Lionel Corbett – Jung’s Notion of the Self and the Ātman

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Psychosocial Wednesdays with Lionel Corbett

19 February 2022
Jung’s Notion of the Self and the Ātman

This talk will discuss Jung’s belief that his notion of the Self is comparable to the Ātman/Brahman of the Upaniṣads and the Puruṣa of the Yoga system of Patañjali. This comparison is controversial, and has been denied by some authors. As a possible bridge between Jung and the Upaniṣadic tradition, I suggest that Jung’s idea of the Self corresponds to the level of the divine with qualities known as Saguṇa Brahman or Iśhvara, which is the source of the numinous material that Jung valued. The comparison is limited, because Jung refused to relinquish the importance of the ego, and although there are nondual strands in his thought, he does not develop a fully non-dual model of the kind found in Upaniṣadic traditions such as Advaita Vedānta.

Dr. Lionel Corbett trained in medicine and psychiatry in England and as a Jungian Analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago. He is a professor of depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, in Santa Barbara, California.