The Difficult Setting-Up of the Self and the Shadow

Jung’s intuitive thinking process enabled him to elaborate only very slowly the main theories of his clinical approach. Two periods of searching can thus be distinguished. During the first, 1913-28, Jung broke away from Freud by gradually elaborating his own theories of the Ego. During the second, 1929-40, he evolved his own vision of the Self. At this time, the discovery of the Taoist text The Mystery of the Golden Flower led him towards an incomplete definition of the Self as purely spiritual, as a Son-Self which, in its opposition to the Father-Ego, is burdened by a dangerously optimistic hope for change. This momentary concept — which was discarded by 1935, when the shadow was taken into account — is the source of Jung’s hesitations and blunders in the years 1933 and 1934.