The Constructed Self: Cultural Formation, Psychological Integration, and Spiritual Liberation in Jung and Trungpa
Ed Reither* – Beezone Library Project
Preface
This essay draws upon three principal sources: Carl Jung’s Collected Works, Volume 9 (Part 2), Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, edited by Gerhard Adler and R. F. C. Hull (Princeton University Press); Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa (Shambhala Publications); and excerpts from guided conversations reflecting contemporary critical engagement with both Jungian and Buddhist frameworks. The purpose of this essay is not to flatten or simplify these deeply nuanced traditions, but to bring their insights into conversation around the theme of ego and self as culturally constructed phenomena. In this way, the discussion seeks to illuminate the tension between integration and liberation, and the deeper recognition that culture and language shape both the problem and the path.
he ego or self, as commonly understood in both Western psychology and Eastern contemplative traditions, cannot be adequately grasped as a purely individual phenomenon. Rather, it is a culturally embedded structure, shaped through language, perception, and historical worldview. While Carl Jung’s analytical psychology approaches the self as a center of integration within the psyche—requiring conscious engagement with both personal and collective unconscious contents—Chögyam Trungpa’s Vajrayana Buddhist model sees the self as a construct formed through layered processes of conceptual solidification, which obscures the primordial awareness that precedes ego-formation. The key term here is ‘formation.’
Despite their differing aims—integration (Jung) and liberation (Trungpa)—both thinkers recognize that ego is not merely individual and personal but a culturally inherited pattern of perception and identity. The process of transformation, whether toward wholeness or awakening, therefore demands not only introspection but a deep awareness of how one’s self-experience has been shaped by culture, language, perception, and collective metaphysics. True psychological or spiritual maturity begins with recognizing that the “self” one seeks to develop or transcend is itself the reflection of a deeper historical and cultural formation.
From the outset, our inquiry emphasized that while Jung and Trungpa offer distinct and often contrasting visions of ego and self, their views also converge in important ways. We began by identifying key overlaps in their descriptions:
- Both agree that the ego is not the totality of the self. Jung describes the ego as “only the point of reference for the field of consciousness,” while Trungpa frames it as a mistaken consolidation of open awareness into solidity.
- Both view ego as a product of interaction. Jung points to the “collision between the somatic factor and the environment”; Trungpa notes the moment when “we became self-conscious,” moving from spaciousness into subject-object duality.
- Each sees a deeper substratum beneath ego: Jung names it the Self; Trungpa calls it primordial openness or vidya.
- Both caution against inflation or delusion. Jung warns that the ego may be overpowered by unconscious archetypes, while Trungpa warns that egoic hallucination leads to delusion, suffering and cyclic samsaric realms.
Yet as we deepened the discussion, we had to acknowledge that these similarities are framed within radically different contexts. To understand their divergences, we returned to the foundations:
- Jung is operating within a Western tradition that seeks integration. His method is introspective, therapeutic, and symbolically rich. The ego is real, though limited, and should enter into conscious relationship with the unconscious in order to become whole.
- Trungpa, rooted in Tibetan Vajrayana, seeks liberation. His method is meditative and experiential, aimed at seeing through ego’s constructed nature. The self is not real in any ultimate sense; it is the result of avidya (ignorance), which can be unraveled through direct awareness.
This leads us to their respective and paradoxical frameworks of ego development. Jung presents the ego as a complex that emerges during a person’s lifetime, shaped by inner and outer conditions, and related to the archetypal Self. Trungpa offers a five-skandha model, describing how pure awareness becomes progressively distorted through solidification, based on fear leading to the formation of ego and its projections—a process that must be consciousness, not perfected.
Even with these differences, both Jung and Trungpa treat the ego as a kind of necessary fiction. It must first be made visible, examined, and engaged with. This reframes the stark contrast between integration and liberation. As we noted, Trungpa does not advocate for the destruction of ego without understanding its development; in fact, he insists that one must fully comprehend how ego functions before any real awakening can begin. Likewise, Jung does not idolize the ego but seeks to place it in right relation to the Self.
The heart of our discussion then turned to the cultural formation of ego. Here, both thinkers become highly relevant to our contemporary concerns:
- Jung saw modern Western man as psychologically fractured by the loss of myth, disconnected from symbolic depth. The ego became inflated as the rational subject but hollowed by repression of the unconscious. Culture, in Jung’s view, was both the source of disorientation and the possible vehicle for re-symbolization and healing.
- Trungpa viewed culture—particularly modern Western culture—as karmically reinforced delusion. Through language, concept, and repetition, culture teaches beings to solidify the world and themselves. His skandha model can be read as a map of how culture teaches ego to construct reality through naming, grasping, and defending.
In both systems, the self is not born in isolation. It is shaped by inherited concepts of time, space, emotion, and identity. This is why we insisted that any authentic engagement with selfhood must include recognition of how language and culture form perception. Ego is not a private entity but a linguistically embedded cultural pattern, and neither individuation nor awakening can occur without working through this embeddedness.
From this, we drew the insight that both Jung and Trungpa see the self not as a fixed essence but as a formative process. Jung seeks a symbolic reintegration with the cultural unconscious; Trungpa seeks a radical deconstruction of conceptual mind and a return to direct, unborn awareness. Yet both require a confrontation with what one has inherited—psychologically, historically, and culturally.
In our final turn, we observed that neither thinker invites us to dismiss culture, but rather to see through its shaping power. Jung offers the possibility of reinhabiting myth as a path to integration; Trungpa points to the possibility of perceiving directly, before concept and culture arise. Both require deep honesty, discipline, and subtle discernment.
Thus, returning to our thesis: The ego is not simply the product of individual experience but a condensation of cultural history, language, and perception. Jung and Trungpa offer distinct yet overlapping pathways through this terrain—one through symbolic integration, the other through meditative dissolution. Taken together, they challenge us to look beyond the individualist assumptions of the modern self and toward a more spacious, culturally aware vision of transformation.
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