This analysis brings into focus the relation of soul to ego. Recall the metaphysical axiom, that the soul is a simple whole—originally not representing—whose self-preservations against various disturbances result in “representings”. The soul in itself, in its simple and thus unknowable quality as not representing soul, cannot become either subject or object of consciousness. But the soul with respect to all of its representations is the true subject: the one, undivided, yet most variously active subject of all consciousness.  Now as we consider psychic activity to be generally a representing over against a represented, there arises the peculiar case where the represented entity is identical with itself (SW VI: 190–1). The soul “unfold[s] the represented world; and, in the middle of the world, the represented, own self” (SW VI: 191).