Jung and Christianity:
An Interpersonal Perspective
By Robert T. Sears, S.J.
We have only to look at our spirituality today to see how much of Jung 's agenda we have taken over. Dream and fantasy workshops, a growing awareness of ecology and care for the Earth, a recognition of our shadow and neglected side are just a few. I believe Jung is speaking a very important word to our one-sided religion and culture, and yet this word needs to be put in a different context — one that is interpersonal, in contrast to the intrapersonal focus of Jung himself. Jung interpreted "faith" as an intellectual adherence to dogmas without religious experience. He sought experience of God in a way that left "faith" in the actual existence of God open to question. An interpersonal view of faith was beyond his "scientific" interest. He retrieved the "whole individuated person," but in the
process lost, I will argue, a mature interpersonality.
In recent times several attempts have been made to put Jung's contribution to Christianity,
healing, and spiritual direction into right perspective.' With the wide use of Jung's thinking
in healing ministries and spiritual direction, it seems important to present a critique of his
position, especially with respect to implications for the healing ministry. Jung was always concerned
with the religious implications of his perspective. He had six theologians on his
mother's side of the family, with a bishop grandfather, and two uncles, besides his father, who
were ministers on his father's side. Jung was steeped in religion, and his concern, as Murray
Stein has well argued, was to treat not just individuals, but the whole Christian tradition as well.2 He felt that the religious neurosis of his father (his inability to move beyond dogmas to experience and, hence, his suppressed doubts) was not peculiar to him, but expressed the one-sidedness of his tradition. The church, he felt, had excluded nature, as seen in its abstract art and architecture; had repressed
animals, as seen in their extinction; had neglected its own inferior and dark side — sexuality,
hostility — and its creative fantasy because of intellectual dogma.3 It had cut itself
off from primitive roots and mythology and had lost its inferiority and soul. It sought an idealistic perfection rather than a realistic wholeness, and the neglected side was causing
alienation, wars, division between the sexes, and separation from God.
We have only to look at our spirituality today to see how much of Jung's agenda we have taken over. Dream and fantasy workshops, a growing awareness of ecology and care for the Earth, a recognition of our shadow and neglected side and the need for recreation to offset the one-sided workaholism of both culture and religion; a recognition of the feminine in men, and, one hopes, a recognition that women do not have to identify with their masculine side but to integrate its virtues in their own way.
Certainly, more could be done to enhance each of these directions. The concern of this article, however, is to highlight what can well be lost in the way Jung and many of his followers view me Christian tradition to meet this agenda. Jung interpreted "faith," as lived by his father, as an intellectual adherence to dogmas without religious experience. He sought experience of God in a
way that left "faith" in the actual existence of God open to Question.5 An interpersonal view
of faith was beyond his "scientific" interest. He retrieved the "whole individuated person," but
in the process lost, I will argue, a mature interpersonality. As a result, his reinterpretation
of Christian "dogmas" in experiential terms distorted their interpersonal nature and made
the church a way station on the road to individuation rather than making individuation
a step toward mature spiritual community. It is this ultimate horizon of understanding that concerns
me in this article, not his agenda for healing the church, an agenda that seems to me a
real need. How one interprets this agenda and meets it is at issue.
My points, then, are two: (1) I believe Jung is speaking a very important word to our one sided
religion and culture, a word that needs to be heard, and yet (2) this word needs to be put in a different context — one that is interpersonal, in contrast to the intrapersonal focus of Jung himself. In this article I focus on the second point. I will first highlight Jung's neglect of the interpersonal, then place his contribution in an overall view of human interpersonal growth, and finally indicate what implications this changed perspective would have on healing and Christian spiritual growth.
I. Jung's Neglect of the Interpersonal Jung was clearly interested in human interaction, as his Psychological Types (1923) documents at length and his analysis of how the projection of shadow and anima/animus corrupts human communication develops further. Yet he focused on withdrawing "projections" between individuals (such as those he discovered in his relationship with Freud) or owning one's own religious experience "projected" onto institutional religion. Analysis frees the individual to full self-expression. Society and the church are the womb of this new birth but not its ultimate goal. This can be seen in Jung's view of faith, his treatment of projection, and his view of God.
A. Jung's view of faith. For Jung, as for many moderns, "faith" is adherence to cultural or religious dogmas without full experience or understanding. When asked whether he believed in God, Jung answered: "I do not believe. I know." Very early he determined not to adhere blindly to dogmas, as he felt his father had done to the detriment of his own life conviction. He would let his experience of "God" lead him, as untraditional as it seemed. He concluded early that "in religious matters, only experience counted."6 Jung was both a scientist and a convinced Kantian. Kant held that we cannot know the other, only the phenomenon of our own experience. We must leave the ground of this experience to "belief that cannot be proved.
A dream of his father that Jung had around 1950 (while struggling with his Answer to Job) brings
his view into clear focus. After a scene where his father is a distinguished scholar explaining a fishskin-bound Bible to Jung and two other psychiatrists at breakneck speed in a way too erudite for their understanding, the scene changes to a large, circular second-story hall with a sultan's throne elevated in the center.
_______________________________________
Jung was both a scientist and a convinced Kantian. Kant held that we cannot know the other, only the phenomenon of our own experience.His father points to a small door high up on the wall
and says: "Now I will lead you into the highest presence." He then kneels and touches his head to the ground. Jung follows suit, but does not go all the way to the floor. That door, he then realizes, leads to the chamber of Uriah, King David's betrayed general, whom Jung sees as a Christ-image. Jung acknowledged that he ought to have submitted to his fate, but "something in me was defiant and determined not to be a dumb fish.... Man always has some mental reservation, even in the face of divine decrees. Otherwise, where would be his freedom? And what would be the use of that freedom if it could not threaten Him who threatens it?"7 In this view, to believe fully is to lose one's independence and freedom.
"Faith" meant to Jung an unquestioning submission that would hinder individuation. Jung's wariness of "faith" in this sense will always be needed if individual experience is to be taken seriously and social systems are to be challenged, yet there is an interpersonal aspect of faith that his view neglects. When Jesus asks his disciples, "Will you also go away?" (John 6:67) and Peter replies that "you have the words of eternal life and we have come to believe...," he is not asserting a dogma so much as a commitment to a relationship. Faith in this sense is a committed, loving relationship to another person,
a basic trust that, in another's self- The Journal of Christian Healing revelation and faithfulness. God is communicated. Par from de-individualizing us, this interpersonal faith ultimately calls each of us,
as it did Jesus' disciples, to full uniqueness at the same time that it builds a believing community."
Jung was aware that his focus on individuation was to offset the rampant collectivism of his time (seen in Nazi Germany and communist Russia but also in the institutional church). He felt that this individuation was itself "one-sided," and took great care to carry out his responsibilities to the state and to religion by his military and political service through his writing.9 The individualism of our day10 is not what Jung meant by individuation that required sacrifice of egoism for the self. Yet even so, the self, for Jung, is not ultimately grounded in interpersonal faith but in one's own nuministic
experience." Though he had his children belong to the church as a container for their initial growth (his mother took charge of this aspect),12 he and Emma did not attend church. Not interpersonal
faith but personal experience grounded his religion.
B. Freeing of projections. "Whatever is unconscious is projected," Jung affirmed, and
unless such projections (shadow, anima/animus, savior) are brought to light, they will contaminate
our relationships, whether personal or social. I (we) will fight the "enemy" outside if I (we) overlook the "shadow" within; I (we) will oppress the sexes if I (we) neglect the countersexual sides of ourselves; I (we) will carry out "holy wars" against those who attack my (our) "saving myth" rather than reverence the revelation of God in ourselves and others to help each other to saving wholeness.
Again, we have to agree with Jung's insights, but what will call us to commitment once the projections are released? What vision of "beloved community" (Josiah Rpyce, The Problem of Christianity, 1913) will be worth the sacrifice of our new-found autonomy once our religious and nationalistic "illusions" fall away? Without a divine Other to ground an interpersonal goal, we are left with individual motivation and self interest (albeit a larger "self than narrow egoism), and experience is showing us this is not enough.
C. God within experience. Ultimately, our image of God is what calls us to growth or
Vol. 12. No. 2, Summer 1990 stands in the way. As Jung saw it, the Christian God was one-sidedly "light" and masculine, so Christians projected their shadow on the "unsaved" outside and kept women in subservient positions. Individuals were not encouraged to trust their own experience and think for themselves, so the slavish following of "-isms" was an ever-present danger. "God" must be found in each one's experience, in one's
_______________________________________
Jung's God-image individuates, that is becomes progressively more self-aware in the world,
through interaction with humans. It includes a dark, destructive side that is revealed in the death of Jesus, and warns us against total trust.______________
darkness as well as light, in fenimine receptiveness as well as masculine determination, if
we are to creatively meet the challenges of our day. The trinitarian God expresses full consciousness:
the Self (Father) expressing itself (Son) and releasing energy through explicit self acceptance
(Holy Spirit). But consciousness leaves out the unconscious (darkness, evil, the feminine). God must be Quaternity — Trinity plus that dark side — if our God-image is to lead us to full individuation."
Here we glimpse the confusing subtleties in Jung's position. He claims to deal with God images,
yet critiques church dogmas (which claim to express truths, not images) on the basis of their symbolism for individuation. Jung's God-experience is open-ended, a personalized contact with a common "ground of being" out of which we individually emerge, an "archetype" (a basic structure of the psyche). Jung is not an atheist, nor even an agnostic. He really says nothing about the ultimate in reality but only that in the psyche. Yet that very neglect of an ultimate statement (if in fact it is possible) leaves the individual adrift in a sea of emerging consciousness with no clear affirmation
of who God ultimately is. That vacuum will be filled with implied ultimate metaphors for God, and ultimate values springing from that commitment.14
13
Jung himself seems to take this step when he describes (in his Answer to Job, 1952) the changing human conceptions of God as changes in God's self-consciousness. Jung's God-image individuates, that is becomes progressively more self-aware in the world, through interaction with humans. It includes a dark, destructive side that is revealed in the death of Jesus, and warns us against total trust (as we saw above).15 To submit totally to such a God is to gain power but lose one's distinctiveness. Such an image is not a loving, personal presence that
_______________________________________
The Spirit given through Jesus' death/resurrection brought to life a community of believers at Pentecost; gave each a different manifestation of the Spirit for the building of the community,
and opened people to Jesus as Lord and the Father as Abba.________
calls us into a committed world of self-giving
love (as David Hassel argues is necessary).16
Such a God is united to our experience, Jung's
main concern, but does not embody a transcendent
goal of perfect, self-giving Love that calls
us into union with Christ and loving community.
How can we take seriously Jung's concern
to relate God to our experience of darkness, yet
maintain an ultimate faith in God's perfect, selfgiving
love? An interpersonal perspective offers
hope for that integration.
n. An Interpersonal View of Human Growth
and Trinitarian Love
Jung focused on emerging individuating consciousness
and understood God as its ultimate
goal. If we attend to God's self-communication
through Jesus and the Spirit as leading to individuated,
self-giving love, what view of
human development and God would emerge and
how would Jung's contribution fit?
First, Christian faith must begin with the personal
God that Jesus reveals in his words and
actions.17 Jesus lived and preached God's
kingdom by healing and reaching out to the
poor. The Spirit at work in him went to the
disciples at Pentecost to build them into a com-
14
munity of service. Authentic Christian tradition
came to see Jesus and the Spirit as equally
divine, a factor that grounds seeing God as a
community of self-giving love." Recent
theology has focused on Jesus' cross and resurrection
as the privileged way to understand God
(very different from the approach to God in
Jung's day). Viewing the Father through the Son
(John 14:9), we see beyond Jesus' cross to the
Father who surrenders his Son out of Love
(John 3:16). The Son's faithful commitment
leads him to surrender himself in response, and
their joint self-giving "sends" their Spirit of
self-giving love to our world to empower other
believers.
Second, this power of self-giving love is made
available to us through the gift of the Spirit in
Jesus' resurrection. Jesus' resurrection brings
human nature into union with God. It is the
beginning of a "new creation" at work in the
world (since Jesus is now Lord of the world),
and because it partakes of God's life, the Spirit
of Jesus pervades all space and time. It brings
Jesus' ancestors, and all our ancestors, into
union with God, as it does future generations,
and calls from the depths of all people whether
or not they are conscious believers. Hence, the
experience that Jung appeals to actually is an
experience transformed by the Resurrection of
Jesus, even though Jung does not understand it
in that light. If he did, what new perspective
would emerge in consciousness?
Third, the new perspective would be fundamentally
interpersonal. The Spirit given through
Jesus' death/resurrection brought to life a community
of believers at Pentecost (Acts 2); gave
each a different manifestation of the Spirit for
the building of the community (1 Cor. 12:7), and
opened people to Jesus as Lord (1 Cor. 12:3)
and the Father as Abba (Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:15).
In every case the gift is interpersonal, yet
implies an individual freedom to develop one's
unique giftedness. Elsewhere I have argued19
that this goal of creative individual relationship
(which I have called communitarian and mission
faith) is reached through several stages corresponding
to stages of Judeo-Christian history:
trust (corresponding to Yahwist theology);
familial faith (corresponding to the law stage of
the Elohist and Deuteronomist); individuating
faith (which we see emerging in Ezekiel 18 and
The Journal of Christian Healing
Job during the Exile and after); communitarian
faith (which first emerges with Jesus'
forgiveness of enemies and sinners, forming a
compassionate individuated community), and
mission faith (which we see at Pentecost and
beyond).
This interpersonal perspective does not
invalidate Jung's insights. Rather, it reinterprets
them from a higher viewpoint, for the above
stages are cumulative and cyclical. Cumulatively,
each higher stage builds on the preceding
and raises it to a new level. Familial faith
presupposes and deepens trust, and individuating
faith presupposes familial relationships
that have contributed to one's unfolding,
yet rediscovers them in an individuated way in
communitarian faith. Thus communitarian faith
increases with the increasing individuation of
those united, and their union, in turn, actually
increases the uniqueness of each involved.
Jung's focus was on individuation, and he saw
community, in this perspective, as familial,
since it was pre-individuated, a container for
later individuation. The Spirit moves us toward
a further form of community that individuates
its members by developing each one's unique
gifts (1 Cor. 12:7) and leads to an overflow of
communal life in mission, as we see in the early
community in Acts.
III. Jungian Insights Re-Visioned from an
Interpersonal Perspective
Jung appeals to experience and uses concepts
such as archetype, etc., to organize that experience.
Hence, there would seem to be
nothing in his view to oppose a restructuring
of his data, as long as it took seriously his concerns.
Let us look at several of his concepts and
concerns from the point of view of the interpersonal
resurrection-Spirit as the ground of our
experience.
A. The Shadow in Humans and God. Jung
was concerned that the perfectionism of Christianity
led to its overlooking its dark side. We
necessarily create outer enemies if we are not
reconciled to the inferior sides of ourselves. We
seek world peace but will never achieve it until
we recognize and reconcile our inner aggression
and suspicion. "We are the source of all
evil," Jung commented in a BBC interview,
Vol. 12, No. 2, Summer 1990
"and we are pitifully unaware of it." Since we
see ourselves in light of our God-images, Jung
concluded that a root cause of our blindness was
our one-sidedly good image of God. According
to Jung, since a trinitarian God is all good, we
are led to constellate an outer enemy to be
fought (as we see happening in the Book of
Revelation) rather than focus on our inner dark
side to be understood and integrated. For Jung,
God must be at the root of good and evil if there
is one source of all. If God also has a questionable
side, then we are freed to admit our
own darkness, to look honestly at all our
experience, bring it to light, and work toward
an integration of the opposites.
This placing of evil in God has led opponents
of Jung's view to various rebuttals. Even such
a staunch Jungian as John Sanford called Jung
"frustratingly inconsistent" in his treatment of
evil, and "adamant in his affirmations."20 Jung
affirmed the Self as uniting opposites in an allencompassing
wholeness, yet states that evil
destroys wholeness. Either there is a larger
wholeness that includes evil, or there is no
ultimate wholeness. Jung seems to imply the
first, for in one place21 he speaks of God as
Love in that God unites opposites, without saying
that the opposite of God is hate. Yet other
passages affirm evil in God. In any case, Jung
misinterpreted the classical definition of evil.
He continually argued that to define evil as the
"privation of good" slighted its terrifying
power, as though it lacked being. In fact,
Augustine and Aquinas defined evil as "the
privation of good that ought to be there"
("privatio boni debiti"), such as a fallen angel.
In no sense does the angel become less powerful;
it only becomes distorted in its power. The
corruption of the best is the worst. And further,
as Robert Doran pointed out, to put evil in God
makes it impossible to trust God unconditionally.
22 Jung's own dream in which he did not
bow fully indicates his need to keep his
autonomy, but also shows a lack of total trust
in God, as though God would take away his
freedom. Augustine and Aquinas both argued,
in contrast, that the touch of God is what frees
us. Only God can free us to open to the ultimate
good. Such faith liberates rather than enslaves.
In preventing a total trust in God, Jung's view
would block the loving integration that alone
15
can bring wholeness.
Let us concede that Jung's argument is faulty
philosophically and theologically. The fact
remains that we often do shy away from full
surrender to God. Do we not feel that God will
take away what we want to keep, will tell us to
"sell all" when we are not ready? To see God
is to die, the Old Testament said, so Moses
could only see God's backside. How can we take
Jung's observation seriously and still be true to
the Christian tradition? I believe the approach
to God by way of Jesus' death/resurrection
shows a way. The death of Jesus is not just an
unfortunate result of sin. Jesus freely gives his
life, and this self-gift unto death must reveal an
essential aspect of God if we see God in Jesus
(John 14:9). God's Spirit in us does put to death
what is partial and self-enclosed, and that
opposition to all that is limited must feel like
an enemy till we can see it as a bridge to selfgiving
love. The shadow in its deepest root need
not be seen as an unalterable evil.
Psychologically, it is an undeveloped aspect of
the individual or social personality turned sour
because it has been repressed, but it is repressed
because we do not open our weaknesses and
perverted choices to compassionate love. In
freely surrendering his life to God's love amidst
human evil and rejection, Jesus shows us how
weakness and even death are a bridge to greater
love. From a limited perspective, the shadow
opposes our autonomy and appears to be totally
evil, but transformed by the Spirit it reveals
God's ever-greater, self-giving love (Romans 7).
Death and darkness is in God, but is
transformed in God (and in us through God's
Spirit) to self-giving love.
B. Masculine and Feminine in Humans and
God. Jung introduced femininity into God to
avoid a one-sided patriarchal image that would
not lead humans to wholeness. His culminating
work Mysterium Coniunctionis (the alchemical
sacred marriage) shows the importance he gave
this union of opposites in God, and his analysis
of the anima/animus in men and women
showed how important it was for individuals to
contact the opposites in themselves. Yet even
in this area of profound interpersonal importance,
Jung's focus was on the sexual opposites
in each individual and in the single God-image. I
16
believe Jung is correct in showing that true inner
freedom in relationships presupposes coming
to clarity about the femininity in men and
the masculinity in women, but is the goal of
human development an androgynous individual?
I think not! An interpersonal view of
God, and male-female relations in God, can integrate
both male and female aspects of God in
a community of self-giving love as well as
develop the full human potential of each person.
23 Jesus' death/resurrection reveals a God
as free, covenanted, self-giving love. Full
human healing would come when each could
freely surrender her/his life for the other in a
similarly individuated way. Such a Spiritempowered
self-giving would give rise to complementarity
and creativity rather than competition
and enmity out of sexual differences. In
social structures, it would release otherempowering
community rather than
domination.
_______________________________________
For Christians, Jesus is the key
both to individuation and to the
reconciling love so needed in our
world. For Jung, the historical
Jesus soon was lost in the myth
of Christ.___________________________
C. The Ground of Ultimate Meaning.
Perhaps the central concern of Jung was to help
clients contact a ground of ultimate meaning in
their own experience, since the church seemed
to be hopelessly one-sided and most of his
clients had lost faith in its teachings. He first
sought for his own grounding myth, which was,
as Barbara Hannah expressed it, to bring nature
to consciousness and hence to be part of the
completion of Creation.24 He found the link to
this ground in myths and neglected products of
the human spirit such as alchemy. So important
did these sources become to him that Jung
reinterpreted basic Christian dogmas (such as
the Trinity, the Sacrifice of the Mass, the
Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, etc.) in light of
world mythology and spirituality to show their
grounding in common human experience and
thus make them again acceptable to people today.
He was opposed to a slavish imitation of
Jesus that alienated people from their own im-
The Journal of Christian Healing
ages and unique selves. Analysis sought to
reconnect persons with their unique senses of
meaning through dreams, projections, etc., and
so to carry out in their lives their own
uniqueness as Jesus did in his life. Jung found
that myths often revealed to people their deep
meanings that had been eclipsed by overly conscious
modem lives. When one finds a personal
"myth" (or life meaning), paradoxically one
gains the freedom to create something that has
meaning for others. Jung's discoveries were
important contributions to his time, and continue
to be in our day. In touching the wisdom
deep inside his own experience, he could lead
others to renewed life.
Yet these myths and archetypes are
themselves no more developed than the times
out of which they emerged. Christianity
completes these underlying myths (as the Old
Testament transformed sacred meals, etc., to
historical Passover meals, and these, in turn,
were given a christological meaning in the New
Testament). Through Jesus they are redirected
to interpersonal, committed love. "Yahweh, not
Baal or Astarte, becomes the source of life, and
Christians see this life in Jesus. The sacred Rock
and Foundation is Yahweh, then Christ. Each
sacred image is regrounded historically in
Yahweh in Israel and mediated through Christ
in Christianity. What Jung has done is to
retrieve neglected aspects of the background of
Israel and Christianity by providing a sympathetic
analysis of ancient pagan mythology.
But he has reinterpreted Christianity in light of
that mythology rather than reinterpreting that
basis in light of Christ. I believe we can use his
analysis of archetypes and mythology to open
our dreams and images to their broadest meanings
if we carry those meanings through to their
fulfillment in Christ. If we are consistent with
our Christian faith, the very ground of our
experience is the Resurrection-Spirit of Christ.
So we are not falsifying our dreams and images
by rooting them in Jesus; we are bringing to
completion what nature has left incomplete.
IV. Union with Jesus in the Church as
Fulfillment of Our Individuated Selves
If Jung had an inadequate ultimate grounding,
why is it that so many Christians look to him
for guidance? Can he be trusted? What is his
Vol. 12, No. 2, Summer 1990
contribution to an adequate Christian perspective?
I have studied and taught Jung and
theology for about ten years now, and I continue
to find new insights in Jung. I would explain
that through the following points:
A. Every psychology, Jung said, is a
personal confession. We see what we are ready
to see, and one who has confronted his or her
own experience more fully can point out things
to others that they would not otherwise see,
whether or not those people "believe" in the
same way as oneself.25
B. Jung's "conversion" and self-awareness
are expressed in his individuation process.
Through it he uncovered the neglected aspects
of his inner life, aspects that he saw had been
neglected by the dogmatism of the Christianity
he experienced through his father and his
clients. These neglected aspects (nature,
animality, femininity, dreams and fantasy, the
inferior side and the shadow) lay deep in the
human unconscious, and were acted out in
negative, primitive ways because they were
neglected. Every human is a product of
cumulative levels of evolution, and so whatever
is neglected remains active, though it is suppressed.
In "reworking" the Christian dogmas,
Jung retrieved these neglected aspects and so
opened us to take seriously all of Creation.
C One can be a "believing" Christian
without being aware of those neglected dimensions,
but then one's Christianity will be
distorted in many ways. Without awareness of
one's grounding in nature and animality, the
Christian will repress these aspects in him or
herself and will also dominate nature rather than
partner it. Some have justified this domination
from the Bible (Gen.-1:28, "fill the earth and
subdue it") even though the text means quite
something else.26 If one is out of touch with
one's inner femininity (or masculinity in
women), one will dominate women and treat
them as inferior and act out sexually, or attack
men as enemies,27 a clear distortion of Jesus'
practice. The recent scandals of some
televangelists provide ample evidence of this.
If one neglects the shadow or inferior side, one
will oppress the weak and create enemies outside
rather than reach out in forgiving love as
Jesus taught, as events in South Africa amply
illustrate. In other words, the Christian who
17
seeks salvation m Jesus while avoiding selfawareness
and conversion (since Jesus saves us
as sinners) will interpret Jesus in light of his
or her own distortions. Jung's focus on
individual awareness is a much-needed corrective
of that view. We will only understand Jesus
if we become like him, and we will only
become like him if we are deeply aware of our
grounding in nature, animality, etc.; for that is
how Jesus was.
D. While individuation is needed for an
integral development of Christian spirituality,
it is not enough.29 We cannot substitute relation
to Jesus for personal growth in selfawareness,
but we also cannot substitute personal
growth for relation to Jesus. Both are
needed if the Spirit unites us interpersonally
with Jesus and not just symbolically in
ourselves. Jung reinterpreted the Ignatian
Spiritual Exercises to mean total submission to
God-within of the Self.29 He rejected Ignatius'
focus on Jesus' life as norm, saying it endangered
the individual's unique way and personal
imagery. Experience teaches us that
slavish imitation of Jesus' life can very well
submerge individual differences. However, free,
mature relationships do not submerge
individuality, but actually increase it. We come
to a deeper sense of our own uniqueness through
freeing dialogue with others, and this would
certainly be the case with freeing dialogue with
Jesus. Jesus himself reveals the perfection of
individuation. He has assimilated his own
shadow through forgiveness and taught us to
"love our enemies" (Man. 5:44).30 He was open
to equalizing dialogue with women in a way
unprecedented for his day, and he found his
Father's love and direction within himself while
remaining faithful to his tradition, at great cost
of persecution from his religion and society. In
relating to him out of an individuated selfawareness,
we cannot help being challenged to
a further growth toward illumination and
wholeness.
E. Jesus calls us not just to wholeness, but
to commitment to him and his mission of
reconciliation. He calls us to intimate union
with himself and to become a community of
reconciling love in the image of the divine community
of God. Jung's insights into collective
structures can help us find the way to the goal
18
of forming individuated, creative community
more clearly and avoid the projection of evil and
dominating relationships on to others. But the
Christian's center must remain the crucified and
resurrected Christ, who integrates all things and
all persons in submission to God (Col. 1:20).
For Christians, Jesus is the key both to
individuation and to the reconciling love so
needed in our world. For Jung, the historical
Jesus soon was lost in the myth of Christ.3' Jung
saw us as called to live our lives with the same
fidelity to the God within that Jesus lived, and
said that we then would be gods in our day as
only we could be. This development is not based
in a personal relationship with Jesus but in a
relationship with the incomprehensible ground
of all being. Without denying our call to
individuation, the biblical Christ calls each
Christian to "follow him," and sends his
followers "to all nations," to baptize all into
trinitarian love and to live that love especially
for the poor. We are, yes, to befriend the poverty
within ourselves, but ultimately that we might
reach out with God's own compassion to the
poor of the world. It is through this creative selfgift
in union with Christ that ultimate healing
and wholeness comes to full expression.
Reference notes
1. See Murray Stein, Jung's Treatment of Christianity: The
Psychotherapy of a Religious Tradition (Wilmette, IL: Chiron Pubs.,
1985) and Jung 's Challenge to Contemporary Religion (Wilmette,
IL: Chiron Pubs., 1987), edited by Murray Stein and Robert L.
Moore, which come from Jung's perspective; Don S. Browning,
Religious Thought and the Modem Psychologies: A Critical
Conversation in the Theology of Culture (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1987): Wallace B. Clift, Jung and Christianity: The
Challenge of Reconciliation (N.Y.: Crossroad, 1982); Robert Doran.
"Jungian Psychology and Christian Spirituality," I, II, III, (Review
for Religious 38 [1979]: 4, 5. 6; Christopher Bryant, Jung and the
Christian Way (New York: Seabury Press, 1983), and Robert T.
Sears, "Individuation and Spiritual Growth," New Catholic World
(March/April 1984), which are open to Jung yet critical.
2. See Stein, Jung's Treatment of Christianity.
3. Sec Barbara Hannah, Jung: His Life and Work, a Biographical
Memoir (N.Y.: C. P. Putnam's Sons, 1976) pp. 149f.
4. Sec C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 52ff.
5. See Bryant, Jung and the Christian Way, pp. 6-10. Jung was
under attack also from scientists who accused him of mysticism.
He defended his empiricism and always held that faith in God's
existence was beyond the scope of science. However, he also
implied that faith was unnecessary for one who "knew" from
experience.
6. See Jung. Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 98.
7. Ibid., pp. 217-20
The Journal of Christian Healing
8. See David Hassel, Searching the Limits of Love: An Approach
to the Secular Transcendent: God (Chicago: Loyola University
Press. 1985) for an analysis of how committed relationships require
a personal "unchoscn absolute."
9. See Hannah, Jung: His Life and Work, pp. 289-90.
10. See Robert Bellah. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and
Commitment in American Life (1985) for an analysis of how pervasive
such erosion of the fabric of social commitment is.
11. Jung wrote in a 1950 letter in reference to a writer who considered
the God-image as the door through which one finds God:
"I can only concur with this view, but with the best will in the world
I cannot maintain that this is a verifiable assertion, which is what
science is about. It is a subjective assertion which has no place in
science" (quoted in Bryant, Jung and the Christian Way, p. 8). As
Bryant comments, if God exists, he is concerned not only for me
but for all, and it is not just my experience that counts, but the
possibility that God already has revealed himself through another
(as Christians hold) or in many thousand ways. Bryant puts it well:
"I believe that Jung is destined to play an important pan in the
revival of Christian faith among educated men and women of the
West, but his role will be more that of a John the Baptist who
prepared the way for the coming of Christ than that of one of
Christ's apostles" (Ibid., p. 9).
12. See Hannah, Jung: His Life and Work. pp. 156-57.
13. See C. G. Jung, A Psychological Approach to the Trinity, Collected
Works, vol. 11.
14. See Browning, Religious Thought and Modern Psychologies,
for an extensive analysis of the implied ultimate metaphors of
several
therapists, with a separate chapter devoted to Jung.
15. From Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy's view of family dynamics, it
would seem that Jung was parentified by his inability to trust his
father's religious sense (see Boszormenyi-Nagy and Geraldine M.
Spark, Invisible Loyalties [New York: Harper & Row, 1973], pp.
151-66). Jung had to father his own father (and his father's religious
tradition), and this inability to receive fathering seems to have carried
over to his relationship to God. Ultimately it was his Godexperience
that he trusted, but this left his consciousness, not a
transcendent Other's, as the focal point.
16. Hassel, Searching the Limits of Love.
17. Robert Doran makes this point in the second of his series of
articles on "Jungian Psychology and Christian Spirituality," p. 743.
In a dream, he was descending to a basement to look at images.
On the way down be met Bernard J.F. Lonergan (a well-known
theologian he was working with), who said, "I will show you some
images." He took Doran to the upper story, where they sat down
to watch images on a screen. What Doran concluded was that the
symbolic products of the unconscious do not interpret themselves,
but need to be looked at from an authentic theological framework.
As I would put it, the higher level of consciousness (God's Spirit
in us) includes the lower, but cannot be concluded to simply on
the basis of the lower. Intelligence includes sense, but animals cannot
think. So also God's Spirit in us includes human life (Jesus
became human, and in his Spirit we can be divinized), but human
experience cannot grasp the divine without revelation.
18. See Robert Sears, “Trinitarian Love as Ground of the Church"
Theological Studies 37 (1976): 652-79. More recently, see
Leonardo Boff, Trinity and Society (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books,
1988).
19. See Sears, “Trinitarian Love," pp. 652-79, and my article
"Healing and Family Spiritual/Emotional Systems," Journal of
Christian Healing 5:1 (1983): 10-23.
20. See John A. Sanford, Evil: the Shadow Side of Reality (New
York: Crossroad, 1984), p. 146
21. See Memories, Dreams, Reflections, chap. 12, sec. 3.
22. See Doran, "Jungian Psychology and Christian Spirituality,"
III, which was reprinted in the Journal of Christian Healing 4:1
(1982).
Vol. 12, No. 2, Summer 1990
23. See Leonardo Boff, Trinity and Society, where be shows
masculine and feminine aspects in each person of the Trinity (the
Father "begetting" the Son and in the Son Creation, the Son showing
feminine tenderness and care for relationships while explicitly
divinizing maleness, and the Spirit explicitly divinizing fcrnaleness
in Mary and the church while revealing implicit masculine traits).
See also his Maternal face of God (New York: Harper & Row,
1987), where he develops the feminine aspect of God more
thoroughly.
24. During his trip to Africa, Jung had a deep experience on the
Athi Plains near Nairobi. He felt in the stillness "the eternal beginning"
of "the world as it has always been." He felt then that human
consciousness was "indispensable for the completion of creation."
As the alchemists put it: "What nature leaves imperfect, the
[alchemical] art perfects" (Hannah. Jung: His Life and Work, pp.
171-72). Consciousness is to bring creation to its full maturity, much
as the Pueblo Indian helped the sun cross the sky, so doing a service
for all people (Ibid.. p. 160).
25. This focus on persona) experience and "conversion" now is
seen as central to theological method (see Bernard J.F. Lonergan,
Method in Theology [New York: Herder & Herder, 1972]). With
research changing "facts" from day to day, what remains constant
is the perspective the researcher brings to his or her work. The subject's
self-awareness (intellectual, moral, religious and psychic
(Doran's contribution] conversion) is the constant source of validity
in the evaluation of the data. Jung's view of individuation serves
a similar function in his psychology.
26. See Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, A Worldly Spirituality
(New York: Harper & Row, 1984), chap. 4, for a fine analysis of
the implications of that text for ecology. What the passage means
is to be God's caretaker for the Earth. Our own lack of love for
nature in ourselves alienates us from our roots in nature.
27. See my article "Trinitarian Love and Male-Female
Community," Journal of Christian Healing 6:1 0984): 32-39, where
I argue that equal complementarity is needed to bring out the full
image of God.
28.1 use "integral" here to imply a deepening through such stages
as purgative, illuminative, and unitive spirituality. Others might
distinguish "justification" from "integral salvation or sanctification."
There is an initial conversion to faith in Jesus, but that can
coexist with a narrow dogmatism or religious prejudices "Integral"
implies a total assimilation to Jesus' mind, heart, and will (mil union
with God), and we cannot attain that goal unless we are aware of
ourselves and have these aspects convened by Jesus' Spirit. Thus,
I understand the "illuminative" way to involve individuation.
29. See C. G. Jung, "Transformation Symbols in the Mass,"
Collected Works, no. 391. Notes on his lectures on the Spiritual
Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola are in Modem Psychology, 2d
edition (1959), vol. 4. Jung says in Lecture VIII, p. 214: "If you
translate this ("man is created to praise God") in psychological
language it means that Ignatius recommended an unconditional submission
to the unconscious mind." In Lecture IX, p. 171, Jung
criticizes Ignatius' vision of Jesus at La Storta of God, saying, "I
will be favourable to you in Rome," as "not authentic." "It is in
accordance with dogmatic expectation....He must have learned how
to project his own thoughts." On the other hand, "visions" of the
snake or luminosity are unconscious products, and authentic. Jung
uses his psychology to evaluate Ignatius' religious visions exactly
the reverse of how Ignatius would evaluate them.
30. Whether Jesus had a shadow side or only the potential for
one is open to question. He did snow the typical Jewish prejudice
against the Syro-Phoenician woman (Mark 7:24-30), but
transcended it by seeing her faith. His view of God included all,
and his human limits were quickly transformed by it.
31. See Jung, Answer to Job, sect. VII.
19
No comments:
Post a Comment