Jung on Christianity (Selections) - Softcover

Jung, C. G.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691006970 ISBN 13: 9780691006970

Verlag: Princeton University Press, 1999

Inhaltsangabe

C. G. Jung, son of a Swiss Reformed pastor, used his Christian background throughout his career to illuminate the psychological roots of all religions. Jung believed religion was a profound, psychological response to the unknown--both the inner self and the outer worlds--and he understood Christianity to be a profound meditation on the meaning of the life of Jesus of Nazareth within the context of Hebrew spirituality and the Biblical worldview.


Murray Stein's introduction relates Jung's personal relationship with Christianity to his psychological views on religion in general, his hermeneutic of religious thought, and his therapeutic attitude toward Christianity. This volume includes extensive selections from Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity," "Christ as a Symbol of the Self," from Aion, "Answer to Job," letters to Father Vincent White from Letters, and many more.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Murray Stein, Ph.D., is the author of Jung's Treatment of Christianity, Practicing Wholeness, Transformation--Emergence of the Self, and Jung's Map of the Soul. He is an international lecturer and teacher, and currently vice president of the International Association for Analytical Psychology. He is also a training analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago.

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"One thing above all should be stressed: Jung's ideas [about religion] are not the result of mere theory or of historical research--they have been wrested from the hard facts of his psychotherapeutic practice.... Jung is, by profession, a medical pastor of souls.... Thus, he not only possesses a very deep insight into the spiritual life of modern man; he also has to look round for what can help these sufferers."--Hans Schaer, Religion and the Cure of Souls in Jung's Psychology

"Stein provides a good selection of Jung's texts with a clear introduction to his Christian background and theory of Christianity."--Diane Jonte-Pace

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ENCOUNTERING JUNG ON CHRISTIANITY

By Murray Stein

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1999 Princeton University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-00697-0

Contents

Introduction.........................................................................................3Part I. Jung's Relationship to Christianity..........................................................251. A Father's Unfinished Work........................................................................272. "Thoughts on the Interpretation of Christianity"..................................................433. The Experience of "Religious Realities"...........................................................614. "Why I am not a Catholic".........................................................................69Part II. Jung's Psychological Approach to Christian Doctrine, Ritual, and Symbol.....................731. "Christ, A Symbol of the Self"....................................................................752. "Christ as Archetype".............................................................................1073. "Father, Son, and Spirit".........................................................................1194. The Holy Ghost....................................................................................1275. "The Mass and the Individuation Process"..........................................................1336. "Symbolism of the Cross"..........................................................................1557. Mythic Features in Christian Doctrine.............................................................161Part III. Jung's Interpretation of Christian History and Its Future..................................1791. From "Introduction to the Religious and Psychological Problems of Alchemy"........................1812. "The Sign of the Fishes"..........................................................................2133. From "Answer to Job"..............................................................................2354. The Missing Element in Christian Doctrine.........................................................273Index................................................................................................277

Chapter One

A FATHER'S UNFINISHED WORK From Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 52–63

With my father it was quite different. I would have liked to lay my religious difficulties before him and ask him for advice, but I did not do so because it seemed to me that I knew in advance what he would be obliged to reply out of respect for his office. How right I was in this assumption was demonstrated to me soon afterward. My father personally gave me my instruction for confirmation. It bored me to death. One day I was leafing through the catechism, hoping to find something besides the sentimental-sounding and usually incomprehensible as well as uninteresting expatiations on Lord Jesus. I came across the paragraph on the Trinity. Here was something that challenged my interest: a oneness which was simultaneously a threeness. This was a problem that fascinated me because of its inner contradiction. I waited longingly for the moment when we would reach this question. But when we got that far, my father said, "We now come to the Trinity, but we'll skip that, for I really understand nothing of it myself." I admired my father's honesty, but on the other hand I was profoundly disappointed and said to myself, "There we have it; they know nothing about it and don't give it a thought. Then how can I talk about my secret?"

I made vain, tentative attempts with certain of my schoolfellows who struck me as reflective. I awakened no response, but, on the contrary, a stupefaction that warned me off.

In spite of the boredom, I made every effort to believe without understanding—an attitude which seemed to correspond with my father's —and prepared myself for Communion, on which I had set my last hopes. This was, I thought, merely a memorial meal, a kind of anniversary celebration for Lord Jesus who had died 1890—30 = 1860 years ago. But still, he had let fall certain hints such as, "Take, eat, this is my body," meaning that we should eat the Communion bread as if it were his body, which after all had originally been flesh. Likewise we were to drink the wine which had originally been blood. It was clear to me that in this fashion we were to incorporate him into ourselves. This seemed to me so preposterous an impossibility that I was sure some great mystery must lie behind it, and that I would participate in this mystery in the course of Communion, on which my father seemed to place so high a value.

As was customary, a member of the church committee stood godfather to me. He was a nice, taciturn old man, a wheelwright in whose workshop I had often stood, watching his skill with lathe and adze. Now he came, solemnly transformed by frock coat and top hat, and took me to church, where my father in his familiar robes stood behind the altar and read prayers from the liturgy. On the white cloth covering the altar lay large trays filled with small pieces of bread. I could see that the bread came from our baker, whose baked goods were generally poor and flat in taste. From a pewter jug, wine was poured into a pewter cup. My father ate a piece of the bread, took a swallow of the wine—I knew the tavern from which it had come—and passed the cup to one of the old men. All were stiff, solemn, and, it seemed to me, uninterested. I looked on in suspense, but could not see or guess whether anything unusual was going on inside the old men. The atmosphere was the same as that of all other performances in church—baptisms, funerals, and so on. I had the impression that something was being performed here in the traditionally correct manner. My father, too, seemed to be chiefly concerned with going through it all according to rule, and it was part of this rule that the appropriate words were read or spoken with emphasis. There was no mention of the fact that it was now 1860 years since Jesus had died, whereas in all other memorial services the date was stressed. I saw no sadness and no joy, and felt that the feast was meager in every respect, considering the extraordinary importance of the person whose memory was being celebrated. It did not compare at all with secular festivals.

Suddenly my turn came. I ate the bread; it tasted flat, as I had expected. The wine, of which I took only the smallest sip, was thin and rather sour, plainly not of the best. Then came the final prayer, and the people went out, neither depressed nor illumined with joy, but with faces that said, "So that's that."

I walked home with my father, intensely conscious that I was wearing a new black felt hat and a new black suit which was already beginning to turn into a frock coat. It was a kind of lengthened jacket that spread out into two little wings over the seat, and between these was a slit with a pocket into which I could tuck a handkerchief—which seemed to me a grown-up, manly gesture. I felt socially elevated and by implication accepted into the society of men. That day, too, Sunday dinner was an unusually good one. I would be able to stroll about in my new suit all day. But otherwise I was empty and did not know what I was feeling.

Only gradually, in the course of the following days, did it dawn on me that nothing had happened. I had reached the pinnacle of religious initiation, had expected something—I knew not what—to happen, and nothing at all had happened. I knew that God...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Princeton University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1999
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0691006970
• ISBN 13: 9780691006970
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 292
• Herausgeber: Stein Murray
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar