Carl Jung and Christianity

Psy-religion Meeting, 11 February 2012

Who is Jung?

Family Background

Born in Kesswil, Swiss on 26 Jul 18758 maternal uncles and 2 paternal uncles were parsonsFather: Paul Achilles Jung

rural pastor in Swiss Reformed ChurchMother: Emilie Prieswork

youngest daughter of Samuel Preiswerk (devoted theologian on Hebrew study)

Childhoodlove of nature, direct relationship with plants, animals, earth, rock, mountains, river, lakeliked playing alone

“I played alone, and in my own way... did not want to be disturbed. I was so absorbed in my games and could not endure being watched...” -- MDR“I had just never run across such an asocial monster ... he was all by himself” -- Albert Oeri, a childhood friend of Jung

1 younger sister born when Jung was 9 years old, too late for a companion

Childhooda home environment that Jung described as “unbreathable”

oppressed with a pervasive sense of death, melancholy, unease, and with “dim intimations of trouble”father slept with child Jung, whereas mother suffered nervous breakdown when Jung was 3, requiring hospitalisation

suffocated in religious environment that is also prone to disappointment while in constant resistance

“In the cemetery nearby, the sexton would dig a hole ... Black, solemn man... would bring a black box... My father would be... in his clerical gown... I was told that someone was being buried in this hole... but when I heard that Lord Jesus ‘took’ other people to himself... was the same as putting them in a hole in the ground... He lost the aspect of a big, comforting, benevolent bird and become associated with the gloomy black men in frock coats, top hats... who busied themselves with the black box”

ChildhoodJung’s earliest remembered dream:

“In the dream I was in this meadow. Suddenly I discovered a dark, rectangular, stone-lined hole in the ground.. I ran forward curiously and peered down into it. Then I saw a stone stairway leading down. Hesitantly and fearfully, I descended. At the bottom was a doorway with a round arch, closed off by a green curtain. It was a big, heavy curtain of worked stuff like brocade, and it looked very sumptuous. Curious to see what might be hidden behind, I pushed it aside. I saw before me in the dim light a rectangular chamber about thirty feet long. The ceiling was arched and of hewn stone. The floor was laid with flagstones, and in the center a red carpet ran from the entrance to a low platform. On this platform stood a wonderfully rich golden throne. I am not certain, but perhaps a red cushion lay on the seat. It was a magnificent throne, a real king's throne in a fairy tale. Something was standing on it which I thought at first was a tree trunk twelve to fifteen feet high and about one and a half to two feet thick. It was a huge thing, reaching almost to the ceiling. But it was of a curious composition: it was made of skin and naked flesh, and on top there was something like a rounded head with no face and no hair. On the very top of the head was a single eye, gazing motionlessly upward...

ChildhoodJung’s earliest remembered dream: (con’d)

... It was fairly light in the room, although there were no windows and no apparent source of light. Above the head, however, was an aura of brightness. The thing did not move, yet I had the feeling that it might at any moment crawl off the throne like a worm and creep toward me. I was paralyzed with terror. At that moment I heard from outside and above me my mother's voice. She called out, "Yes, just look at him. That is the man-eater!" That intensified my terror still more, and I awoke sweating and scared to death.”

ChildhoodDream interpretation?“The phallus... a subterranean god ‘not to be named’” ... “a ritual phallus” ... “an initiation into the secrets of the earth” ... “that fearful tree of my childhood dream” ... “revealed as ‘the breath of life’ the creative impulse”in line with the powerful phallic deities of the Celtic, German, Greek, Egyptian, Middle and Far Eastern peoples, gods that are the embodiment of creative life-bestowing powerexpecting Jesus enthroned in glory vs monstrous phallus, a subterranean god, “therefore Jesus never became quite real for me, never quite acceptable, never quite lovable, for again and again I would think of his underground counterpart, a frightful revelation which had been accorded me without seeking it”

Student Yearsenrolled as student at Basel University in 1895natural science, then switched to medicinewhy entered Psychiatry?

witnessed Seances of his cousin Helen Preiswerk: in trance state, she lost her Basel accent and spoke in high German, and claimed to be controlled by a variety of spirits

alerted Jung of ‘dissociated unconscious parts’?read Krafft-Ebing’s Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie (1890) with intense excitement, “in a flash of illumination, that for me the only possible goal was psychiatry”

under the apprenticeship of Eugen Bleuler, outstanding psychiatrist of the time, who replaced the term “Dementia Praecox” to Schizophrenia

Jung and FreudJung read Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900, identifying delayed response in ‘Word association test’ could be related to ‘repressed wishes’ and ‘traumatic memories’sent a copy of his book Studies in Word-Association to Freud in 1906, and Freud encouraged Jung to meet him in Viennafirst meeting with Freud in Mar 1907 in Vienna, where they got on so well that they talked without interruption for 13 hours

Jung and FreudFreud, for fear of death within 12 years out of superstition, was keen to secure Jung as his successor in Psychoanalysishowever, as time goes on, Jung was unable to conceal his difference from Freud:

that human motivation is exclusively sexualthe unconscious mind is entirely personal and peculiar to the individual

finally withdrew from the Psychoanalytic movement in 1913in 2-part publication of Symbols of Transformation, Jung deliberately repudiates Freud’s theory of libido, which he did so in fear that “would cost me my friendship with Freud”

Jungian Psychology

Jungian Psychology

The PsycheArchetypeCollective unconsciousnessIndividuation

The Psychecould be a confusion in term, as both ‘psyche’ and ‘soul’ are ‘Seele’

3 levels

consciousness

directly assessable to individual

contains his/her attitudes to adjustment to outside world

personal consciousness

all psychic material not yet reaching the threshold of consciousness

collective unconsciousness

The Psyche

The Collective Unconsciousnessdeepest and most extensive stratum of the psycheimpersonal and transpersonal foundation of the psychereservoir of unconscious content that had never reached consciousnessprimordial images common to all humanity

The Psyche

Archetypes‘identical psychic structure common to all’‘the archaic heritage of humanity’a proposed fundamental concept in Psychology similar to genetics in Biology and Quantum theory to Physicsfundamental duality of ‘spirit’ and ‘matter’, hence a bridge from psychic entity to matter in generalmediators of Unus Mundus, organizing ideas and images in the psyche and governs fundamental principles of matter and energy

The Psyche

ArchetypesPersona

a mask, how we codify ourselves to prove acceptance by others

Shadowside of an individual that s/he prefers not to revealdisowned subpersonality that is ignored most of the timegives rise to distrust, anger, fear, etc

Anima and Animusthe contrasexual feminine / masculine nature of a person

The Psyche

Complexespersonification of archetypeslinked to each particular archetype

Egoorbiting round the system like the earth round the sunthe centre of consciousness, “I” or “me”

The PsycheSelf

at the centre of the psyche, permeating entire system with its influence architect and builder of the dynamic structure which supports our psychic existence through lifetranscends ego, inheres the age-old capacities of speciesgoal: wholeness, realization of blueprint for human existence within individual contextseeks fulfillment of spiritual achievementsmanifestation of the God within?

Individuationthe process by which the individual integrates the conscious and unconscious parts of the personalitya living and dynamic process, spontaneous and natural within the psyche, hence ‘destined’ to individuategoal: realization of the Self2 stages in life

1st half adaptation of the psyche to the demands of the environmentseparation of ego and Self

2nd halfinitiation into inner reality, psychological transformation into the quest of self-explorationreuniting ego and Self

Synchronicity

“a coincidence in time of two or more causally unrelated events which have the same or similar meaning”‘acausal connection principle’, based on Chinese I Ching that anything happens is related to everything else that happens at the same time

Jung on Religion

Jung on ReligionFreud and Jung on Religion, by Michael Palmer

God as archetypal formGod is a manifestation of the deepest level of the unconscious mind, the collective unconsciousa priori structural component of the psychea ‘psychic reality’, something intrinsic to the individual, an active dimension within psychic life, impersonal, timeless and autonomous

God as archetypal contentpsychic experience of God e.g. demons, angels, spirits, God Himselfcan only be expressed symbolicallyChrist figure: overpowering, all-embracing, complete, perfect being a man of heroic proportions

Jung on ReligionFreud and Jung on Religion, by Michael Palmer (con’t)

nature of religious experiencesdefining religion

‘peculiar attitude of the human mind’ in which ‘certain dynamic factors’ are observed and considered ‘beautiful and meaningful enough to be devoutly adored and loved’does not rest upon tradition and faith but originates with the archetypesreligious attitude is an essential component of the psyche

‘dynamic activity’, in which value attributed to the numinosum involves a psychological condition of great ‘psychic intensity’

‘numinosum’: termed by Rudolf Otto, a dynamic agency or effect, not caused by arbitrary act of will

Jung on ReligionFreud and Jung on Religion, by Michael Palmer (con’t)

God and IndividuationIndividuation: God and the Self

is the process of individuation a religious process?individuation may be defined as religious because it is an archetypal process, any such orientation towards archetypes is religious

God = Self?“How on earth did you get the idea that I could replace God - and with a concept at that?... I can establish the existence of psychological wholeness to which our consciousness is subordinate... but this ‘self’ can never take the place of God, although it may... be a receptacle for divine grace”“I could say that the ‘self’ is somehow equivalent to God... when (as a psychologist) speak of ‘God’ I am speaking of a psychological image... similarly the ‘self’ is a psychological image of human wholeness,... something transcendental and incomprehensible”

Jung on ReligionFreud and Jung on Religion, by Michael Palmer (con’t)

God and IndividuationIndividuation and images of God

Father Stageearlier stage of consciousness when one was still a childproduces God-images of primitive religion“man, world and God form a whole, a unity unclouded by ciriticism”

Son Stage“in opposition to the still-existing earlier state... contains many latent possibilities of dissociation... a conflict situation par excellence”more differentiated images, e.g. Satan as regarded as shadow-side of Yahweh, divine pairs of Adonis and Aphrodite, Yahweh’s feminine counterpart the divine Sophia (Old Testament Book of Wisdom)

Jung on ReligionFreud and Jung on Religion, by Michael Palmer (con’t)

God and IndividuationIndividuation and images of God

Holy Ghost Stagea stage that genuine adulthood is achieved, final phase of individuation process (not exclusive to Christianity, but paradigm of final stage paralleled in symbolisms of other religions and culturesthe original unity is re-established, but in higher and more elevated conditionall images of God are psychic products of an essentially unconscious origin, evoking inner experiencee.g. interest in spiritualism, astrology, theosophy, even UFOs... became symbols (not substitutes) of deityif no new symbols created, individual becomes neurotic, as he loses psychic balance to integrate the conscious and unconscious

Jung and Religion

Jung and the Christian Way

quoting Jung’s BBC interview with John Freeman in 1961, “I don’t need to believe, I know”“all his life was concerned with knowing God, with the immediate intuitive awareness of God (in contrast to intellectual faith), wholly committed to God”“a profoundly religious man that was able to shed light on religious psychology”“went through an agnostic phase when he was heavily criticized by theologians and psychologists, hence maintained agnostic attitude to maintain scientific integrity”“what I offer is an impressionistic sketch of those elements of his teachings which have helped me... I cannot suppose that Jung would have agreed with written, but I believe he would heartily approved my attempt to follow up his ideas” -- author, Christopher Rex Bryant

Jung and BuddhismJung, Christianity, and Buddhism, James W. Heisig

theoretically, Jungian psychology enables inter-religion dialogueReality: has not attracted Christians and Buddhists for some reasons (broad academic background of Jung, study takes time)

Jung and the Christian Way, by Christopher Rex Bryant“William Johnston has interestingly described a dialogue between Christians and Buddhists in Japan: ‘We found that dialogue based on theology and philosophy did not achieve much; but when we talked from experience we suddenly discovered how closely united we really were.”

Jung and New Age Flying Saucers : A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, by C. G. Jung, R. F. C. Hull

concerned not on reality or not, but the psychic aspect; “about 12 years ... I cannot even say whether they exist or not”"In the threatening situation of the world today, when people are beginning to see that everything is at stake, the projection-creating fantasy soars beyond the realm of earthly organizations and powers into the heavens, into interstellar space, where the rulers of human fate, the gods, once had their abode in the planets.... Even people who would never have thought that a religious problem could be a serious matter that concerned them personally are beginning to ask themselves fundamental questions. Under these circumstances it would not be at all surprising if those sections of the community who ask themselves nothing were visited by ‘visions,' by a widespread myth seriously believed in by some and rejected as absurd by others."acknowledged UFO is not a purely psychological problem in an interview in New York Herald Tribune in 1958

Jung and New AgeJung as the proponent of the concept of the Age Aquarius

“This is the fateful year for which I have waited more than 25 years... This year reminds me of the enormous earthquake in 26 B.C. that shook down the great temple of Karnak. It was the prelude to the destruction of all temples, because a new time had begun. 1940 is the year when we approach the meridian of the first star inAquarius. It is the premonitory earthquake of the New Age...” -- Jung’s letter to Peter Bayne in 1940

Jung and New AgeJung and the New Age : A Study in Contrasts, article by David Tacey

Jung's name associated with New Age for about three decadesJung died in 1961, some years before the New Age has gained international momentum... he has foreseen the rise of paganism in the Western psyche... identified this resurgent paganism as the archetypal source for 21 century fascism and national socialismOn religious matters, Jung was both Christian and New Age... Jung could see that the one-sidedness of patriarchal religion and culture would necessarily constellate the awakening of compensatory matriarchal and feminine archetypal figures, but his response to these figures was ambivalentBy contrast, Jung discovers spirituality in and through our human pathologies, not by transcending them... “the Gods have become diseases”Jung’s well-known preoccupation with unity, mandalas, and the Self as the “archetype of wholeness.”

The Jung CultThe Jung Cult : Origins of a Charismatic Movement, by Richard Noll

Richard Noll: clinical psychologist in DeSales University in Pennsylvania, not orthodox ChristianBest Book in Psychology published in the United States in 1994

Jung shaped most the contemporary New Age movementJung was accepted by professing Christians (e.g. J. Gordon Melton, Morton Kesley, John Sanford)To prove his theory of a collective unconscious Jung cited the recurring independent appearances of the same archetypes in mythological traditions and in the delusions of his psychiatric patientsancient mysteries and their pagan gods no longer as satanic and taboo to the average ChristianNoll’s interpretation on MDR

a very well packaged contentfalsely passed off as his autobiographynot historically reliable, but well-crafted image of a cultic leader preserved by his cult

The Gnostic JungGnosticism (Gnostikos, Gk: knowledge): antithetical dualism of immaterality (good) and matter (evil)Jung considered Gnosticism and alchemy as evidence of the collective unconsciousGnostic creation myths described development not of the world but also the human psychethe androgynous godhead’s bearing of a son symbolizes the emergence of the ego out of primordial unconsciousJungian therapeutic aim vs Gnostic aim

Jungian: making as fully conscious possible the constellated unconscious content, and synthesizing them with consciousness through act of recognitionGnostic: reversion to the incipient state of both humanity and cosmos, not transformation

The Gnostic JungJung’s own Gnostic myth: 7 Sermons to the Dead

“Around five o’clock in the afternoon on Sunday the front doorbell began ringing frantically. It was a bright summer day; the two maids were in the kitchen, from which the open square outside the front door could be seen. Everyone immediately looked to see who was there, but there was no one in sight. ... Then I knew that something had to happen. The whole house was filled as if there were a crowd present, crammed full of spirits. ... Then they cried out in chorus, ‘We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not what we sought.’ That is the beginning of the Septum Sermones.” -- MDR

The Gnostic JungJung’s own Gnostic myth: 7 Sermons to the Dead

Jung’s confrontation with the collective unconscious“all my works, all my creative activity, has come from those initial fantasies and dreams which began in 1912” (1912: after break with Freud)psychological vs parapsychological?

a continuing dialogue with ‘Philemon’ (an imaginary Alexandrian Gnostic), most important personifications of the unconsciousthe dead symbolizes Jung’s collective unconscious (ancestor’s inadequacy of mainstream doctrine), living the ego conscious, so it is the unconscious seeking revelation from ego consciousnessattributed to Basilides (2nd century Alenxandrian Gnostic), channeling Basilides or used the channeled Basilides to address to the deadcontrary to popular opinion, the dead are not ‘possessors of great knowledge’

Memories, Dreams,

Reflection

BBC Interview“When I say that I don’t need to believe in God because I ‘know’, I mean I know the existence of God-images in general and in particular. I know it is matter of a universal experience and, in so far as I am no exception, I know I have such experience also, which I call God. It is the experience of my will over against another and very often stronger will, crossing my path often with seemingly disastrous results, putting strange ideas into my head and maneuvering my fate sometimes into most undesirable corners or giving it unexpected favorable twists, outside my knowledge and my intention. The strange force against or for my conscious tendencies is well known to me. So I say, ‘I know him’. But why should you call this something ‘God’? I would ask, ‘Why not’? It has always been called God.”

Memories, Dreams, Reflections

456 instances of ‘God’ in MDR“Slowly I came to understand that this communion had been a fatal experience for me. It had proved hollow; more than that, it had proved to be a total loss. I knew that I would never again be able to participate in this ceremony. ‘Why, that is not religion at all’, I thought. ‘It is an absence of God; the Church is a place I should not go to. It is not life which is there, but death.’I was seized with the most vehement pity for my father. All at once I understood the tragedy of his profession and his life. He was struggling with a death whose existence he could not admit.”“My sense of union with the Church and with the human world, so far as I knew it, was shattered.”“I began to ponder, what must one think of God? I had not invented that thought about God and the cathedral, still less the dream that had befallen me at the age of three. A stronger will than mine had imposed both on me. Had nature been responsible? But nature was nothing other than the will of the creator. Nor did it help to accuse the devil, for he too was a creature of God. God alone was real - an annihilating fire and an indescribable grace.”

“I had prepared it [the communion] in all earnestness, had hoped for an experience of grace and illumination, and nothing had happened.”

Memories, Dreams, Reflections

“How had I arrived at m certainty about God? I was told all sorts of things about Him, yet I could believe nothing. None of it convinced me. That was not where my idea came from... For example, all that about Lord Jesus was always suspect to me and I never really believed it, although it was impressed upon me far more than God, who was usually only hinted at in the background. Suddenly I understood that God was, for me at least, one of the most certain and immediate experiences, it was forced on me and I was compelled... I had no control over these things”“Once I heard him [Jung’s father] praying. He struggled desperately to keep his faith... I saw how hopeless he was entrapped by the Church and its theological teaching... Now I understood the deepest meaning of my earlier experiences: God disavowed theology and the Church founded upon it. On the other hand God condoned this theology, as he condoned so much else.”

Memories, Dreams, Reflections

“At home, I had the welcome opportunity to talk with a theologian who had been my father’s vicar... The theological students with whom I had discussions in the fraternity all seemed quite content with the theory of the historical effect produced by Christ’s life... To me this absolutely belied Christ’s own view that the Holy Ghost, who had begotten him, would take his place among men after his death. For me the Holy Ghost was a manifestation of the inconceivable God... Lord Jesus was to me unquestionably a man and therefore a fallable figure, or else a mouthpiece of the Holy Ghost.”

Memories, Dreams, Reflections

“The intensity of my emotion showed that the hill of Sanchi meant something central to me. A new side of Buddhism was revealed to me there... Buddha saw and grasped the cosmogonic dignity of human consciousness... Christ, like Buddha, is an embodiment of the self, but in an altogether different sense. Both stood for an overcoming of the world: Buddha out of rational insight; Christ as a foredoomed sacrifice. In Christianity, more is suffered, in Buddhism, more is seen and done. Both paths are right, but in the Indian sense Buddha is the more complete human being. He is a historical personality, and therefore easier for men to understand. Christ is at once a historical man and God, and therefore much more difficult to comprehend. At bottom he was not comprehensible even to himself; he knew only that he had to sacrifice himself, that this course was imposed upon him from within. His sacrifice happened to him like an act of destiny. Buddha lived out his life and died at an advanced age, whereas Christ's activity as Christ probably lasted no more than a year.”

Memories, Dreams, Reflections

“We know that something unknown, alien, does come our way, just as we know that we do not ourselves make a dream or an inspiration, but that it somehow arises of its own accord. What does happen to us in this manner can be said to emanate from mana, a daimon, a god, or the unconscious. The first three terms have the great merit of including and evoking the emotional quality of numinosity, whereas the latter - the unconscious - is banal and therefore closer to reality... The unconscious is too neutral and rational a term to give much impetus to the imagination. The term, after all, was coined for scientific purposes, and is far better suited to dispassionate observation which makes no metaphysical claims than are the transcendental concepts, which are controversial and therefore tend to breed fanaticism.Hence I prefer the term ‘the unconscious’, knowing that I might equally well speak of ‘God’ or daimon if I wish to express myself in mythical language. I am aware that ‘mana’, ‘daimon’, and ‘God’ are synonyms for the unconscious”

Memories, Dreams, Reflections

“The need for mythical statements is satisfied when we frame a view of the world which adequately explains the meaning of human existence in the cosmos, a view which springs from our psychic wholeness, from the co-operation between conscious and unconscious. Meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life and is therefore equivalent to illness. Meaning makes a great many things endurable - perhaps everything. No science will ever replace myth, and a myth cannot be made out of any science. For it is not that ‘God’ is a myth, but that myth is the revelation of a divine life in man. It is not we who invent myth, rather it speaks to us as a Word of God. The Word of God comes to us, and we have no way of distinguishing whether and to what extent it is different from God.”

Is Jung Christian??