What it is
In Carl Jung’s psychology, inflation is what happens when a person is so taken over by an archetype, one of the big shared images of the unconscious like the hero, the sage or the savior, that they identify with it. The personality gets “magnified into something that expresses not the individual person but the collective image,” as Alasdair MacIntyre summarized it.
It feels like insight or destiny from the inside. From the outside, it looks like grandiosity.
How it shows up for me
I’ve had moments after a big realization where I felt like I’d figured out everything. That’s my warning sign now. Real insight tends to make me quieter and more ordinary. Inflation makes me want a podium.