As we are our consciousness, we need to identify with everything and everyone we are conscious of. To identify with something or someone is to be conscious of a connection between ourselves and them, and as consciousness is made of connections and we’ve evolved only to be conscious of what we need to take care of that which we identify with, this is the only way we can become more conscious. When it learns to identify with several people or things at the same time, our ego disintegrates into parts, and then reintegrate them into the new whole of a greater ego, which happens every time our consciousness grows. It takes many reintegrations before we identify with the whole of our consciousness, however, and until it has, there must be a balance between disintegration and reintegration. Too much disintegration will cause schizophrenia, too much integration will cause psychopathy. When there is a balance between the two, however, ego disintegration and reintegration take place at the same time, so that the ego does not break as such, but rather bends.
Dabrowski has more to say on this topic. But I differ on the opinion that disintegration is the only part of the process. We need our ego like any other part of ourselves, otherwise it wouldn't exist and we'd be schizophrenic. Besides, it's the ego itself that tries to see something as always bad or always good. The message of infinitarianism that I'm trying to get across here is that all aspects of ourselves can and should coexist.
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