Erich Neumann

The Origins and History of Consciousness

Publisher: Princeton University Press (1954)

385

Compensation is the first requisite for a productive relationship between the ego and the unconscious. This means that the princess, the soul, is lost to the ego just as much in the patriarchal as in the matriarchal form of castration.\r\n \r\nBut, as we have made clear in Part I of this book, behind both forms there looms the original uroboric castration, where the tendencies to differentiation cancel out. To put it in psychological language: just as mania and melancholia are merely two forms of madness, of the devouring uroboric state which destroys all ego consciousness, so regression to the unconscious, i.e., being devoured by the Great Mother, and the flight to 'nothing but' consciousness, i.e., being devoured by the spiritual father, are two forms in which any truly compensated consciousness, and the striving for wholeness, are lost. Deflation as well as inflation destroys the efficacy of consciousness, and both of them are defeats for the ego.\r\n \r\nSpiritual inflation, a perfect example of which is the frenziedness of Nietzsche's Zarathustra, is a typical Western development carried to extremes. Behind the overaccentuation of consciousness, ego, and reason - sensible enough in themselves as the guiding aims of psychic development - there stands the overwhelming might of 'heaven' as the danger which goes beyond the heroic struggle with the earthly side of the dragon and culminates in a spirituality that has lost touch with reality and the instincts.