When we are born, we enter the world in a natural state of inflation. The infant is the center of its universe. Every cry brings response, every hunger expects to be filled, every discomfort longs to be soothed. Inflation is the psyche’s first condition, a necessary beginning.
In Jung’s language, the ego is meant to be a center of consciousness, a bridge between the inner world and outer life. When inflated, though, it tries to occupy the place of the Self (the deeper, organizing principle of the psyche).
Sometimes this shows up as grandiosity: “I’m above the rules, I can’t fail.” Sometimes as perfectionism: “If I’m not flawless, I’m worthless.” Sometimes as certainty in politics or relationships: “My way is the only way.”
In IFS terms, it’s like a manager part has swollen beyond proportion, convinced it must control everything. It’s not that the ego is “bad” it’s simply over-identified with energies too vast, too archetypal.
If this inflation is never tempered by relationship, by limits, by the long apprenticeship of growing into the human community, it can persist into adulthood. One part of the psyche swells beyond its natural size, convinced that its way is the only way. It is not evil; it is a distortion. Something in us is trying to protect, control, or assert itself, but it does so by crowding out the other voices of the soul.
In my therapy room, inflation often looks like the person who believes they must be flawless , who cannot tolerate imperfection in themselves or their partner. Inside, it is not arrogance but fear: a fragile part believing that if imperfection is allowed, love or safety will collapse.
We see the same pattern magnified on the world stage at the moment. When a single ideology, leader, or nation believes it alone carries the whole truth, it demands obedience and denies complexity. Wars, rigid politics, and cultural divisions often begin as psychic inflations that were never questioned, never balanced by humility or dialogue.
The task, then, is not to condemn inflation but to notice it, listen for what it is trying to secure, and invite it back into proportion.
Healing happens when no one voice, inner or outer claims the throne, but when the many voices of the psyche, the people, and the world are allowed to speak together and collectively collaborate.
At the heart of much inflation lies the terror of the ordinary, the fear that if we are simply human, imperfect, and limited, we will not be loved, we will not matter. Yet it is precisely in the ordinary, in small acts of care, in honest mistakes, in the daily work of being human that the soul finds its truest dignity.
With humility and compassion,
Aleksandra
Aleksandra Staneva, PhD - Internal Family Systems & Jung 