them with "folk physics" properties. I.e., thoughts that can be moved around, that interact and transform as if by physical laws of motion. I keep recommending Steven Pinker's the
The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature to you. It's dense, but very well written and fascinating.
I think Pinker (along with other language theorists who are focusing increasingly on the physical or folk physical substructures of language and thought) is onto something big. It hasn't fully materialized in psychology yet (to my knowledge), because the people studying it most intensively are linguists. The people thinking about this aren't thinking about ego and Self or in depth psychological terms. We (depth psychology types) get caught up in big philosophical ideas and metaphors that make complex things seem more sensible and ordered. But some of this small or quantum picture thinking is also needed in depth psychology, I feel.
That's maybe the main reason I am interested in science and in fields like evolutionary psychology. It's that ability to look at what we ("intuitive types") usually miss: the "inferior sensation function", the tiny quantum ways in which thoughts (and organisms) are put together. That is what "analysis" is really aimed at. Analysis is not a philosophical ideology, but a capacity to focus on the elements of thought/psyche and their interconnections. Freud tried to do this with "instinct" and Oedipal paradigms and infantile behavior. Jung tried to do it with archetype theory. But these are still big metaphors that tend to eclipse the smaller elements from which they are derived.
Now is there an intermediary order between the psyche as a whole and the world that we should call an Ego? Or is the Self directly interacting with the world and its point of contact is always a "most sensative and most flexible" interaction?
I am not keen on the philosophical sounding abstraction "intermediary order". I would be more concrete and say that there is the human brain and the environment of the human organism interacting . . . and their interactions have co-evolved through a kind of feedback system. I.e., humans evolved to adapt to a social environment that was itself evolving along with human genes. I would be willing to go along with ego as "mediator" for the individual organism in its natural environment. But there are many such mediators in all species. All kinds of adaptations (and on more complex levels, whole organs and instinctual behavior patterns) mediate between the individual organism and its environment. That is behind the "selfish gene" theory of Dawkins. I.e., the evolution of species is a matter of serving the basic "needs" or "drives" of genes to replicate themselves. From the perspective of these individual genes, every trait is a way of mediating the interaction with the environment in a relatively favorable way (for the replication of those genes).
Complexity (as in the complexity of the human organism, the human brain and mind) is derived from simpler stuff.
Psychologically and metaphorically speaking, the Self cannot interact directly with the world. The Self is a principle of organization (especially of the organization of the psyche). The human organism is the complex, evolved system of traits that has been so very successful at surviving and adapting to its environment. The ego is an emergent phenomenon that allows the cognitive interaction between organism and environment to be computed in terms of folk physics rules. For instance, the ego allows the organism to have a simple physical model of being and thingness, an I to relate to a Thou. Then folk physics notions like penetrability/resistance, similarity/difference, togetherness/separateness, within/without, and hundreds of others can be applied to the incredibly complex and abstract thing that is a self/Self.
The point of interaction between the organism and its environment is not a "most sensitive and flexible" organ, though. It is a kludge, a workaround. It breaks down and fails constantly (at least under modern environmental conditions).
Is the elephant's nose a fixed bodily organ with locality or is it a bodily state capable of being physically located almost anywhere in the elephant's body? That is, is the Ego a part of the Self or is it a state of the Self?
In my opinion, the ego is not really a state of the Self, nor is it a part of the Self (unless we are defining the whole psyche as Self). As an emergent phenomenon, it is other. It functions as a mental organ, but it is not organic in a fully physical sense. The Self system seeks homeostasis, which requires a kind of equilibrious relationship with the environment. The ego emerges/develops to facilitate that relationship within the natural environment of human society. I don't think the Self is all that concerned with the environment. At least, that is what we see in Self phenomena in dreams. The Self is not concerned with what the ego needs to defend itself. The Self is concerned with maintaining homeostasis. The ego often interprets this "drive" as a need for conformity or social acceptability and even influence or status in society. Where such things can be achieved, it seems (and may often be the case) that homeostasis (limited anxiety and systemic destabilization) is served. In other words, a coherent and positive image of selfhood is reflected back to the individual by the society s/he exists in. This positive image also typically accords with some kind of survival success, perhaps reproductive, but also a success in helping maintain a social order in which the individual and/or his/her kin are fairly well facilitated and guaranteed of relative "fitness" and its benefits.
Using such devices as a mandalic diagram is but one way of using a metaphor to intuitively grasp what is psyche. By literally mapping concepts (inner persons) to a circular space (mandala) are we not creatively engaging the visual cortex and our facial recognition cortex and our linguistic cortex together to produce a picture of the relative qualities of psyche as a set of inner persons? The fact that the list of inner characters is short conforms to our short-term memory limitations to create a finite spectral set of parts to stand for (map to) an unknown whole? Making that finite spectral whole into pairs of opposites (ego/Self, persona/Anima, etc) also reinforces the libidic content (through simultaneous "entertainment" of opposites) and makes it more powerful (greater libido) in our Ego consciousness (aka short term memory) thereby making it more amenible to long-term memory storage and later short-term memory recall and manipulation.
I can't tell what you are proposing and what you are questioning in this paragraph. What I can say is that the archetypal personage model I've been fiddling with (utilizing ego, personal shadow, hero, animi, Demon, Self, and Core Complex) differs in two important (and I'm sure many other minor) ways from the classical Jungian mandala split into opposites of conscious and unconscious (with unconscious split into personal and collective, etc.). First, my model is not meant to be a model of the psyche or "whole psyche". Rather, it is specific to a kind of theatrical play in an individuating psyche. My theory is that these personages are vaguely recognizable in non-individuating psyches as well, but they remain mixed up with one another and muddled together with a lot of shadow. They are also relatively inactive. So, an "anima/animus", a term that implies animation, movement, life spirit, libido, soul, may not be very animated in a non-individuating psyche. To be full-fledged animi, they have to be activated in the theater of individuation along with the hero, the Self, the shadow, and the Demon (and the ego has to be able to somewhat recognize and differentiate these figures).
The second important difference from the Jungian model is that my model is not really a model of separate personages, per se. It is a model of complex interrelationship among these organs of individuating psyche. So, it is not the characters in my model that are important, but the whole play on stage. The narrative that involves all of them is the archetype . . . the "master archetype" of individuation. I hold that the characters cannot be understood only as characters and only by themselves. That is the major Jungian mistake in archetype theory. It is alluring, because we tend to recognize these psychic forces as personages (that is a product of our theory of mind). But this has led to a great deal of silliness and confusion and vagueness in Jungian archetype theory . . . it has led to a theory that doesn't actually have real applicability. It neatly reduces a very complex interrelational dynamic, and that makes it easier for us to grasp (with our intuitive folk physics). But what I think we are observing is not really "splinter psyches" or autonomous personalities inside our minds so much as a complex dynamic system in the process of a state change.
As I recently urged others on the IAJS list: it is time for Jungianism to fully enter the age of complexity. The old language of archetypal personages and opposites is outdated . . . but the language of complexity is ripe and ready to be applied. Some of this is already being adopted, but what I have seen is that the Jungians that do adopt complexity language use it to supplement classic (or developmental) Jungian archetypal language (as if it meant the same thing or merely amplified that old language). Really, archetypal language needs to take a back seat to a language of complexity for depth psychology to truly progress and become fully modern.
I've felt for a long time that the New Age is a re-engagement of intuition as a means to creatively re-express abstract concepts onto non-spiritual substances. The result is the spiritualization (or abstract noumenizing to coin a term) of matter and the daylighting of spiritual matters into physical substances. A short-attention span form of alchemy. It doesn't matter so much what constellations or gems or Tarot card sets you use so long as the physical set or "deck" offers a "spectral" (diverse like the primary and secondary colors), "finite" (accessible or relatively accessible to short-term memory manipulation) array of parts which stand together for a whole.
Again, I'm struggling to follow your language here, but I guess I partly agree. I have a lot of problems with New Age languaging (which derives from Victorian occult languaging filtered through 1960s and 70s pop culture and then sold in instant form to capitalism . . . i.e., commodified. The problem (as Jung and other Jungian critics of the original occult movements like theosophism have often asserted) is that the New Age languaging fails to be as functionally descriptive as the older symbolic languaging was in say, medieval times, or earlier. In other words, moderns don't natively understand and speak symbolic language . . . so even when we learn some of it, we are highly susceptible to "orientalizing" and romanticizing such language, essentially conforming it to our modernist assumptions, habits, and desires. And in that conformation, much is lost. The naturalness of the symbolic language is lost. The result is a tremendous increase in egoic inflation, a kind of appropriation by the modern ego (or, as I would say, the Demon) of affective and structural dynamics perceived from the Self system.
In other word, the New Age language that gets so many moderns (including most Jungians) introduced to symbolic and spiritual thinking causes as much harm as it provides benefit. It is not a "good enough" language (in the sense that psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott felt a mother had to be "good enough" for her child's ego to develop healthily) to really represent and welcome the Self into the modern environment. My lingo for this is the development and constant refinement/improvement of a Logos, a languaging of the Self system's principle of organization and the vaulting-heroic ego/Self relationship. I see this as a later aspect of the individuation process, post-animi work (to use the alchemical metaphor: post-Coniunctio) . . . although it is beginning to occur even with the start of the animi work.
I feel New Age and even Jungian languaging of the Self system's principle of organization is not "good enough". Therefore my project (here at Useless Science or whatever I am studying and trying to understand) is a re-languaging project fundamentally. I am a creative writer, a poet, a worker in the medium of language. Many New Ager's and Jungians are "creative" and "intuitive" people. But very few are what I would call "real artists". I feel a "real artist" is a little more like a tribal shaman. I.e., it is a vocational personality trait, a "calling". That calling shouldn't be confused with any kind of inflated Christian or perhaps Indian/Eastern calling to God or inner enlightenment. It is neither yogi/guru nor prophet. Rather, it is a calling primarily to languaging itself. Because we need "good enough" languaging in order to really be able to think about and relate to these things (i.e., complex dynamic systems like the Self).
What I mean to say is that it is not some kind of profound "spiritual vision" I feel I can and try to offer trough my writing projects. It is a craftsman's dedication. It is actually quite "aesthetic". I am not "discovering some new truth", I am re-describing old truths in a language that is not oriental and exotic to moderns in the West. That is, I am
trying to do this. I have no idea if I will meet with any success . . . but as it is a vocational drive, success of that kind is very secondary. I will do what I will do because that is what I am compelled to do. And I will manage to do it only as well as I am able to.
So, that is sort of rooted in what I had at first been calling a scapegoat and then a scapegoat/shaman complex. It is not some kind of destined social role, but rather a relational frame through which I habitually and innately approach the Self.
Now, all of that quasi-spiritualistic mumbo jumbo sounds perfectly like other Jungian and New Age mumbo jumbo . . . but I have learned (especially from interacting with Jungian analysts and authors at the IAJS), that despite the similar sounding "spiritual calling" language, I have a radically different approach to the Self and to the Jungian tribe than other Jungians I've read and corresponded with seem to. And (this at first surprised me) it was not some kind of spiritual visionary experience that differentiated me from other Jungians speaking in similar terms. It was my vocational frame as a poet and creative writer, as an artist. Jungians (starting with Jung) just don't understand art. They don't adequately understand the artist/art/Other relationship or the psychology of creation. And I think the lack of progress in Jungian languaging of the psyche has at least as much to do with this artistic lack as it does with, say, a lack of native (non-touristy), natural, and direct experience with the Self system that is being symbolically represented in dreams, religion, and art.
Another way of saying this is that Jungians have plenty of "religious experiences" that enrich their lives, but they don't do a very good job of interpreting and harnessing these experiences to a functional languaging or Logos project. Instead of a truly creative and progressive languaging project, Jungians (like most New Agers) approach languaging traditionally and faithfully . . . as something sacred to believe in and be fed by. It is a very Catholic approach . . . through faith alone (in the Word) is one "saved". But the artist does not think this way. The artist is compelled to translate the religious affects and ideas s/he has into a worldly or linguistic product (perhaps a model rather than a theory) . . . and ideally that translation is itself an act of faith and religious service to a Source. Creation as faithful facilitation of the Self-as-Other.
The New Ager (and the Jungian) says to his/her "god", "Feed me with your manna, and I will honor you." The artist says, "I will make you a bridge into this world. It may be a poor one, but I will put everything I am and have into it." The believer petitions for the grace of God; the artist invites and hosts (even without expectation of acceptance) God into the world to be fed.
With Jungians, their greatest asset (valuation of a spiritual Other/God/Self/unconscious/etc.) also serves as their greatest weakness. Jungianism (despite some claims to the contrary) is directed at being fed by the gods (i.e., the Jungian ego or identity is fed by the gods). It does not well understand how to feed those same gods. It is, in my opinion and experience, ego-centric in its religiosity. And this shadowy egocentrism is concealed behind a lot of poetic and devotional language about Self, spirit, and soul. But ultimately, people come to Jungianism to get their souls fed and healed. No part of the Jungian program teaches them how to turn around and become a feeder and healer of the soul/Self. It simply isn't a part of Jungian thought and literature . . . and this means that indoctrinated Jungians complete their religious journeys once their god provides something fulfilling to the ego. From my perspective, this is not the end of the journey, but only the first opened door to the Self. It does not constitute a really intimate relationship with the Self, the kind of relationship I call valuating and facilitating (or heroic) and which is founded on a devotional and dynamic Logos building and revising principle.
And one of the key (and largely misunderstood) things about that kind of Self-facilitating relationship is that it does not grant the ego some kind of "transcendence" or inflated worth or spiritual enlightenment. It is a humble partnership, not a conduit where truth is delivered. The only thing "delivered" is a subtle sense of gratitude . . . and indirectly, a more functional relationship to Otherness and change. It is not even guaranteed to reduce suffering or win "mental health". It is just something one does because one feels and knows that it is the right thing to do, that it is worth doing . . . and not only for one's benefit, but for the benefit of the Other.
To me the Ego is a Trickster, it is whatever part of the Elephant's body needs to be the nose. The Trickster made the world and still doesn't get it. That's why I have been eager to dissolve the distinction between ego and Self because I see but one order in the psyche with two faces. The two faces are the two types of memory and the energic (neural impulse strength and frequency) flows that drive them.
Here again me have a major divergence. In my experience, getting ego to work together in harmony with Self is never entirely or perfectly possible. And most of the time, it is radically dysfunctional. The trickster archetype is related to the shaman archetype. They are both fringe members of the tribe. But the shaman is concerned with healing the tribal soul, keeping it healthy and functional. S/he is responsible for putting the tribal soul/identity/Self-relationship back together (because soul is volatile and is always getting "lost"). The trickster may make certain aspects of the "world" (or tribal identity) that are always breaking or become dysfunctional, but he (usually male, but not always) is more of destroyer or dissolver of culture. The trickster energy is both feared and honored (by tribes). Tribal ideologies (that are Self-aware enough to celebrate and allow the trickster) harness the culture-dissolving energy of the trickster to keep the tribal soul/identity supple and changeable . . . adaptable. The trickster is related to the Self's capacity to dissolve and challenge the faux-solidity of ego. In other words the trickster is a fragment or aspect of the Self system . . . and therefore the trickster, in my opinion, cannot be used as an ego figure. Of course, in particular situations, an individual can act out and become identified with the trickster archetype or energy. We see that wherever tribal communities form . . . and as we are no longer very well tuned into the rhythms of tribalism, tricksters are usually persecuted.
It takes a tribal "wisdom" and familiarity with the Self to be able to
employ a trickster. That is, to let a trickster constructively dissolve those aspects of culture and identity that become diseased and ossified . . . but prevent him from destabilizing the functional aspects of cultural organization. Of course, in actual practice, we are rarely able to tell functional tricksterism from dysfunctional.
The trickster is also renowned for his appetites, libidinousness, and curiosity. Even most tribal cultures found their cultural identity constructions on some kind of "control" of impulses (for the sake of mutual benefit). The trickster has no control or desire to control such impulses. That impulsiveness can destroy or "loosen" arbitrary norms. So, for instance, Dionysus (as great loosener) has some trickster in him. Even Christ (where he is turning tables in the temple and defying kin-based sociality) is part trickster and part shaman. But, as with Christ (or Dionysus), identification with the trickster can easily become inflating. Trickster is a volatile archetypal energy (like Mercurius in alchemy), a Self dynamic . . . not something the ego can control or determine.
To understand archetypes we need merely to understand the processing functions of the various cortical regions and through abstraction (aka mapping) to other cortical regions see what "new age" mappings might result. This occurs when instinctually driven libido comes into conflict and yields a highly energized but static situation in the psyche. This is when creative mapping takes place spontaneously in the cortex and eventually yields some kind of symbol, aka spectral whole which resolves the conflict through a remapping of the original issue onto a third context.
Still having a hard time grasping your language . . . but in general (and as you know) I am opposed to mapping brain regions to specific psychic phenomena like archetypes. My suspicion is that such psychic phenomena derive their representations or images (as we perceive them) from a complex convergence of numerous coordinated brain regions and processes. And then, these complex coordinations are filtered and translated and reduced through our habitual theory of mind . . . which causes us to see systems with certain traits as minds, agents, or thinking beings.
There I think I've packed in a good variety of my own private theories into a relatively (for me) cohesive and not too long post. But does it make sense to anyone else...besides me...yet? lol
Relatively cohesive, yes, but I feel these things you are touching on are all very big issues. They demand extremely complex and detailed treatments. They are not to be understood by simpler paradigms or extreme reductions. I see them as analytically available only to language that allows for a lot of complexity. In other words, the goal of theory for these psychic phenomenon (in my opinion) is not coherence, neatness, cleverness, reduction to strict laws or rules of thumb or perfect analogies. In these arenas, I suspect theory must resist its habit to oversimplify and instead try to cope with and represent complexity. This is why I call the present the "age of complexity" . . . and it is also why, despite my numerous criticisms and grievances, I consider myself a Jungian. Jung was, relatively speaking (especially relative to Freud) a "complexifier" of psyche. He sought to language psychic complexity without resorting to extreme and overly neat theoretical reductions . . . and specifically positioned his approach in contrast to that of Freud. I embrace (and even extend) Jung's valuation of complexity in the psyche . . . and I think that is one of the most distinct differences between our respective approaches to psychological theory.