Dynamics of the Transpersonal

Abstract

Given the obscurity of causation relative to the diversity and novelty in consciousness, the more inclusive arguments about evolution in the psyche presume an encounter with inner otherness, what Jung called, paradoxically, the “objective” psyche. According to the nomenclature of analytic psychology, as the psyche evolves toward ego strength, it is better able to withdraw its projections and thus come into greater consciousness of the transpersonal dimension of “subjectivity.” Doubtless Jung’s term “Self ” is problematic, as are its correlatives in Whitman and Nietzsche—the latter, as subject of Jung’s extensive lectures, his most likely inspiration. Thus, we see in Jung’s one term a mythic conflation of what appears interdependent and bifurcated in Tillich: the self as individual and the Self as contingent.