The archetype of the self underlies the ego-complex at its root and source in the unconscious. None of these assigns to the self the role that I feel to be so essential in the syndrome. SP 50-52 sp In regard to the method of study of these processes of the archaic, unconscious psyche in psychosis, I find myself baffled as to how to set up anything like a scientific approach to the material. In this hypothesis the model is easy to visualize but difficult to understand in terms of experience; the self is seen in this case as the center of the total psychic organism, and the ego is subsumed within this totality as the center of the field of consciousness only, that is, of contents accessible to consciousness; between the two are the autonomous complexes, which are groupings of contents not accessible to ego-consciousness (Figure 1). Reconstitutive process in the psychopathology of the self1: The following paper by J.W. Perry is published with permission from the Annals of the New York Academy of the Sciences where it was first published in January 1962. The imagery I refer to is a whole class of symbolic representations of centrality and organization, of order and highest authority; I hope to demonstrate that in these we see representations of the self and processes that transform or reorganize the self in the unconscious psyche. [Extracted from the article]