The Enigma Of The Self Poem by Paul Hartal

The question of personal identity remains to be an elusive and unsolved problem. The concept of the Self concerns the sense of your unique presence as an inner and essential experience, a witness of events. The Self appears to be a constantly evolving entity, an inner agent that has directing functions, controlling roles, as well as specific fears, motives and needs. Furthermore, researchers distinguish between Authentic Self and Pseudo Self. It is also common to differentiate between the Self as I- the subjective knower- and the Self as Me, the subject that is known.

Moreover, the Self can also be viewed as a specific entity, which has been split up as part of the central core of life that the individual shares with the Universal Self, the totality of undivided existence. As the personal ego, it seems to incorporate the realms of the conscious and the unconscious. As an aspect of the eternal soul it transcends the temporal world.

Interestingly enough, John Locke saw the Self as the product of episodic memory. For Freud, it was the interacting agents of id, ego and superego in one's psyche. Jung, however, regarded the Self as an archetype, symbolized by the circle, square and mandala. He believed that the Self signifies the unification of consciousness and unconsciousness in a person; and that it represents the psyche as a whole.