Up: [[Jungian Glossary]] Created: 2022-11-03 Updated: 2025-09-13 > [!Orbit] [[C. G. Jung]] > The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego; the second half is going inward and letting go of it. It’s essential that we establish a strong ego in the first half of life, because our ego is our personal identity, the major [[Complex]] at the centre of consciousness. Without a stable sense of identity, we’d be lost. We’d have no sense of reality and therefore no way to ground or centre ourselves. The problem with ego is that it thinks it runs the show. And since it is *usually composed of conditioning, wounds, and self-protective agendas* [[Ken James]], this perception keeps us caught in a drive for power. Ken makes the apt observation that ego consciousness seems to be becoming a stronger and stronger dominant in our society. Interestingly, many branches of psychology don’t even talk about ego because, as far as they are concerned, there is nothing other than ego. Jung’s position is that as we enter into the second half of life, we feel an increasing call to be guided by the archetypal dimension of life, since this is where we have the transcendent experiences that help us see the meaning of our life before we die. We need the unconscious for this, but the unconscious can’t be directly active in the world. It’s the ego that does that, serving as a mediator between inner and outer worlds. So it isn’t the case that we actually let go of our ego in the second half of life. What we need to do, in Jungian terms, is to “relativize the ego”, meaning move it from its self-appointed position as the director of the play to its rightful position as a major player. The director position belongs to [[the Self]]. Much of this relativization happens through the process of [[Individuation]] taking us closer and closer to the Self. We naturally begin to recognize the ego’s limitations and start to ask ourselves questions like, “What am I missing in understanding this situation I’m in?” and “What is unseen that is influencing this situation?” We can also support ego relativization consciously. Engaging in [[Active Imagination]] is one way. Another is to notice (and back off) when we try to dominate the inner world, such as being determined to control our thoughts or feelings. And a third, suggested by Ken James, is to reframe what we currently pathologise. If, for example, we have trouble coming up with a word, we tend to claim it either a “senior moment” or a “brain blip.” If we instead think of it as “the unconscious is not cooperating with my ego,” we subtly remind ourselves that our Ego is not the only function in the [[Psyche]]. ### Poetry and Story [[Poem - Ego - Rumi]] [[The Problem of Ego - a Story]]