The Picture of Dorian Gray begins with Basil describing his fascination with Dorian and ends with his masterpiece returning to its original splendor. He describes his reaction to Dorian in these words: "When our eyes met, I felt myself turning pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew I had come face to face with someone whose simple personality was so charming." which, if I let it, would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art." (6)Such a reaction is not a reaction towards another human being. It signals a hint of something superhuman. The word "fascinating " comes from fascinum, meaning "enchantment". A fascination is caused by unconscious factors. It grips us; it holds us in its power; it acts on us. The expression "face to face" suggests the image of a "god" - cf. Jacob's experience at Peniel (Gen. 32.30) or Moses in the Tabernacle (Ex. 33.11) corresponds to both definitions of Jung's Self: "an image of God in the psyche" and a "complexio oppositorum" (Vol. 9.ii; par. 73; also CW 11.283). Jung in fact maintained that an image of God must be a mixture of opposites "if it is to represent a sort of totality " (CW 13.289). According to Jung, the Self is an autonomous archetypal image, symbolizing something towards which the individual is striving. An experience of the Self therefore represents a hint of a meaning that the individual has not yet assimilated. The individual's task is to integrate the meaning implicit in his particular experience, but not to identify with it, since this would signal psychological inflation. Basil lives only for his art (56). He is afraid of life, because it is capable of exerting an influence on him that he feels is threatening. He is afraid of Dorian, because Dorian personifies the Dionysian side of his personality that he has repressed. So he needs Dorian, because only through Dorian can he feel alive. The contrast between them is suggestive. Basil is fascinated by what he himself is not. The attributes he finds so fascinating stand in a "compensatory" relationship to him. But instead of seeing his fascination as symbolic of the need to develop the Dionysian side of one's personality, he seeks to perpetuate his experience through art..