JUNG'S PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF IMAGO DEI

PHANÊS, 2018

This paper aims to position Jung's psychology of religion in the context of the development of the study of religion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I argue that Jung's psychology of religion represents a synthesis between the 'science of religion' tradition, put forward by luminaries such as Max Müller and Cornelis Petrus Tiele, and the psychology of religion that Jung encountered in the works of his two intellectual masters, Théodore Flournoy and William James. KEYWORDS C.G. Jung, psychology of religion, science of religion, Max Müller, William James JUNG AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 59

Self - Revista do Instituto Junguiano de São Paulo, 2019

This paper considers Jung’s lifelong engagement with the phenomenon of religion. More specifically, it examines the development of his theories in relation to the stages of his life and how religion gradually assumed a definite place in his theory and practice; moving over from psychiatry through psychoanalysis and typology to the theory of archetypes, and finally to the psychology of religious motifs. This study is based on a large literature review of the Jungian works and accounts about the author. From the years spent composing his “The Red Book”, Jung struggled to understand the psychological and historical effects of Christianity. The older he got, the more he felt a powerful sense that it was his task to treat the spiritual and religious ills of his patients. His whole oeuvre can be understood as an attempt to grasp the future religious development of the West, in the conviction that religion is necessary for the spiritual evolution of mankind. A strong example of Jung’s influence in the second half of the 20th century were the annual Eranos Conferences, which he promoted to discuss innovative ideas about religion. The conferences became one of the most important forums of dissemination of his religious ideas to a broader public. In the course of his research he actively cultivated dialogue with theologians and historians of religion, and everything he published had to do with religion to a greater or lesser degree. He even employed religious terms for his therapeutic format, like in the first of the four stages of his analytical process: confession, elucidation, education and transformation. Keywords: Carl Jung, psychology, religion, Eranos

Jung argues that the symbols of Christianity are no longer alive, and as a result they have lost their healing function. As a restorative he professes an immanent Godhead, symbolized by the quaternity. The devil, or the alchemical Mercurius, shall be elevated as the fourth person of the Godhead. The article evaluates Jung’s quaternarian theology and measures it against trinitarian theology. Jung’s metaphysical postulates, such as the mental unconscious, are criticized. The spiritual plight of modern man is discussed. Luther’s theology ought to be complemented with a good understanding of ‘summum bonum’. Keywords: quaternity, trinity, nature of evil, the Self, Christ, ‘complexio oppositorum’, ‘summum bonum’, ‘privatio boni’, theology of the cross, Jung, Luther.

2013

The twenty-first century could well be Jung's century, just as the twentieth century was Freud's. Jung predicted the demise of secular humanism and claimed we would search for alternatives to science, atheism and reason. We would experience a new and even unfashionable appetite for the sacred. Educated people, however, would not return to unreconstructed religions, because these do not express the life of the spirit as discerned by modern consciousness. The sacred has developed a darker hue, and worshipping symbols of light and goodness no longer satisfies the longings of the soul. The new sacred cannot be contained by the formulas of the past, but nor can we live without a sense of the sacred. We stand in a difficult place: between traditional religions we have outgrown and a pervasive materialism we can no longer embrace. These changes in our culture have come sooner than Jung might have imagined. In his time, Jung struck many as eccentric or unscientific, but his works speak to our time since we have experienced the full gamut of Jungian transformations: the unsettlement of Judeo-Christian culture, the rise of the feminine, the onslaught of the dark side, the critique of modernism and positivism, and the recognition that the Western ego is neither the pinnacle of evolution nor the lord of creation. A new life is needed beyond the ego, but we do not yet know what it will look like. The outbreak of strong religion and terrorism are signs of the times, but these are expressions of a distorted and repressed spirit, and not, one hopes, genuine pointers to the future. What the future holds is uncertain, but Jung's prophetic vision helps to prepare us for what is to come, and this will be of great interest to analytical psychologists and psychoanalysts, as well as to theologians, futurists, sociologists and the general reader. David Tacey has written extensively on spirituality, mental health and society. His most recent book is Gods and Diseases: Making sense of our physical and mental wellbeing. David is Professor of Literature at La Trobe University, Melbourne, where he teaches courses on the crisis of meaning in Western culture, Jungian psychology and postmodern theory. He is the author or editor of thirteen books, including Jung and the New Age, The Spirituality Revolution and The Jung Reader.

Jungian Dialogues, 2018

This paper begins with the notions of “religious experience” inaugurated by the Protestant theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) whose insistence on the importance of describing it from the subject’s perspective was formative in shaping subsequent studies of religious phenomena. It then moves to the two well-known representatives of this tradition: the American philosopher and psychologist William James (1842-1910) and the German Lutheran theologian Rudolf Otto (1869-1937), both of whom were to have a strong influence on the thought of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875-1961). Finally it explores Otto’s idea of the holy and how his concept of “numinous state of mind” introduced a strong psychological and emotional component into the study of religions. Jung made use of the numinous to refer to a variety of psychological phenomena that had mostly to do with archetypal manifestations. Since then the term has been appropriated becoming a corner stone in analytical psychology and an important part of the Jungian lexicon.

Psyche, Science and Society, 2023

Official publication date 13 April 2023. Indicative contents: race; the Nazi era; religion; the city; Jung and Lorenz; gender; ecology. Details available on: Psyche, Science and Society: Essays on Jung and Sociology 1st Editio (routledge.com)

Nederlandse Associatie voor Analytische Psychologie (NAAP), 2020

This paper investigates how Carl G. Jung (1875-1961), the founder of analytical psychology, approached religion and the religious in pursuit of psychological healing. It begins with the idea of "religious experience," and its radical new approach to the study of religion. An approach in which the feelings and emotions stirred by religion gained center stage over religion's theoretical substance. First, it will place religion and Carl Jung's theories in a historical perspective. It then dives deeper into the works of Carl Jung to explore the psychological and religious importance of the unconscious mind, the Self and its various aspects, for understanding mental illness and psychological healing. Through a discussion of dreams, archetypes and individuation, this paper demonstrates how man has worshipped the psychic force within him as something divine and shows how psychological healing can bring about a religious experience.

This paper arguea that Jung intentionally positioned his psychological theory in a liminal space between and inclusive of science and spirituality, while he performed the roles of both doctor and spiritual master. Jung formulated his psychological theory as a solution to his era’s social malaise, which many people believed stemmed from the rupture between faith and reason. Jung sought to build a bridge between science and spirituality through psychology by drawing on certain streams of thought in religion, science and spirituality in his day. The religious view he embraced was that of a “religionswissenschaftliche Religiosität,” which scholar of religions Hiroshi Kubota describes as a “religiously marked intellectuality” that developed due to the “‘scientific’ reflection on religion,” one informed by Enlightenment, Romantic, and liberal Protestant ideas. The scientific perspective with which Jung agreed was that held by holistic scientists, who sought to restore to life a sense of ultimate meaning that was grounded in science. Finally, the spirituality which Jung incorporated into his psychological theory was a Protestant-based, Germanic-inflected form of self-redemption. Formulated by members of the intellectual middle class, this new spirituality reflected their own self-identities as autonomous modern individuals, removed from kin networks and class restrictions. Seen as a completion of the Reformation begun by Martin Luther, self-redemption was touted as a form of spirituality specific to people of Germanic stock. It was within this nexus of ideas about science and spirituality that Jung formulated his psychological perspective. A much expanded version of this paper can be found in ch. 3 of my book, "Jung's Wandering Archetype: Race and Religion in Analytical Psychology” (Routledge 2016).

Journal of Religion and Health, 2011

This article explores one of C. G. Jung's generally neglected essays, his psychological interpretation of the Trinity, and links up key theoretical notions with several more mainstream psychoanalytic concepts. It further uses the notions of oneness, otherness, thirdness, and the fourth to consider the recent points of convergence between psychoanalysis and religion.