Emergence of our inner, archetypal mediators of divine power

"True sanity entails in one way or another the dissolution of the normal ego, that false self competently adjusted to our alienated social reality: the emergence of the "inner" archetypal mediators of divine power, and through this death a rebirth, and the eventual re-establishment of a new kind of ego-functioning, the ego now being the servant of the divine, no longer its betrayer." -R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience

We must become the self whom the other recognizes, but our being always transcends what is false in that early recognition, always seeks authentic connection with the other, with others, even as we pull back at the same time for fear of the humiliation of not being reciprocated". Please see chapter 2 of my new book "The Desire for Mutual Recognition" for more on the formation of the false self.