The Jungian Ego
Exploring and Defining the Ego According to Jung — The Jungian Psyche #1
Introduction
There is no word that is as flagrantly thrown around, casually uttered, and morphed into a multitude of contexts than ego. We tend to hear it when talking about someone we don’t like, claiming that they have a big ego. But outside of the milieu of pop-culture psychology, many do not fully grasp what the function of the ego is, much less its role in the grander scheme of the psyche. Here we will be discussing in depth the nature of the ego, and how we can work with this locus of awareness to better know ourselves and the world we inhabit.
In this article, I will be primarily discussing the ego in the contexts of a Jungian paradigm. Many psychologists have attempted to describe the ego, all of which follow similar criteria. Jung, however, placed the ego in context of the larger psychological arena, and for that matter we will be discussing his views on this crucial function of the psyche.
Jung is infamously difficult to read, so I have decided to pull from a much more readily digestible book: Jung’s Map of the Soul by Murray Stein. Stein has done an excellent job synthesizing and mapping out Jung’s original ideas into a comprehensible text that beautifully illustrates the different components of the territories of consciousness that Jung charted.
Stein periodically quotes Jung directly from his book Aion, which describes how Jung understood the ego. I have occasionally chosen a few of Jung’s direct quotes as well.
If you are interested in learning more about the psyche according to Jung, I highly recommend reading Stein’s book!
The Ego
As many intuitively understand, the ego is the “I” of the self. When discussing who one is, they are describing their ego. The word itself comes from the Latin word ego, simply meaning “I.” It is thus aptly named…or is it?
Consciousness itself is the scope of all awareness. To be conscious is to be awake, alert, and aware. Consciousness functions like a field of awareness, ultimately containing everything that there is to be conscious of.
Direct experience of this field is inherently overwhelming. To be aware of everything is simply too much for our nervous system to handle all at once. In order to make heads or tails of our experience, an ego develops that firmly places the boundary of where the self ends, and the rest of the world begins. Without this ability, we would be stuck in an undifferentiated state of oneness; unable to discern who we are, or where we are going as we drown in a perpetual ocean of chaotic awareness.
There is much debate on the topic, but it is thought that as infants first become aware they only experience this undifferentiated soup of consciousness. They must develop a sense of self, or egoic self, in order to establish the boundary of where they end and the world begins. This is why children go through the “terrible twos” phase, whereby they are overly defiant and favor the word “no.” Here they are actively building the boundary of what is and isn’t them. When parents threaten this natural process, the child is never able to establish a solid sense of self. This can lead to relational issues later in life, and in extreme cases even psychosis and paranoia.
If you’re interested in learning more about the process of relating at this stage of development, you can check out my article here on the primal wound.
To return to our concept of ego in terms of a larger psychic field, we can see how this establishment of a differentiated self is pivotal in managing the sheer scope of what it means to be aware.
The ego is essentially a tool. This tool allows us to feel secure in who we are so that we may slowly, and with intention, integrate the rest of the colossal field of consciousness.
Jung thought that understanding the ego itself was an important first step in understanding the psyche. Understanding the instrument we are using is necessary, as “one needs to make adjustments for distortion” (Stein, pg. 14, 1998). It is no secret that this egoic structure can, when left unchecked, assume total control of the psyche. In failing to understand that it is one small part in a larger field of awareness, it assumes that it is the center of all that is. This inflation has led to many distorted beliefs and has sparked dogmatic authority that does more harm than good.
I have recently been interested in gnostic traditions, and have found the concept of the demiurge to be analogous to the ego. In these traditions, the demiurge is the disregarded child of wisdom, or Sophia. The demiurge is shunned because of its defects and wakes up, alien and alone. Seeing no one around, the demiurge assumes that he is the god of everything, and thus creates the material world we know and love today. The demiurge is called Samael by Sophia, or “the blind god.” The demiurge is symbolic of ignorance.
I recently wrote an article on this concept that you can find here.
Much like how the demiurge assumes that it is the God of everything, our ego assumes that it is the sole center of awareness. Taken to the extreme, it assumes it is creating awareness. This is a dangerous place to be; without a proper understanding of ego dynamics in regards to the rest of the psyche, any knowledge, information, or beliefs emanating from the self are going to be distorted.
Ego and Consciousness
As we have discussed thus far, the ego is the locus of awareness within a field of consciousness. In Jung’s own words,
“It forms, as it were, the centre of a field of consciousness; and, in so far as this comprises the empirical personality, the ego is the subject of all personal acts of consciousness” (Jung, Aion, 1951).
Personal acts of consciousness are everything we hold near to us and label as who we are—i.e. our personality. This culminates into an experience of oneself as a center of willing, desiring, reflecting, and acting.
This center of awareness functions not only to label what it is, but to act as a mediator between what is known and conscious and what is in the dark of the unconscious. Jung writes that
“The relation of a psychic content to the ego forms the criterion of its consciousness, for no content can be conscious unless it is represented to a subject” (Jung, Aion, 1951).
In other words,
“The ego is a ‘subject’ to whom psychic contents are ‘represented.’ It is like a mirror [italics added]” (Stein, pg. 15, 1998).
Indeed, the ego is simply a mirror. Its job is to reflect contents from the unconscious so that we, as the sentient beings we are, can integrate the components into our conscious awareness.
“The ego is a kind of mirror in which the psyche can see itself and can become aware. The degree to which a psychic content is taken up and reflected by the ego is the degree to which it can be said to belong to the realm of consciousness. When a psychic content is only vaguely or marginally conscious, it has not yet been captured and held it in place upon the ego’s reflective surface” (Stein, pg. 15, 1998).
To best visualize this process, we can look at the original ‘iceberg’ model of the psyche proposed by Freud. While not entirely accurate, it offers a good metaphor for the process of conscious and unconscious integration.
When we see icebergs on the surface of the ocean, we are only seeing a small peak that has breached the water, while up to 90% of the iceberg is lurking beneath. Just ask the captain of the Titanic. We can think of the ego as this small 10% of awareness that we can “see”. The unconscious contents we have yet to integrate are the rest of the 90% below the surface.
“The unconscious is not simply the unknown, it is rather the unknown psychic; and this we define … as all those things in us which, if they came to consciousness, would presumably differ in no respect from the known psychic contents” (Jung, Aion, 1951).
According to Jung, our job is to facilitate this process. The act of living as a sentient being is to aid in the creative process of increasing one's total amount of awareness.
Our tool to do so is the ego.
When an organism is conscious, they are alive. Unconsciousness is akin to death. Living life, imbuing our reality with vitality and health, is to facilitate this process of becoming more aware. When our egoic identifications are too rooted, too forceful in denying the unconscious in its varying forms, then our vitality struggles.
While the concept of ego death has percolated throughout modern spiritual circles, killing the ego is not the goal of inner work; In fact it is the opposite. We have to strengthen the ego to better facilitate this process. When we hear talk of ego death, we are instead referring to removing the negative, aversive identifications that halter the process of integrating more unconscious contents.
For example, when we’ve been burned by a bad relationship we may develop a negative response by emotionally shutting down. This negative identification stops the potential of integrating more unconscious material (such as the root of the painful experience) by allowing ourselves to love again, knowing the risk that it may bring more pain. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to face our unconscious—our shadow—knowing that the experience won’t always be pleasant.
The rewards of becoming more conscious however far exceed this fear.
Another reason that attempting to rid oneself of the ego is a fool's task is that the ego is inherently a neutral entity. It simply grounds the transient and ephemeral nature of consciousness into a locus of awareness.
Think of a depiction of celestial bodies, such as stars and black holes, that warp spacetime with their gravitational mass.
In a similar way, the strong ego is able to ground itself within the field of consciousness, dictating the flow and integration of contents from the unconscious.
Due to the inherent sense of authority the ego takes over its experience, i.e. like the story of the demiurge recounted above, the ego has a tremendous power to dictate our experience of reality.
“The ego is responsible for retaining contents in consciousness, and it can also eliminate contents from consciousness by ceasing to reflect them ... The ego can ‘repress’ contents it does not like or finds intolerably painful or incompatible with other contents. It can also retrieve contents from storage in the unconscious (i.e., from the memory bank) so long as (a) they are not blocked by defense mechanisms, such as repression, which keep intolerable conflicts out of reach, and (b) they have a strong enough associative connection to the ego—they are ‘learned’ strongly enough” (Stein, pg. 18, 1998).
Through this it is important to remember that the ego is not fundamentally defined by these connections—it is simply the mirror, or the magnet that attracts and holds these identifications in a single focal point.
“The ego is a virtual center of awareness that exists at least from birth, the eye that sees and has always seen the world from the vantage point, from this body, from this individual point of view … It is not the product of nurture or growth or development. It is innate” (Stein, pg. 19, 1998).
This center is our locus of decision making and free will, arranging what parts of the psyche are to be focused on. It is the ego that allows us to make decisions outside of base instinct and survivalistic means.
In and of itself, the ego is not a bad thing. It is simply a localized point of awareness. It is the function of the psyche that sets humans apart from other species that possess consciousness.
“The ego contains our capacity to master large amounts of material within consciousness and to manipulate them. It is a powerful associative magnet and an organizational agent” (Stein, pg. 20, 1998).
These ‘large amounts of material,’ refer to our ability to overcome the gushing of primal urges and instincts in favor of a higher purpose. Those who have a strong ego have strong boundaries around where and how they dictate their attention. Those with a weak ego struggle with this and succumb to impulses, emotional reactions, and distractions.
Awareness and attention are the currency of the psyche. When the ego is strong, the individual will be able to control this and thus master any area of life they choose to focus on.
“Waking consciousness is focused, then, by the ego’s registering of internal and environmental stimuli and phenomena and putting the body into motion” (Stein, pg. 21, 1998).
At the core of the ego is pure awareness. While it is possible to remain in a suspended state of observation, the ego tends to become identified with whatever it is consuming, whether it be external or internal stimuli. However, beneath these momentary influences, there exists a distinct continuity present with the ego. Indeed, it can feel so unchanging and constant that it can give a strong conviction in the idea of having lived many lives before—that even beyond death the ego remains aware.
“The ego is based in the body only in the sense that it experiences unity with the body, but the body that the ego experiences is psychic. It is a body image and not the body itself. The body is experienced ‘from the totality of endosomatic perceptions,’ that is, from what one can consciously feel of the body” (Stein, pg. 24, 1998).
This brings us to the paramount question of the origin of conscious awareness. While it is not entirely known how consciousness is produced in the body empirically, we can look at it from within—fleshing out the subjective experience. While it would seem that the ego and the body are one, they rather operate side by side, in tandem with each other.
The experience of the body and its senses are not a direct experience, but are filtered through an image. This is due to the egos function to reflect, like a mirror, what it is perceiving. Even the most direct sensory experience is projected onto the ego in the form of an image—like watching a movie on an internal screen. This is the only way for the ego to be completely aware of what it is interacting with.
To the ego, the body is unconscious. We know this because when someone dies, their body will remain even though there is no conscious activity. When the ego ceases to be, the body doesn’t simply vanish. Since the ego's sole job is to reflect contents from the unconscious, we can assume that the ego is separate from the body and only experiences it through a projected image.
The reality of the body and the reality of the psyche are two separate realities. They simply exist in an entangled, coterminous state.
“There are two thresholds: the first separates consciousness from the unconscious, the second separates the psyche (both conscious and unconscious) from the somatic base” (Stein, pg. 25, 1998).
To reiterate, the ego rests on the psychic soma—the body image—and not on the body directly. This makes the ego entirely a psychic phenomenon.
Location of the Ego
Now that we’ve discussed the nature of the ego as a function of the psyche, let us touch on the ego in terms of psychic territory.
Jung posited that the ego rests on the total field of consciousness, as described above, as well as the sum total of unconscious contents. The main groups were
“temporarily subliminal contents that can be reproduced voluntarily (memory) … second, unconscious contents that cannot be reproduced voluntarily … third, contents that are not capable of becoming conscious at all” (Stein, pg. 26, 1998).
While this third group should fall outside the psyche, as they include the body and world outside of the psyche, there is the possibility of our unconscious being intertwined with the world around us. At this point we enter into the realm of energy healing and miracle work, some of which holds credibility.
As mentioned earlier, the ego rests on both a somatic and psychic base. Both of these contain conscious and unconscious elements. This implies that the ego has roots in the unconscious. Here Jung describes the ego as thus—
“In its upper structure, the ego is rational, cognitive, and reality-oriented, but in its deeper and more hidden layers it is subject to the flux of emotion, fantasy, and conflict, and to intrusions from the physical and psychic levels of the unconscious” (Stein, pg. 27, 1998).
Because of this dual connection, the ego can be disturbed by both somatic and psychic contents.
Jung also clarifies that just because the ego rests on the total field of consciousness, it is in fact distinguished from it. The ego is more like a vessel that maneuvers through the general stream of consciousness we are all experiencing. The ego must focus onto a single portion of consciousness, and as a consequence will block out what isn’t necessary.
This isn’t to say that consciousness does not continue to monitor, observe, and collect information from the internal and external world. It very much does, though the ego is not always involved in this process.
The ego will often fixate on memories, thoughts, feelings, or future plans that it has plucked from the general stream of consciousness. Whenever the ego has chosen to focus on something, it is effectively dissociating from other parts of consciousness. This is why everyone experiences some psychological splitting, and not only trauma survivors have to contend with dissociation. Our ego will naturally dissociate in some form or another. The entire scope of consciousness is just too overwhelming to inherently experience at once.
Jung wrote that over the course of one's lifetime, the ego does grow and enlarge its scope and integrated material. This is done through a series of collisions with the external world that challenge the ego’s held perceptions.
In other words, micro-traumas, through conflict, trouble, anguish, sorrow, and suffering gradually break down the ego so that it can be rebuilt stronger.
When one experiences wounding that classifies as trauma, they are experiencing these collisions that were too great for the ego to handle. The ego could not build itself back together and instead remained in an extremely dissociated and fractured state.
In an ideal world, we are given the tools to rebuild our ego after it has been broken down. When we know with certainty that it is just our ego that is being tested, and underneath this our real self remains intact, we can facilitate a process of true growth and expansion.
Above all, no matter how badly the ego has been raptured, or how severe the trauma one experienced is, there exists always an underlying current; a thread of potential that can mend whatever wounding has been done.
No matter the extent of our pain, our Real Self—our soul—remains intact.
Conclusion
In any psychology, the ego is always a critical function to understand. It stands quite literally at the center of who we are, and allows us to be conscious, sentient beings. When embarking on any kind of inner work, healing or spiritual journey, understanding the role of the ego and how it operates is crucial.
Achieving a sense of autonomy and a measure of control over consciousness with the ego brings with it a tremendous amount of personal freedom. Knowing that the totality of self is much larger than the small corners we are so used to is empowering, and being able to dictate the control of emotional fluctuations, impulsive actions, and instinctual urges is truly liberating. Mastering the ego is the first step to becoming integrated, and to becoming whole.
Our free will is one of our greatest superpowers. To the degree that unconscious contents are running the show, our scope of influence is haltered. We try to control events happening externally, but fail to realize we must also control events happening within as well. Strengthening the ego gives one agency over societal beliefs, family traditions, and other arbitrary rules that have been programmed into the unconscious mind. Being able to reflect and discern what is truly meaningful and then act on it is a marvelous feeling.
Here’s to growing a healthy, strong, resilient ego.
—Recommended Reading—
Jung’s Map of the Soul by Murray Stein
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Wow 😳 I'm in awe. The connection between the demiurge and the ego.. I normally try to limit myself from reading to much about topics I already know about and especially believe in as it just serves my confirmation bias but I'm glad I could resist here.
Masterfully explained and actually gave me new insight so thank you so much for that!