Jung’s Empty Self: a Buddhist and Postmodern Perspective

Jung says clearly ‘the archetype itself is empty.’ What precisely does he mean by empty? We may infer that in the context of his definition, emptiness has something to do with the possibility of imaginal representation as it is filled out by the content of our human experience. The content of the empty archetype, or the image is not determined. It has infinite variety or a boundless quality. In other words it is always changing, as is the form but to a more limited degree. Implied in Jung’s statement is the important distinction between the archetypal image that may be known and the symbol of the archetype that can never be known. What precedes the image of the empty archetype, is a movement of energy out of what Jung describes as the psychoid character of the collective unconscious. And from this swell of energy emerges the fluid form that circumscribes the content of my human experience with all of its delight and anguish.