/tag/centroversion

4 quotes tagged 'centroversion'

The Origins and History of Consciousness

Publisher: Princeton University Press (1954)

300

The tendency of unconscious contents to swamp consciousness corresponds to the danger of being 'possessed'; it is one of the greatest 'perils of the soul' even today. A man whose consciousness is possessed by a particular content has an enormous dynamism in him, namely that of the unconscious content; but this counteracts the centroversion tendency of the ego to work for the whole rather than for the individual content.

297

Pain and discomfort are among the earliest factors that build consciousness. They are 'alarm-signals' sent out by centroversion to indicate that the unconscious equilibrium is disturbed. These signals were originally defense measures developed by the organism, though the manner of their development is as mysterious as that of all other organs and systems. The function of ego consciousness, however, is not merely to perceive, but to assimilate these alarm signals, for which purpose the ego, even when it suffers, has to hold aloof from them if it is to react appropriately. The ego, keeping its detachment as the center of the registering consciousness, is a differentiated organ exercising its controlling function in the interests of the whole, but is not identical with it.

221

Stability and indestructibility, the true goals of centroversion, have their mythological prototype in the conquest of death, in man's defenses against its power, for death is the primorial symbol of the decay and dissolution of the personality. Primitive man's refusal to recognize death as a natural occurrence, the immortalization of the king among the ancient Egyptians, ancestor worship, and the belief in the immortality of the soul in the great world-religions - all these are but different expressions of the same fundamental tendency in man to experience himself as imperishable and indestructible.

219

The development of personality proceeds in three different dimensions. The first is outward adaptation, to the world and things, otherwise known as extraversion; the second is inward adaptation, to the objective psyche and archetypes, otherwise known as introversion. The third is centroversion, the self-formative or individuating tendency which proceeds within the psyche itself, independent of the other two attitudes and their development.