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James Hollis Ph.D. is Executive Director of The Jung Educational Center of Houston, Texas. Hollis trained as a Jungian analyst in Zurich, Switzerland, and is the author of eight books and over forty articles on Jung's work. He has his own active therapy practice and travels around the country lecturing to audiences of students and peers on Jungian theories of human development and what he calls "the meeting point of psyche and soul."
James Hollis博士,得克萨斯洲休斯顿容格教育中心主任,Hollis是瑞士苏黎世容格派分析学家,他是八部关于容格工作的书和超过40篇文章的作者。他有他自己的积极有效的治疗实践,并在国内游学,向学生和同辈们讲授关于人类发展和被他称为“心理和灵魂的融会点”的容格学派的理论。
WIE: What, according to Jung, is the ego?
WIE: 从容格的角度说来,什么是自我呢
JAMES HOLLIS: The ego as defined by Jung is the central complex of consciousness. When we hear the word "complex" we tend to think of something that's pathological, whereas all a complex really is, is an affectively charged cluster of energy. The complex of the ego begins to form when we first split off from the primal other, which is typically our mother; that is when we separate from the breast. And while that separation is necessary for the formation of the individual, it's also very painful because it's the loss of that early experience of unity and sense of primal belonging.
JH:容格定义自我为意识的中心情结。当我们听到“情结”这个词,我们会认为这是病态的,其实,一个情结就是情感控制的一簇能量。自我的情结在我们第一次从最初的他者分离时开始形成,一般是我们的母亲,也就是说,当我们从母亲的乳房分离时,我们开始形成自我情结。而且对个体形成来说分离成为必要的时候,这种分离是痛楚的,因为这是早期整合经验和最初的归属感的丧失。
Jung saw the formation of the ego as essential for consciousness. Consciousness is predicated on the split between subject and object—to become conscious I have to know that of which I am not. I have to have a sense of "that over there" versus "this over here." He also saw the ego as a necessary agency of intentionality, focus and purpose. How is it that you and I arranged to meet at the same time to address the same subject? It was a function of "ego focus" that was critical for this conversation to occur.
容格把自我的形成看作意识所必须的。意识以客体和自体的分裂为基础——变的有意识,我必须知道我不是其他.我必须有 “那个在那上边”相对于“这个在这之上”的这样一种感觉。他还可以把自我看作意图,注意和目的的必要中介。你和我安排在某一时间会见来讨论同一个客体是怎样的呢?这就是“自我关注”的一个功能,它是这次谈话发生的重要条件
The ego, as a complex, is extremely malleable and "invadable." When the ego gets invaded by contents from the unconscious, when it's in the grip of other complexes, it becomes insecure or power-driven, or whatever the case may be. You see, what we often call "ego" is really the ego under a state of possession by one or more of the complexes, such as a money complex, a power complex, a sexual complex or an aggression complex. These complexes are not an individual's core nature, but they do have the power to usurp or possess the ego.
作为一个情结的自我是非常容易改变和“侵入”的。当自我被无意识侵入时,它变的不安全或者被力量驱使,或者任何可能的情况。你看,我们平常所谓的“自我”是被一个或者多个情结占有的“自我”,这些情结有金钱情结,权利情结,性欲情结或者侵犯情结。这些情结并不是个体的内在本质,但是他们具有侵占或者摆布自我的能力。
WIE: In Jung's view, is the ego a positive, negative or neutral force in the personality?
WIE:在容格的观点中,自我在人格中是积极的,消极的还是中性的力量呢?
JH: As I described earlier, the ego is a necessary formation for the creation of identity, consciousness, intentionality and purpose—all of which are pluses. The ego itself is not a problem. However, when it's in a state of possession by our insecurities, when it's in the grip of our history, it becomes neurotic, so to speak—it gets in the way. So the problem is not the ego; the problem is what happens to the ego. The perfect balance—if we could ever achieve it—would be an open ego state in dialogue with the other parts of the outer and inner world, where we could absorb messages from the culture, but not necessarily be subsumed by them, and we could also dialogue with the unconscious.
JH:如前所述,自我是同一性,意识,意图和目的形成的必要组成,所有这些是加和在一起的。自我本身不是问题。但是,当它处于被我们内在的不安全因素占据的状态时,当它被我们的历史所占据时,它变的神经质,所以这样说——它妨碍了我们。所以,问题不是自我;问题是自我的身上发生了什么事情。完美的平衡——如果我们永远能够达到的话——将在我们同内部和外部世界的其他部分对话时成为一个开放的自我状态,那时,我们可以从文化中吸收各种信息,但是并不被他们所左右,而且我们还可以和无意识来对话。
WIE: Do these complexes have a will of their own or do we, in the end, choose which complex predominates?
WIE:这些情结是不是有它们本身的愿望?(这句不太明白)或者我们最终会选择一种具有优势的情结?
JH: Let's take an example: A person could say, "When I look at my history I see that there are certain patterns there. The only person who has been in every scene in the history of my life has been me, so I am somehow the manufacturer of those patterns. I can blame Western civilization or my parents, if I want to, but I have to recognize that somehow I am doing this." We'd say that that's good work by the ego because it's opening up dialogue with other parts of the psyche.
JH:让我们用一个例子来说明:一个人可以说,“当我们回顾我们自己的历史,我看到那里有着一个确定的方式。在我生命的历史中每一幕中都出现的那唯一的一个人就是我,所以我是所有这些方式的制造者。如果我想,我可以谴责西方文明或者我的父母,但是,从某种意义上来说,我必须认识到我在做这个。我们说这是自我所做的良好工作,因为它是开放地与心智的其他部分对话。
WIE: Is the ego, according to Jung, equivalent to who or what we refer to when we say "I"?
WIE:根据容格的理论,自我等同于我们说“我”的时候所指的那个人或者物么?
JH: Generally speaking, "who I think I am" is the ego state. But the problem is "who I think I am" can also be a complex. I could be born a slave and have the identity of a slave. The only time we're in a pure state of ego, I think, is when we're responding strictly reflexively to the moment. In an activity of sports, one is normally not in a complex. One could be at the batter's plate so filled with anxiety that one couldn't swing the bat, but usually in the moment of the ball's flight, one is wholly absorbed and present to the moment. That's a pure ego state.
JH:一般说来,“我认为我是谁”是自我的状态。但是问题是“我认为我是谁”可能依然是一个情结。我可能出生是一个奴隶,于是我就对奴隶认同。我想,我们处于自我的纯状态的唯一时刻是瞬间严格自发的反应。在一体育运动中,一个人一般不会处于情结之中。他可能充满焦虑的处于击球手的位置,以致于无法挥动球棒,但是在球的飞行时刻,他被深深的吸引并且仅在此刻存在。这就是纯粹的自我状态。
WIE: Would Jung's pure ego state be equivalent to a condition where we were in touch with reality directly as it is?
WIE:容格的纯自我状态等同于我们与事实的本身直接接触时的状况么?
JH: Yes, that's right. In that sense it would be not unlike the Zen concept of "no mindedness"—it's just pure being. And yet to function in culture, we need an ego that allows us to structure time and organize our energies in service to certain abstractions like economics or service or whatever.
JH:是的,这个是正确的。因为感觉它并不象禅宗的“空明”概念——它仅仅是纯粹的是什么。而且在文化的功能中,我们需要一个自我来保证我们构造时间和组织我们的能量来服务于确定的意识,就象经济或服务业或其他什么一样
Jung's concept of the ego evolved over time. Early on he wanted, I think, to privilege the messages of the unconscious and to say that the job of the ego was to serve what the unconscious wanted. Later in his life he modified that and emphasized the need for ethical responsibility. For example, if I dream I'm murdering someone, I don't wake up and murder the person. I say, "What's that about?" That's a proper use of the ego—to serve as a conscious processing of life's experience, neither giving too much authority to the outer world, nor too much to the inner world.
容格关于自我的概念是随着时间而发展。我想,在他早期观点中,他希望把这个特权授予无意识的信息并且宣称自我的工作是服务于无意识的需要。在他生命的后期他修改了这个观点并且强调伦理的责任的需求。例如,如果我做梦我在谋杀某人,我没醒来并且谋杀了这个人。我说, “这是什么?”这是对自我的一个恰当应用——作为对生活经验的意识过程而应用,既不是给外部世界授予过多的权力,也不是对内部世界授予过多的权力。
WIE: What was Jung's view on the relationship between conscience and ego?
WIE:容格关于道德和自我的关系的观点是什么?
JH: Well, let me step back and I'll come around to that in a moment. You see, for Jung, the superordinate reality is what he called the "Self"—which is not to be confused with the ego. In the first half of life, our task is to develop an ego, a conscious sense of who we are that's strong enough to leave our parents and go out into the world and say, "Hire me, I can do that job"; "Have a relationship with me, you can trust me"; etcetera. If we fail to develop our ego awareness sufficiently, we remain children. The dialogue in the first half of life is the dialogue with the world: What does the world ask of me? But the second half of life, Jung said, was for the ego to develop a dialogue with the Self. The question then is: What does the Self ask of me?—which is much more of