Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2008, 53, 389406

Your Self:
did you find it or did you make it?
Louis Zinkin (1926 1993)
Abstract: In this paper 1 , written in draft form in 1991 and now posthumously published,
the late Louis Zinkin 2 presents a constructivist view of the self. He considers some of the
paradoxes in Jungian definitions of the self and compares these to Winnicotts forbidden
question regarding the transitional object: Did you find it or did you make it?. He argues
that, for the purposes of a coherent scientific theory, these apparent paradoxes need to
be formulated in an internally consistent way. Bemused by the many contradictions in
Jungs thinking, he proposes making a fresh start by thinking in terms of people in social
interaction with each other rather than as solitary subjects, as Jung did. This leads him
to the view that the self comes into existence through continuing interaction with other
people. Drawing on the work of Harre and Vygotsky, he suggests that the public self is
prior to the private self and that one becomes real through recognition by other people
in and through language and culture. The paper was discussed at a meeting held at the
Society of Analytical Psychology in November 1991 and an edited version of the taped
discussion follows.
Key words: archetypes, collective, individuation, paradox, self, social interaction

If Jung had one point to make, it was this: whatever psychotherapists might
think they are doing, the important thing to understand is individuation. We
may question the circumstances in which it is a practical and realizable goal,
who might be suitable subjects for it, at what time of life, or what might be the
best method of achieving it and Jung did question all of these things. But what,
for Jung, was unquestionable was the supremacy of individuation as a goal and
therefore as a process if one could undergo it, or even understand it. For Jung
it was undoubtedly the greatest human endeavour.
Jungs followers have struggled with it ever since, the latest example to my
knowledge coming from Fred Plaut in a remarkable lecture at the Analytical
1 This is a slightly edited version of a paper that was pre-circulated to members of the Society of
Analtyical Psychology for discussion at the monthly meeting of the analytic group on 4th November
1991. Sub-headings and some references have been added by the Editor, Warren Colman.
2 The late Louis Zinkin was a practising analytical psychologist and group analyst, a training analyst
of the S.A.P., honorary consultant psychotherapist and senior lecturer at St Georges Hospital,
London, and associate of the Group-Analytic Practice, London. He died on 13th March 1993.

00218774/2008/5303/389


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2008, The Society of Analytical Psychology

Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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Louis Zinkin

Psychology Club in honour of Faye Pye (Plaut 1991) 3 . It is not difficult to see
why everyone struggles with it because it is so hard to define. Whether we turn
to Jungs own definition in Psychological Types (Jung 1921/1971, para. 789
791) or to the Critical Dictionary (Plaut, Samuels & Shorter 1986) we are still
left bemused. What could be more important than becoming who one truly is?
We could call it, then, self realization. But this means, as we go into it, having
some notion of what the self truly is and this is where all the difficulties start.
We all are ready to agree that there is no satisfactory way of defining the self.
This agreement can readily lead to the idea that the self eludes the possibility of
definition and this, I think, will not do. It cannot remain something which those
in the know understand, but which cannot be explained to others; not, that is,
if analytical psychology has any claims to be a theory of psychology which can
be explicated, rather than a mystery-cult to which one has to be initiated and
whose secrets must never be revealed to others. But if we make such a claim, we
have to do our best to untangle the contradictions or paradoxes which confront
us when we try to be coherent.
For analytical psychology is full of contradictions. Perhaps psychoanalysis is
too, though this is much less apparent at first glance. There are a number of
reasons for this but, broadly, it results from some basic differences in viewpoint
between Freud and Jung on the nature of the mind.
Paradox in psychoanalysis and analytical psychology
Freud did his utmost to produce a scientific theory of the mind which included
the unconscious, which he mostly thought of as a part of the individual mind.
Both in his original topographical model and, later, in his structural model, he
achieved consistency by dividing the mind into parts which could be in conflict
with each other. The mind, like the brain, was itself a part which could be
conceived as being possessed by the individual. Though Freud essentially saw
the individual as being in internal conflict, he did not regard the universe as being
in conflict, but saw it rather as being governed by laws. It was the individual who
had to face contradictions arising from there being conflict between different
structures in the mind, each of which had an unconscious component. Making
the Unconscious conscious allowed the subject to see the conflict more clearly,
to become aware, in fact, that his mind was governed by the same scientific
laws which governed Nature and to be thus freed to take control and to make
choices which were previously unavailable. By replacing id with ego, or making
conscious what was previously unconscious, conflict could become choice, even
if sometimes difficult or painful choice. Choosing between competing alternative
courses cleared away the paralysis of contradiction. Contradiction implies a
breach in logic such that alternative propositions cannot both be true and logical,
one has to decide which is true and act accordingly. Freud saw consciousness

Plauts lecture, entitled Individuation Reviewed, was given on 21 March 1991.

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391

as recognition of the reality principle, making possible the use of Aristotelian

logic, with its well-known laws of identity, non-contradiction and excluded
middle. These were features of secondary-process thinking and all theses rules
are broken in primary process thinking, which is found in dreams and psychosis.
Scientific theory is, or ought to be an example of secondary process. Primary
process with its illogicalities is studied in psychoanalysis but is eschewed in its
theoretical propositions. Freud did not put forward individuation as a goal and
patients are, within his system, thought to be freed from neurosis when they
become, not more themselves but better at reality testing.
In this approach, what is the status of the paradox? If allowed a place in
psychoanalytic theory, retaining Freuds rational model, paradox would have
to be only apparent; in other words: the verbal contradiction is simply a device
to make one think of an otherwise hidden non-contradictory truth. In poetry
and in wit, the hidden meaning has only to be dimly sensed for one to be
moved, whether it be to laughter or to tears. There is no need to spell it out in
a different language from the one used by the poet or the wit. The dissection of
wit, as shown in Freuds Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious kills the joke
by explaining what it means (Freud 1905). Because scientific theory is supposed
to be the explanation of objective reality it cannot itself be left in the form of
paradox. If contradictions are revealed in theory, they have to be dealt with in
such a way that the theory remains internally consistent.
Analytical psychology however abounds in paradox. Its most basic terms
reveal it. How can there be a collective unconscious or an objective psyche?
How can there be a self which is defined both as the centre and the totality of
the psyche? How can archetypes be experienced through symbols if at the same
time they are said to be unknowable? Surely these are contradictions in terms,
so how can we begin to use them as part of a scientific discourse? Analytical
psychologists can be defined as those psychologists who are not troubled by
these contradictions or at least not so troubled that they wish to abandon their
terms. Of course, they find in Jungs writing a number of ways of justifying
this. They may say in effect that if this is not science, so much the worse for
science or they may say it is a new science in which neither the laws of Aristotle
nor those of Newton apply. Or they may talk of opposites as having to be
held together until they reveal a third more profound truth in which they are
combined. Or they may say that the paradoxes are only apparent and suggest
that Jung was fond of rhetorical utterances which can be broken down to reveal
straightforward self-consistent truths. But in any case, thinking itself is only one
of four functions; there are three others, of equal importance even though one
other (feeling) is said to be rational.
Sometimes paradox can be shown to be a confusion of logical typing as Russell
and Whitehead showed: a breach in the principle that a class cannot be a member
of itself (Russell & Whitehead 1910). Oscar Wilde makes us laugh when he says
I can resist everything except temptation. Why is it funny? Only because we
cannot immediately grasp that it is logically inadmissible, as is the notice which

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says: This is not a notice or It is forbidden to read this notice. These breaches
of logical typing are now well known in the psychopathology of the double
bind.
Paradoxical definitions of the self
I begin my talk with these observations in order to introduce a topic which is
of central importance. The self, as we are often told, is hard to define but is
nevertheless a very useful term. Individuation for Jung meant becoming more
oneself. The persona is a mask, a socially necessary one to be sure, but a mask
nevertheless. It is not to be mistaken for the true self. Not only does it conceal this
true self from others but also, more importantly, it conceals it from ourselves.
Therefore the first step in individuation is to dissolve it. The final step is to find
and therefore to become ones true self, though, as this is an endless quest, like
looking for the Grail, this final step is never taken. The paradox though is that
the self is there all the time. It is after all what one really is, what one has always
been without knowing it.
Jung perhaps would agree that the paradox reveals a profound truth for the
individual who confronts it, but deny that there is any contradiction in his
theory. This would be possible for him because he distinguished the ego from
the self. He regarded the ego as being at the centre of consciousness. The self,
the centre of the psyche as well as its totality, mediates between the opposites
including the opposites of consciousness and the unconscious. It cannot be
known in the way conscious contents can. Therefore, though it has always been
there it can never be fully understood. Gradually one can learn to apprehend it
through its various symbols and in that way come to recognize it, transcending
ego-consciousness and, particularly in later life, this process will enable the
subject to become more fully himself, a more fully individuated human being.
In this formulation there is no contradiction; the paradox is only apparent, a
manner of speaking. In the experience of the individual, it is a great mystery,
but as a psychological description it should be easy to grasp and elementary
descriptions of analytical psychology are not particularly difficult to follow.
Even the transcendent function was nothing mysterious or metaphysical and
Jung suggests that it has the clarity of a mathematical function (Jung 1916,
para. 131). Moreover, many people immediately feel that Jungs descriptions
are right and more satisfactory than Freuds.
But the appeal of Jung and the intuitive sense of rightness he evokes may
depend greatly on one particular locution, the use of the word self. This familiar
word, used every day by everybody seems to have instant meaning. Being oneself,
not pretending or imagining oneself to be what one is not, is, after all, what we
are all wanting to do. In fact, as time goes on, more and more people are finding
this quite a problem and Jungs appeal grows, as does any psychological method
which purports to help us to become less alienated from ourselves. Alienation is
on everybodys lips. It is the great symptom of our times. The difficulty is not just
that our everyday use of the self has to be modified to meet Jungs specialized

Your Self: did you find it or did you make it?

393

use of the term but that there is a vast philosophical and sociological discussion,
going back to antiquity on exactly what we mean by the self. If only Jung had
invented a new term, say the centrum, for what he was intending, things would
have been much easier. We could talk about a patient in analysis as having been
in touch with her centrum, having a centrum dream, or becoming identified
with her centrum. Of course, it would still be quite close, in many ways to
talking about the self but only in the sense that talking about the superego is
close to talking about conscience. Though there are many features in common,
the terms would not be interchangeable. But Jung did not do this and I think it
was because he consciously wanted to remain within the traditional disciplines
which ponder on the nature of the self, even going beyond Western philosophy
to the Self, with a capital S as used in the Vedic scriptures.
This being so, we cannot avoid being curious about such questions as: Is
there one self or do we all have one? What is it like? Where did it come from?
Do we all start with an individual self or do we begin by being unable to
make distinctions between ourselves and our mothers, perhaps being unable
to make distinctions of any kind? If this is so and we only gradually learn what
it is to have a self which can be distinguished from that of other people, is it
nevertheless true that we had one all the time but simply did not realize it? If
we have to learn that we have one, how does this learning take place? Does
the information come from some prior expectation laid down in our psyches
or does it come from outside, a product of social interaction or both? As these
questions become more precise, it becomes clear that they need not be confined
to philosophical or theological speculation because, at least to some extent, they
can be empirically examined. By empirical, I do not mean simply by observation
or behaviour. We can systematically enquire: under what conditions do people
experience themselves as having a self or being more themselves and under
what conditions do they feel instead to be isolated, depersonalized or empty
inside? Even little babies can be the subject of such an enquiry. There are now
techniques for asking babies what they are experiencing and Stern has devoted a
large volume to studying this question of the self through infant research (Stern
1985). Clearly these are not academic questions for the analytical psychologist,
but are urgent practical ones. If our overriding aim is to help people become
more individuated we need to know at least how to provide the conditions
which enable it to happen.
My title is, of course, taken from Winnicott (1953/1971) who thought or,
rather, passionately believed that there is a certain question we must not ask
babies. He, a psychoanalyst, is speaking about a certain kind of object that he
calls a subjective object. Again note the contradiction in the term. If we need
to distinguish subject and object, how can there be a subjective object? But
Winnicott, unlike Freud but like Jung, did not wish to dispense with paradox.
It is because there is indeed such a contradictory entity that we must not ask the
infant: Did you find it or did you create it? I am not sure how much Winnicott
meant us to unpack the metaphor. It could be said that what Winnicott meant

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is straightforward and not really contradictory. It may be simply that even if the
infant did in actual reality find this object, it is important to maintain the illusion
that he created it for himself. Winnicott believed in the value of illusion; he
thought that the infant needed to feel omnipotent even though it really was not.
Disillusionment could come later. This was Winnicotts explanation of why
the question must not be asked. It is as easily understandable as it is that fairies
and Father Christmas should be believed in even though they do not really exist.
But Winnicott, I am sure, did not mean us to take his explanation so simply.
Fairies and Father Christmas surely do continue to exist even after scientists have
disproved their existence. Winnicott was a magical therapist and he shared with
his patients a belief in magic, particularly if they were children. His appeal to the
reader that the question, Did you find or create it? must not be asked is because
it is a preposterous question. The reader has to see that it is preposterous before
understanding why it is, before having a theory that illusions of omnipotence
are necessary to the infants wellbeing. Unless the question is experienced in this
way, there is, in fact, no need for such a theory.
What then of the self? It might seem absurd to think of the self as a transitional
object, occupying the no mans land of a third area, but it certainly seems
to be a subjective object. Jung could only describe it in terms of opposites.
The forbidden question includes the word or. It implies that you must make
your mind up. Either you found it or you didnt, you must have made it, or
perhaps you made it up. These questions, if pursued in this way about the self
become more than preposterous; they begin to have the sinister, evil, quality
of an interrogation whose purpose is to destroy the sense of self, the fragile
identity which enables a person to feel he or she is a person. The questions have
a menacing, accusatory ring to them.
But as psychologists who wish to explain mental events and regard the concept
of the self as helping us to do so, we do still need to know the answers to the
question of how the self started. My own answer is that the self comes into
existence only through interaction with others and the form it takes, the sense
the individual has of being or having a self, will depend greatly on the culture
in which he or she has been brought up. It is created, made and formed not
by any single act but by a continuing interaction with others. This does not
imply that it is fragile. In certain cultures it may be very strong, in others weak
and uncertain. My difficulty is that by providing this particular answer, I find
myself in disagreement with most other Jungians. They tend to argue in a certain
way. They may say something like: Yes, there is a good deal of evidence that a
persons identity depends on social factors but this evidence is anthropological
or sociological or experimental. The self you are talking about in this way is
not what Jung meant at all, and it certainly is not what he was talking about in
his idea of individuation. You are, perhaps, referring to the ego or you might be
thinking of the ego end of the ego-self axis, very important of course, but you
have missed the point, the essential point of Jungs whole endeavour. To which,
of course, I reply that Jung himself used experimental techniques from which
his idea of archetypes eventually evolved, gave a good deal of ethnographic

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evidence and certainly did not ignore collectivity and social interaction. But this
is of little use and my opponents remain convinced that I have missed the point.
This is particularly maddening because I did not come easily to my present
position and have tried to reconcile it with other positions, such as: that the
self is an innate biological given, that it is better to call it the soul, given to us
by God and that it will survive bodily death, or that it is indeed created by the
individual, or that it has no real existence, or that there is not one but many
selves. The problem with the argument that I have not understood Jung and
therefore I am not a true Jungian is that it does not address the issues I am
wanting to raise either to prove me wrong or even partially right in coming
to one conclusion rather than another. I am left rather hopelessly to turn back
yet again to reading Jung, to try to understand him better and yet again to feel
bemused by his contradictions.
Jung endlessly repeats his Kantian idea of the unknowable thing in itself. This
is essential for his definition of the archetype and for understanding what he
means by a true symbol as distinct from a mere sign. The true self can only be
known through the true symbols and I am left in a circularity. If my true self
has to be found, how can I recognize the symbols of it as being true?
What I find best to do at this point is to stop asking myself unanswerable
questions and to abandon, for the moment, this particular metaphysical
viewpoint and to approach the whole problem from another angle and through
the eyes of a quite different discipline. Suppose we start, not by posing a solitary
subject and wondering how he can have knowledge, but with groups of people
and ask instead, how it comes about that they seem to talk to each other without
too much difficulty as if they all know what they mean by the self. I can now
examine the idea that the notion of the self arises from an interaction between
them and is perhaps a necessary one as a kind of assumption rather than one
which requires proof.
The self in social interaction
The idea of the self being formed through social interaction, being, in fact, a
social construction, is now common in social psychology, a good example being
Goffmans presentation of self in everyday life (Goffman 1959). Such an idea
runs counter to Jungs system because there is no room for it in the polarity
he makes between collective and personal. When considering the problem of
individuality, he tends to regard a person as having features which are either
personal or collective. For example in the Two Essays on Analytical Psychology,
Jung makes this polarity quite explicit. Discussing alienations of the self, he calls
them
ways of divesting the self of its reality in favour of an external role or in favour of an
imagined meaning. In the former case the self retires into the background and gives
place to social recognition; in the latter, to the auto-suggestive meaning of a primordial
image. In both cases, the collective has the upper hand.
(Jung 1928, para. 267)

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This seems to be a way of saying what Jung so often emphasized: there is a

double danger. On the one hand there is inflation, in which one is blown-up in an
identification with the archetype. On the other, one is lost through identification
with some social role. Both these dangers, both the archetype and the social role,
are collective. This gave rise to his use of the word persona the mask which hides
the true individual, on the one hand, and the impersonal nature of the collective
unconscious, on the other. These constitute the Scylla and Charybdis through
which, to individuate, one has to pass. It is this formulation, to which Jung
continued to return, that makes it difficult for me to find room for something
of which I remain utterly convinced: one becomes real through recognition by
other people. The use of the word social suggests to Jung, and to many of his
followers, a purely conventional exchange between people, who follow the rules
of whatever society they belong to. Such rules were freely regarded as necessary
by Jung but any notion of a social self bound by such rules had nothing to do
with the self one was seeking to be. This, of course, is a very limited view of
human interaction. It is found in Memories, Dreams, Reflections which does not
include personal interaction as being formative in Jungs own self-development
(Jung 1963). On the contrary, it conveys the lack of satisfactory relationships
in his early life as, for example, in his disappointment with his father.
Apart from these personal factors in Jung, one should also consider the
philosophical background which, from Descartes to Kant, Hegel and Fichte,
treated the single subject in relation to a world of objects in its attempt to
understand the conditions for knowledge, which in Hegel and Fichte became
self-knowledge or transcendental self-consciousness. This background together
with Jungs central notion of the psychological need for God-images, whether
God really existed or not, led him to trivialize the social dimension. Jungs stance,
like Luthers, is that of the single individual standing alone and surveying his
fellow creatures. From the very beginning and not just at the very end, Jung is the
solitary individual, an I rather than part of a human I-thou or as a member of
a we. Much of Jungs rhetoric is an appeal to the reader to transcend everyday
reality, the daily interchanges with our fellows which can easily be made to seem
banal. But it is to the schizoid personality that this rhetoric has its greatest appeal
and who is most ready to identify with Jungs way of thinking. For the schizoid
personality, the dilemma can easily be seen to lie in a twofold fear. On the one
hand is the fear of losing oneself by conforming to social demands. On the other,
there is the fear of losing oneself in the unconscious by attempting to transcend
these social demands and to come under the spell of the archetypes not realizing
that these are quite impersonal and thus totally indifferent to the value of the
person. To withdraw from society in order to preserve ones individuality carries
the risk of chaotic fragmentation, of insanity. Very often there is an attempt at a
solution by outwardly conforming and secretly withdrawing resulting in a false
self concealing a fragmented or chaotic inner life which still manages to retain
a fragile core. Jung refers to Scylla and Charybdis when discussing the danger
of confusing the impersonal and collectively defined archetype with a person.

Your Self: did you find it or did you make it?

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The Scylla is to introject the archetype, thinking one can be it; the Charybdis is
to project it, to see the analyst as a God or demon (Jung 1928, para. 110).
But the Scylla and Charybdis myth is misleading as an analogy for the ordinary
person even though it wonderfully expresses the schizoid dilemma. The power
of the myth lies in the temptation towards self-destruction, the wish not to
succeed in steering the narrow channel between the dangerous rocks. Jung uses
the analogy to illustrate his favourite theme, that both the inner world and the
outer represent terrible dangers to the individual because both are collective and
therefore impersonal.
If on the other hand the true situation is that there is a large expanse of calm
water between these two terrible rocks, or even dry and fertile land, the urgency
of what Jung has to say is much diminished. The fertile land might consist of the
very everyday reality which Jung as a schizoid personality is inclined to reject.
I say inclined to because, of course Jung did value it and every now and again
he says so 4 . But this is only found in occasional references and is by no means
the main thrust of his argument.
Breaking into ones own house: differing interpretations of a self symbol
In practice, I think that the great dividing lines between the ways different
Jungian therapists work depends on their understanding of archetypes. Nobody
could claim to be Jungian who did not make use of the theory of archetypes,
but the theory can be used in quite different ways. In the case of the self, let
us take as an example a dream which a patient of mine had. He dreamt that
he was breaking into his own house. It was very important that he got in and
that he did not get arrested as a burglar. He was a schizoid personality who
produced a great deal of fantasy material showing how cut off he felt from
his real self and I suppose no one would quarrel with my understanding that
the house symbolized the self. Perhaps a Kleinian analyst might think of the
mothers body or even the analysts body as having been appropriated by the
patient but even this interpretation would at some level acknowledge that by
being dreamt as his house it had become for him a self of some sort.
If we take the self as an archetype, it would be distinguished from personal
material and what would be emphasized is the universality of house or building
images to represent the self. This is what I would call foregrounding the
archetype. The personal associations would be regarded as superficial, leading
to the patients complexes in a predictable way while amplification would lead
to a deeper understanding, reflecting the numinosity of the archetype, enabling
the patient to transcend his personal ego. This would be the procedure of the
classical Jungian. An archetypal psychologist following Hillmans interpretation
of Jung would place great emphasis on the position of the dreamers ego
A note in the draft text here says quote the passage about suicide Vol 18. Unfortunately, the only
reference to suicide in Vol. 18 is not relevant to this context and it has not been possible to find the
passage that Louis Zinkin had in mind (Ed.)

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being outside the house but would, I imagine, still regard the house itself as
archetypal. My own interpretation is to take the dream as representing the
patients relationship to himself. By this I mean himself in the sense that one
frequently meets oneself in dreams but I am thinking of the self in its everyday
usage. I know of course that the house is often used to signify the self and that
the self thus signified is an archetype but this for me is background knowledge.
It does not account for the fact that in the dream it was his own house which I
take to mean his own self.
Whatever the value may be of seeing experience as archetypal, it seems likely
from Jungs autobiographical material that for him personally it had the value
of helping him to feel sane through recognizing that his strange fantasies were
not his alone but belonged to the whole of humankind. Universality, an ultimate
collectivity, was a great attraction to Jung as well as representing the ultimate
danger to his personal survival, like Scylla and Charybdis. I am not so sure
that our patients, however cut off and alone they may feel, need this kind of
universal confirmation. They seem rather to require what is more easily available
to them in the analytic situation: a sense of being with another person. This
is best achieved by always taking the patients fantasies in an interpersonal
context. Though there are no other persons in the dream, the dream is still a
communication to me. For some reason I was being told that this was how the
dreamer understood his relationship to himself and it was up to me to help him
in his dilemma, even though there seemed in the dream to be no such helpful
figure. I could connect the dream with many of his memories of being kept
out, such as his being kept out of the bathroom where his father, who suffered
from a severe obsessional neurosis, was continually washing and there was a
particularly painful memory of being punished by being shamed at school for
not having washed. He could not explain that he had not been able to get into
his own bathroom without enduring even greater shame. But this of course is
personal material. What was I in the transference? Could I be the policeman
whose arrival he feared, who would arrest him for trying to get in to his own
property? Could it be that I was him? After all an analyst is always trying to get
into the patients house as though by right. Though these questions need to be
put to oneself, they may preclude a more general consideration. This man had
a complicated relationship to himself, which is to say that the self in his case
needed picturing by me in a complicated way. This picture was provided by the
dream images. Putting myself in his position is helpful whether or not I could
be said to represent him in his transference to me. I imagine his situation as
follows: there is my house, it belongs to me. Belonging to me, I have the right to
access but in spite of having this right, I cannot enter. My only hope is to break
in. This requires a violent forced entry. I am afraid this may attract attention
and I will be falsely accused of breaking into someone elses property. I can try
to explain but perhaps I will not be believed.
This may be a familiar situation. It has its place in everyday reality. Losing
ones key creates this kind of dilemma. But of course it would be wrong to

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interpret the dream to represent such a situation: that would be no interpretation

at all. Calling the house ones self makes all the difference. What is the key to
ones self? How has it been lost? What does it mean to own ones self to be
shut outside it? What damage may be done to ones self by forcing an entry?
Why does no one believe the explanation and why will one be punished? How
can one live down the shame of exposure and punishment for which one is not
guilty? Is this shame a repetition not only of the past but an imagined future
re-representation of the dream itself?
A further difficulty is that all these questions are about the person who has
the problem, the very person that is portrayed as outside his own house-self.
We can call this figure the I in the dream, the dream-ego, but what kind of ego
can be imagined that is not part of or somewhere inside a self? It is the person
of the dreamer who is outside, and the house, which we are calling a self, has
at the moment no one in it. Surely then, it is the house which is impersonal
and needing an occupant. If we grant selfhood to the dreamer as well as calling
the house a self, then we have a split self. There seems to be a container self
and a content self. Each is incomplete without the other. A split self is hard to
contemplate in Jungs archetypal terms because he is always emphasizing that,
in these terms, the self is an image of completeness.
I have chosen this dream almost at random. I am sure you will have
encountered dreams or images of this kind very often. They are commonest
amongst people with self-problems, people who could be said to have narcissistic
personality disorders or to be schizoid personalities or to be schizophrenic but
probably everybody has them. Probably we are all to some extent alienated
from ourselves. They raise the puzzling questions I have raised and I have only
thought of a few of the puzzles. Even without giving this example I could have
referred to the numerous popular expressions, such as being beside oneself, out
of touch with oneself, despising oneself and of course the idea which has been
the subject of much philosophical debate, known to all analysts, whenever they
are with a patient: deceiving oneself.
I am suggesting that two analytical approaches are inadequate to answering
these questions. These are: analysing the transference and amplifying the
archetype. The first only answers a limited number of questions which may
well fall short of understanding the dilemma. I might have said, I wonder if
the policeman might be me. Or perhaps, You are angry that I do not seem
to have the key that you need. The second, exploring the archetype through
amplification, might very well do little more than repeat the paradox. In fact my
story might not really be true. Perhaps I never had a patient with such a dream.
I might have made it up or I might have got it from a collection of folktales,
The man who lost his key, and then connected it with the keys to the Kingdom
of Heaven, or the key to a mystery. I might even have found a story which had a
helpful animal, perhaps the mans own dog with the missing keys in its mouth.
I am making this contrast because it illustrates the sort of controversy that
different kinds of Jungian analysts might have, all agreeing that the house

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Louis Zinkin

represents the self and all agreeing that the self is an archetype, though
disagreeing on the significance of this fact.
To return to the central problem as to the origin of the self, there now appears
another answer to why Winnicott refused to allow the question to be asked to
the infant. It is too difficult. He is too young to conceptualize what is meant by
such a question, let alone to provide an answer, which he is apparently expected
to do. But Winnicott was not even envisaging asking the question about the self.
Imagine asking a child: Where did you get your self from? Did you find it by any
chance or did you make it up? The absurdity of such a question, I suppose, is
that whatever the answer might be it cannot be expressed in such simple terms
and insisting on answers couched in this language becomes as persecutory as
trying to convince the policeman that one is not a criminal. The other possibility
is that there is no need to question it. The self is just there. This will do for the
child, but will it do for us?
The social world as the primary reality
The idea that the self, whether considered as an archetype or not, is the result
of social interaction, which I find the most helpful answer, is not easy to grasp.
The work of Rom Harre which is, for me, the most satisfactory exposition
of this view is not easily assimilable from a psychodynamic viewpoint, largely
because he rejects our familiar Cartesian distinctions of subjective and objective
and inner and outer (Harre 1983). These two pairs of terms are often used by
analysts in the same sense: inner is subjective and outer is objective. This usage
also permeates Jungs writings, especially his typology. Harre instead asks us
to reflect on three polarities which form dimensions in which mental concepts
such as the self can be placed. These are public-private, collective-individual
and active-passive. He is concerned to account for three characteristics of the
self, agency, coherence and consciousness and his suggestion is that the primary
reality is in the public, collective sphere rather than there being some entity
within the individual. This public collective reality has to be appropriated by the
individual. He prefers the use of the word appropriated rather than the usual
psychoanalytic word of internalized. The word is used by Vygotsky whose
theory is that the child learns grammar through speaking out loud, joining
in the public-collective conversation and later learns to have silent thoughts
through dialogue with him or herself, privately, by appropriating interpersonal
language (Vygotsky 1962). This reverses the common assumption of analysts
that the private self comes first. To begin with the infant always displays publicly
whatever it is feeling and only later has the capacity to make this private. There
are really two acts. By appropriation the infant makes the interaction its own
and, with it, the pattern of interaction. But it also conceals this from others.
Making it private does not necessarily make it secret but the baby is in a position
to choose whether or not to display it to others and can later choose how
much and to whom it can be shown. It is while this ability is developing that

Your Self: did you find it or did you make it?

401

intrusiveness can be such a danger. The sensitivity of the mother and of others
is crucial at this stage.
Once made private, experiences can be transformed by the individual and it
is only at this point that one truly can speak of the individual creating their own
reality. Now a further stage is reached where the individual can make public
again what they have created. Harre speaks of the self which has both agency
and consciousness. Being reflective there is a sense of being able to plan action
and reflect on action and there is self-consciousness: not only can one act and
have experiences but one is aware of doing so and one has an autobiography.
Harre considers that this involves having a theory that one has a self and this
theory will derive from whatever theory the culture has of the self in the social,
i.e., interpersonal sphere.
This view of the development of the self is fully compatible with modern infant
research, which is based on the study of how infants learn and become socially
competent beings through actual conversations with the mother who endows
the infants talk with social meanings derived from their culture (Richards 1974;
Newson 1977, pp. 4761, 1978; Shotter 1984). Daniel Sterns work on the
development of the self consistently takes the view that a sense of self only
gradually emerges during the first three months of life as the infant abstracts
patterns which occur in its interactions with others (Stern 1985).
How do these theories, which place so much emphasis on the social world
as the primary reality, bear on the theories of analytical psychology? I have
suggested in a recent paper that they raise serious doubts about the accuracy
of the Kleinian account of infant development (Zinkin 1991). The most serious
defect in this account is that the unit of study is taken to be the individual
infant and its internal world consisting of internal objects which become altered
through projections and subsequent introjections. Jungs idea of consciousness
arising like an island from the sea of the collective unconscious at least enables
us to start not with the individual but with the collective. On the other hand
the idea of the collective unconscious is an abstract one, as also is Jungs way
of speaking of the collective consciousness. It is derived mainly through Jungs
researches into the collective representations found in myth and ritual as well
as in certain kinds of dream material. Finding the remarkable extent of nonculturally determined similarities in these representations, he used the concept of
the collective unconscious as a sort of place in which they existed and called them
archetypes. Because he was at pains to demonstrate that the archetypes manifest
themselves in widely different cultures where there is no direct transmission
between them, he has great difficulty in accounting for the presence of the
archetypes within the unconscious of the individual. Because they are innate
they must have been inherited, but the mode of their inheritance is obscure.
What I think is needed is not to abandon the idea of the archetypes, nor
of the collective unconscious, but to sharpen them. Jung repeatedly draws
attention to the consideration that the unconscious contents he is describing
cannot be personal because they are found everywhere in all mankind since

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Louis Zinkin

time immemorial. What I have always found puzzling is where to locate these
contents in all mankind. Jung seems to use the word collective in the sense of
being shared by everybody, that is to say, what is present in every individual
mind is shared by mankind as a whole, just as each person having a nose is
shared. The nose can be regarded as a collective in that it has the same structure
irrespective of the person owning it. It is just in this way that he discussed the
persona; it is an impersonal segment of the collective psyche. If, however, the
archetypes are never to be found within the individual but are patterns to be
found in culture or in society then what is meant is that they are patterns of
communication between people, and people cannot communicate except within
a language which reflects their culture.
The archetype which is most difficult to accept in Jungs terms is the one which
is the most important in the process of individuation: the self. It is certainly not
the body and cannot be properly regarded as analogous to the body, even less
to a part of the body like the nose. Of course each individual is born with a
nose and, of course, it is found, not made by the individual. But supposing the
mother, while playing with her baby, finds the babys nose. She doesnt discover
that the baby has a nose. That is obvious for all to see. But she may discover
that she loves the nose. She transmits the discovery by saying to the baby: You
have a lovely nose. In this way the baby discovers at the same time that there is
a nose and that it is lovely and that it is his. Of course he may discover later that
there is nothing especially lovely about his nose. It may even turn out to be an
ugly one. This loss of narcissism may not matter too much if by this time he has
a secure sense of having a lovable self. The mother after all is not just referring
to the nose; she is saying that the nose is lovely because its your nose and I love
you. Part and whole are not distinguished here and so the baby has not only a
nose, not only a lovable nose but also a lovable self. But here I mean lovable in
the sense of loved by his mother rather than loved by God. I am saying that the
relationship with the mother which is expressed in the particular language used
between mother and baby is anterior to the sense of the private possession of a
self. It is in this sense that Harres idea that the self exists primarily in the publiccollective domain and only later becomes private and personal is both supported
by recent studies of infantile development and deals with Jungs objections to
the social world as being a false one.
Winnicott reaches or almost reaches the same point but he can deal with it
only by recourse to paradox. I think this stems largely from his thinking being
embedded in object-relations theory so that he could only explain the sense the
baby has of creating the object by suggesting that it exists through his failure to
destroy it. This explanation cannot work if we try to use it for the self though
the question which must not be asked of the baby is equally valid.
Object-relations theory is one which assumes an individual ego surrounded
by objects and has therefore to derive from this state of affairs the emergence
of intersubjectivity. This contrasts absolutely with Jungs idea of consciousness
and the formation of an ego as an achievement, though Jung too did not address
the question of intersubjectivity. Other people, as I have said, were too often

Your Self: did you find it or did you make it?

403

regarded as collective, lacking individuality. If we retain Jungs approach to

consciousness as arising like an island in the sea of the unconscious and follow
him too in the notion of the unconsciousness of the infant, then it might be
possible to account for the self as developing only with consciousness and to see
this development as only being possible through intersubjectivity. By this I mean
a subject relating to another subject rather than to an object. This would cut
across the limitations of thinking of internal as meaning subjective and external
as objective which Jung did in his typology.
It seems helpful here to use Harres opposition between public and private
to that between collective and individual and to follow him in regarding these
oppositions as continua rather than dichotomies. This is helpful in that the
private need not mean personal and public need not mean collective. This
then makes possible the distinction: personal-social, which could replace Jungs
distinction between personal and collective which leads to so much confusion.
Personal indicates a combination of privacy with individuality while social
would be the combination of collectivity with public display, but the distinction
personal-social would avoid the idea prevalent in Jung that social considerations
are in any way inferior to personal ones. It also does not involve us in the
opposition of personal with impersonal. Above all it avoids the suggestion
that archetypes are impersonal of necessity. Whether archetypes are personal
or impersonal is not an either-or of their nature but would depend on the
context in which they were experienced. This applies to the self as well as to the
other archetypes.
When Winnicott forbids the question, Did you find it or make it?, he is
referring to a context, a very special one between an emphatic mother and an
infant at a particular stage of development when privacy is being established
and the question, in this form, at this place and at this time is an intrusive one.
In other contexts, such as this one, a public-collective event, it is a perfectly
appropriate one.
Conclusion
I should like to end with a brief summary as to how we can modify Jungs
theory of the self and individuation without diminishing their importance as
distinctive elements in analytical psychology and to attempt to put this in a
non-paradoxical fashion as befits a theory. This must be a simplified account of
an extremely complex topic.
The self, whether discovered or created, is not a given. Somehow or other it
has to be acquired and, however stable it might become it is not invulnerable.
Also, it is never complete; there is always, in every person, the possibility of
a more complete sense of self. This justifies the concept of individuation as
popularly expressed by such phrases as the search for the self or self-discovery
or self-realization.
This does not mean that mothers are mistaken in discerning unique features
in their babies from the start or that they are unable to discern the signs of

Louis Zinkin

404

a potential personality in their early dialogue with their babies. Indeed, it is

difficult for a self to develop satisfactorily if the mother does not see her baby
as a unique individual. But we must be careful not to confuse this with the baby
possessing a self before this process of interchange with others takes place.
The self, then, is always a construction, one which is not possible without
language and language is not possible without culture and culture is always
shared. Even private property is only private within a culture which agrees on
a notion of property and a notion of privacy. Having a self is therefore only a
claim, but it is a claim which can readily be validated by others within the same
society and what is claimed, that is, what a person means by having a self will
depend on the notion of the self shared by his or her particular society. It is true
that one can claim more than this. One can claim, for example, to be the true
messiah, but again this is a claim to be validated as such by the society which
may or may not proceed to do so. If it does, the society may well change and
its notions of the self will change, though one can only claim to be a messiah if
the notion of a messiah is already possible within the language of the existing
culture.
These considerations which are becoming increasingly familiar within the
social sciences are given short shrift by Jung. They are all subsumed under
the vagueness of his use of the word collective and his efforts to stress the
age-old timeless, placeless and thus context-free nature of the deepest levels of
the unconscious. I should mention here a few notable attempts among Jungs
followers to make good this deficit in Jung: Hendersons idea of a cultural
unconscious, Hobsons view of dialogue, Redfearns many selves and in the
younger generation: Samuels with his pluralism and Young-Eisendrath who,
with Hall, has made a strong claim for constructivism such as I, from a somewhat
different viewpoint, am putting forward here (Henderson 1984; Hobson 1985;
Redfearn 1986; Samuels 1989; Young-Eisendrath & Hall 1991).
So the dreaded Winnicottian question has to be put. Did you find the self or
did you make it? We can change the personal pronoun to we or they or he.
Did we make or find it, or did they: our ancestors, our parents, or our leaders,
or the gods, or he, God, or she, the goddess? I am suggesting, as Winnicott was
when talking about objects, that it may be important to feel one has found it
but that it is really constructed or created but that, in any case, it is not really
an object. Though the question is a difficult one, I hope that, with others, I have
made a start in demystifying it. Much as we might mourn the loss of paradox,
we might celebrate the gain in clarity and consistency of exposition.
Translations of Abstract

Dans cet article, e crit sous forme debauche en 1991 et publie ici a` titre posthume,
Louis Zinkin presente une vision constructiviste du soi. Il aborde divers paradoxes des
definitions jungiennes du soi et les compare a` la question interdite de Winnicott a`

Your Self: did you find it or did you make it?

405

propos de lobjet transitionnel: est-il trouve ou cree ? . Il affirme que pour le propos
dune theorie scientifique qui se tienne, ces paradoxes apparents se doivent detre
formules selon une coherence interne. Face aux nombreuses contradictions de la pensee
de Jung, il propose un nouveau depart qui pense les personnes en termes dindividus
quen tant que sujets solitaires, ainsi que le fit Jung. Ceci
en interaction sociale, plutot
le conduit a` postuler que le soi vient a` lexistence a` travers linteraction continue avec
dautres. Sappuyant sur les travaux de Harre et Vygotsky, il sugg`ere que le soi public est
prealable au soi prive et que lindividu devient reel a` travers la reconnaissance par dautres
individus, dans et a` travers le langage et la culture. Cet article fit lobjet dun debat lors
dune reunion a` la Societe de Psychologie Analytique en novembre 1991. Une version
retranscrite de cette discussion enregistree est ici presentee a` la suite de larticle.

In dieser Arbeit, die 1991 als Konzeptpapier geschrieben wurde, und jetzt posthum

veroffentlicht
wird, zeigt der inzwischen verstorbene Louis Zinkin einen konstruktivistis
chen Blick auf das Selbst. Er denkt uber
einige der unterschiedlichen Paradoxe Jungscher
Definitionen des Selbst nach und vergleicht dies mit Winnicotts verbotener Frage

bezuglich
des Ubergangsobjektes,
Hast Du es gefunden, oder hast Du es gemacht? Er
eine koharente

argumentiert, dass es fur

wissenschaftliche Theorie notwendig sei, diese

offenkundigen Paradoxe in einer in sich schlussigen

Weise neu zu formulieren. Irritiert

er vor, einen Neuanfang zu

durch die vielen Widerspruche
in Jungs Denken schlagt

Menschen nachdenken sollte, die miteinander

machen, indem man eher uber
Begriffe fur

in sozialen Wechselbeziehungen stehen, als uber

einzelgangerische
Subjekte, so wie Jung
es tat. Dies bringt ihn zu der Anschauung, dass das Selbst durch eine kontinuierliche
Wechselbeziehung mit anderen Menschen entsteht. Er bezieht sich auf die Arbeiten von

Harre und Vygotsky und vertritt die Anschauung, dass ein allgemeines / offentliches

Selbst einem eigenen personlichen

Selbst vorangeht, und das man real wird dadurch, dass
andere Menschen einen wahrnehmen in der Sprache und in der Kultur. Die vorliegende

Analytische
Arbeit wurde im November 1991 wahrend
einer Sitzung der Gesellschaft fur
Psychologie diskutiert. Eine edierte schriftliche Form der damaligen Diskussion wird in

Kurze
herausgegeben.

In questo lavoro, scritto in una prima stesura nel 1991 e ora pubblicato postumo, lultimo
Louis Zinkin presenta una visione costruttivistica del se. Egli considera alcuni dei vari
paradossi delle definizioni junghiane del se e le confronta con la domanda proibita
di Winnicott a proposito delloggetto transizionale. lhai trovato o lhai costruito?
Egli sostiene che, per avere una teoria scientifica coerente tali paradossi devono essere
formulati in un modo internamente coerente. Confuso dalle molte contraddizioni del
pensiero junghiano, propone di ripartire daccapo pensando in termini di persone in
interazione sociale reciproca piuttosto che in termini di soggetti isolati, come fece Jung.
Cio` lo porto` allidea che il se arriva ad esistere attraverso la continua interazione con gli
altri. Basandosi sul lavoro di Harr`e e Vygotsky, propone lidea che il se pubblico venga
prima di quello privato e che un individuo diviene reale attraverso il riconoscimento
delle altre persone e attraverso il linguaggio e la cultura. Il lavoro venne discusso in un
convegno tenutosi alla Societa` di psicologia Analitica nel novembre 1991 e segue una
versione pubblicata della registrazione della discussione.

406

Louis Zinkin

Este trabajo, escrito como un borrador en 1991, es publicado ahora en forma postuma,
constructivista del Self. El analiza algunas
Louis Zinkin nos presenta ahora una vision
de las paradojas de las definiciones junguianas del self y las compara conlapreunta
al objeto transicional lo encontraste o lo invenprohibida de Winnicott en relacion

taste?. Argumenta el autor que, con el proposito

de establecer una teora coherente, estas
aparentes paradojas necesitan ser formuladas internamente de una manera consistente.

Asombrado por las multiples

contradicciones en el pensamiento de Jung, propone realizar
social entrellos
un nuevo comienzo pensando en terminos de las personas en interaccion
en lugar de verlos como sujetos solitarios, como lo hizo Jung. Ello lo conduce a ver que
con otras personas. Apoyandose

el self surge a la existencia por medio de la interaccion

en la obra de Harre y Vitgotski, sugiere que el self publico

antecede al self privado y que
uno se hacer realidad al ser reconocido por otras personas en y a traves del lenguaje y la
en una reunion
en la Sociedad de Psicologa Analtica
cultura. Este trabajo se discution
editada de esa discusion
grabada.
en noviembre de 1991 y mostramos una version

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