Sunday 24 February 2002

Pic of the day: Sometimes a man's ego will swell like a balloon.

Personal inflation

I had a visit today by a fellow Christian. We talked about the things that concern the Kingdom of God and the current world's shortcomings. In particular this time, we dwelt upon the fact that humans are so easily inflated.

Events lately have shown the sad effects of personal inflation on people who live at the heights of society: Politicians, CEOs, top athletes. There is an enormous pressure - or suction, perhaps - on them, to be larger than life. To be more than human, to exceed and transcend the rules. And they - or at least some of them - give in to this. They become inflated, too big for their breeches. And then suddenly they are caught with their breeches down, and do not understand what happened.

The Bible commands us Christians to pray for those who are in positions of power, and it certainly seems that they can need it. But of course the same problem applies to us, only at a more moderate level because we have more moderate opportunities.

***

C.G. Jung, that pioneer of psychology, actually used the concept of inflation. He considered the ego to be only a modest part of the larger self, most of which was subconscious. But unlike Freud, which saw the subconscious as a dumb cesspool of raw lusts, Jung had a much more positive view. Yes, there was the "shadow", our suppressed dark sides. (Or bright sides, for the more evil characters.) But below this, there were archetypes that had proved their worth through millenia of human development. Anima (or Animus, for women), the mysterious guide that represent our feminine side (or masculine, for women). And other more mythic characters, as found on Tarot cards and in dreams and myths.

In many of his patients and clients, Jung found that they had a need to open up their subconscious and absorb matters that had been unknown to them. Parts of themselves that they had not known about, even though they had been lying there and influenced their lives. Meeting these parts of their deeper psyche first projected as person, the seekers of truth eventually accepted them as parts of themselves, functions of the self.

But there was a risk to this. The risk was of inflation: By absorbing matters from the subconscious, the person could be overwhelmed and start to identify with the collective archetypes. They would start to think of themselves in mythic terms, to become god-like in their own eyes. They would try to reduce the greater self, the whole of the psyche, to a function of their ego, completely reversing the balance. This was a very unhealthy thing.

I know that too well from my own life, for I have delved deeper into these things than most. There is always this other person enveloping me, someone much greater than I am, and there is again and again the temptation to mythify myself, as it were. But then luckily I sometimes get sick and remember than I am not a demigod, but a very human little human. As women say, there is nothing as sick as a sick man. ^_^*