The Ego Doesn’t Choose its Symptoms

The ego does not choose its symptoms; it is a victim of the particular symptom that the unconscious throws up: The symptom is like a crocodile that grips and possesses one. This is most important to realize. This is how we fix reasonable boundaries to the ego: we don't grant to the ego power and responsibility that don't properly belong to it. That would be inflation. Inflation is far more subtle than that. It is a completely unconscious, unscrutinized presupposition almost universally held, that there is no such thing as an autonomous psyche beyond the ego. Anyone who talks in public about the autonomous psyche is suspected of being a little crazy. Although this state of unconscious inflation is practically universal, one generally does not get into trouble with it. It is astonishing that the vast majority of people can live quite happily in a state of inflation. It is a natural condition unless the individuation process is activated; then one is held to account. Another important point in this same paragraph is that one symptom of inflation is a growing disinclination to take note of the reactions of the environment and pay heed to them. It is good to remember that the unconscious comes to us from the outside as well as the inside, so that the reactions people have to us, the events that happen around us, are all expressions of the unconscious just as much as a dream.