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In Jungian Anaylisis

The Mandala in analytical psychology is an image that brings attention to a center and a periphery of the self or total personality Within the context of dream interpretation or work with dreams by an analyst or in active imagination the appearance of a mandala is a point when the shadow and the anima or animus has been confronted and the patient begins to be aware of the self archetype. Jung often asked patients to draw mandalas because he considered them spontanious expressions of the unconscious. The mandala as a symbol emerges because of a strong need for a person to change. Joseph L. Henderson, a founding member of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, recalls that Jung was fond of quoting "In Habentibus Symbolum Facilior Est Transitus" (It is easier for those who have a symbol to change.) and also notes in his 1982 work Reflections on the History and Practice of Jungian Analysis that the mandala is a primal symbol.

The mandala is a dream image which "squares" early confrontations with the self archetype. According to Jung:

“ The "squaring of the circle" is one of the many archetypal motifs which form the basic patterns of our dreams and fantasies. But it is distinguished by the fact that it is one of the most important of them from the functional point of view. Indeed, it could even be called the archetype of wholeness. ”

This has been called a quaternity by Jung and the two terms can be considered synonymous. One of the best examples of this is in Jung's Answer to Job where he mentiones several mandalas in the dreams of the prophet Ezekiel and the squaring of the mandala "with the quaternity of the four living creatures in whom God manifests himself". Wolfgang Pauli collaborated with Jung to bring to light the concept of synchronicity which elaborated the significance of the mandala:

“ As the mandala symbol begins to evolve, the underlying imagery becomes identified with abstract concepts such as rotation, orientation, centering and symmetry, all of which have psychological meaning." ”

The Significance of Four

Because the Mandala is a dream image of a self archetype developing unconsciously as the child develops a personality emerging and becoming more conscious to the individual throughout the psychological stages of life, it often manifests in recognizable, if sometimes surprising, ways. The self emerges in dreams as stones, tables, homunculi, children, and especially in numbers. According to Marie-Louise von Franz, the mandala "represents an attempt to describe the archetype of the Self as a regulating center of archetypal and numerical fields" in the form of the unus mundus.

In a person, the mandala is not static but a developing symbol of the self, part of the dialogue encouraged by analysis between the conscious and the unconscious. While the mandala initially appears as a singular object such as a sun or a skull, eventually the mandala becomes divided into a quaternity. It is not uncommon for individuals to divide their mandalas into threes or fives. According to Murray Stein:

“ Numbers, particularly the number four and multiples of four, indicate quaternity structures. (Jung was not so fond of the number three, which he regards as only a partial expression of the self ”

Representing cardinal points or the Holy Trinity including Satan or the Gnostic Sophia (Answer to Job) The Shadow, considered the seat of the soul is similarly divided this way. Many contemporary Jungian Analysts identify the self mandala archetype as the same archetype as the shadow only no longer ignored and many of the inferior aspects dealt with and absorbed by the ego and persona. Similarly the squaring of this circle can be seen as dividing the shadow into fours as in a quaternity. A conscious shadow aspect, a feminine or anima shadow (dark anima) similarly a dark animus and a wholy unconscious, unknown or collective unconscious aspect.

“... there must be a transconscious disposition in every individual which is able to produce the same or very similar symbols at all times and in all places. Since this disposition is usually not a conscious possession of the individual I have called it the collective unconscious, and, as the bases of its symbolical products, I postulate the existence of primordial images, the archetypes.”