ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the main trends in C. G. Jung's developing concepts of the self. The other sources of Jung's study are derived from comparative religion, folklore and alchemy, with the aid of which he succeeded in generalizing, illuminating and amplifying his clinical observations. Yet data indicating actions of the self cannot also be the totality since, in Jung's general theory of the psyche, a part of it, the ego, is specifically differentiated from the archetypes and is the only means for generating consciousness. The chapter considers formulations about the self as envisaged in two other disciplines: psychoanalysis and general psychology. H. Kohut alone has given transcendence to the self and claims to have introduced a revolution into psychoanalysis thereby doing away with libido and drive theory. In progressing from unknowing to knowing, it can be understood that the self has a powerful creative influence in the formation of mental structures whilst still remaining unknown and unknowable.
