ABSTRACT
The ego as a topic of study came to me through a dream, three dreams to be exact. Many years ago, while a diploma candidate at the CG Jung Institute in Zürich, I started my practice day by seeing a shy university student who opened his session by relating the following dream: “I was walking down a dark street at night and realized I was being followed by a brutish man. I was terrified and ran as fast as I could but he still followed me”. The second client of the day, a middle-aged teacher in the middle of a divorce, began the session with her dream: “I was walking down a dark street at night and realized I was being followed by a man with a knife. Rather than run, I turn and confront him. He then silently hands his knife to me”. The third client of the morning, a young shop clerk, also had the stranger dream: “I am walking down a dark street at night and realize a shapeless thing, possibly a man, possible an animal, is following me. I am terrified and begin to attack it, kicking and punching until I am sure it is dead. I am covered in blood”. The tremendous coincidence – some would call it synchronicity – of these three dreams in one day was striking: all had the same opening scenario but each with very different conclusions based on the actions of the dream ego, that is, the dreamer in one's own dream. I responded to this striking experience with a new fascination for the ego concept, and I wanted to understand more about this aspect of Jung's theory. During my education in Zürich, we students had a tendency to focus on Jung's pioneering ideas about archetypes; my clients’ nearly identical dream scenarios led me to reread Jung in a new light. Yet as I explored his works for an organized theory of ego, I found instead confusion and contradictions.
