Depth Psychology · The Self
Teaching · 1912
The Shadow
Relative Evil, Absolute Evil
The hidden, rejected, or unacknowledged parts of our personality that we disown or project onto others.
What it isAion divides it in two and the division is the teaching. The personal shadow can be assimilated with effort; the archetypal shadow integrates with nothing at all. Modern usage collapses the pair, and promises for the second what Jung only offered for the first.
The FindingAion (1951) gives the shadow seven paragraphs, and §19 splits it in two — the personal shadow can be seen through "with a little self-criticism", while the shadow met "as an archetype" raises "the same difficulties as with anima and animus" and, at the limit, "a rare and shattering experience" of absolute evil — the half rarely carried over into the popular shadow-work literature.
Teaching · 1916
The Persona
Worn, Not Owned
The social mask and public identity we present to the world to navigate society and protect our inner vulnerability.
What it isJung's claim is that it is not individual at all — a segment of the collective psyche, licensed rather than owned, which is why it fits so well and why identifying with it costs so much. The Latin word is the actor's mask, and he does not mean it only as a metaphor.
The FindingJung's persona is not the individual's own mask but "an arbitrary segment of collective psyche" (CW 7 §245, the claim already made in the 1916 lecture), so analysing it turns up more collective material rather than the real person underneath.
Teaching · 1921
The Self
Wholeness Approached, Never Reached
The central Jungian archetype of wholeness, uniting the conscious ego with the vast depths of the unconscious mind.
What it isThe totality that already contains the ego, so individuation ends in a relation between the two rather than in an arrival. Aion then concedes the hard part: empirically, a symbol of the Self cannot be distinguished from an image of God. Jung declines to settle what his critics say he settled.
The FindingAion (1951) calls it "a psychic catastrophe when the ego is assimilated by the self" and says the ego's approach to it "must be a never-ending process" — individuation ends in a bounded relation between two centres, not in becoming whole.