Jung on Christianity


Book Description

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.




Jung's Treatment of Christianity


Book Description

An insightful and convincing interpretation of Jung's encounter with Christianity. In the last 20 years of his life, Jung wrote extensively on the Trinity, the Mass, alchemy and the Bible, in what Stein understands as his effort to help Christianity evolve into its next stage of development. Here, Stein provides a comprehensive analysis of Jung's writings on Christianity in relation to his personal life, psychological thought and efforts to transform Western religion. Murray Stein is a Jungian analyst who until recently had a private practice in Wilmette, Illinois, but who now lives in Switzerland. He is the author and editor of numerous books, including Jung's Treatment of Christianity, In Midlife and Jungian Analysis. He is the co-editor of The Chiron Clinical Series and presents in many live webinars with the Asheville Jung Center.




Jung's Treatment of Christianity


Book Description

An insightful and convincing interpretation of Jung's encounter with Christianity. In the last 20 years of his life, Jung wrote extensively on the Trinity, the Mass, alchemy and the Bible, in what Stein understands as his effort to help Christianity evolve into its next stage of development. Here, Stein provides a comprehensive analysis of Jung's writings on Christianity in relation to his personal life, psychological thought, and efforts to transform Western religion.




The Unfolding God of Jung and Milton


Book Description

In this first extensive Jungian treatment of Milton's major poems, James P. Driscoll uses archetypal psychology to explore Milton's great themes of God, man, woman, and evil and offers readers deepened understanding of Jung's profound thoughts on Godhead. The Father, the Son, Satan, Messiah, Samson, Adam, and Eve gain new dimensions of meaning as their stories become epiphanies of the archetypes of Godhead. God and Satan of Paradise Lost are seen as the ego and the shadow of a single unfolding personality whose anima is the Holy Spirit and Milton's muse. Samson carries the Yahweh archetype examined by Jung in Answer to Job, and Messiah and Satan in Paradise Regained embody the hostile brothers archetype. Anima, animus and the individuation drive underlie the psychodynamics of Adam and Eve's fall. Driscoll draws on his critical acumen and scholarly knowledge of Renaissance literature to shed new light on Jung's psychology of religion. The Unfolding God of Jung and Milton illumines Jung's heterodox notion of Godhead as a quarternity rather than a trinity, his revolutionary concept of a divine individuation process, his radical solution to the problem of evil, and his wrestling with the feminine in Godhead. The book's glossary of Jungian terms, written for literary critics and theologians rather than clinicians, is exceptionally detailed and insightful. Beyond enriching our understanding of Jung and Milton, Driscoll's discussion contributes to theodicy, to process theology, and to the study of myths and archetypes in literature.




Jung's Map of the Soul


Book Description

More than a mere overview, the book offers readers a strong grounding in the basic principles of Jung's analytical psychology in addition to illuminating insights.




God, Science, Sex, Gender


Book Description

God, Sex, Science, Gender: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Christian Ethics is a timely, wide-ranging attempt to rescue dialogues on human sexuality, sexual diversity, and gender from insular exchanges based primarily on biblical scholarship and denominational ideology. Too often, dialogues on sexuality and gender devolve into the repetition of party lines and defensive postures, without considering the interdisciplinary body of scholarly research on this complex subject. This volume expands beyond the usual parameters, opening the discussion to scholars in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences to foster the development of Christian sexual ethics for contemporary times. Essays by prominent and emerging scholars in the fields of anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, literary studies, theology, and ethics reveal how faith and reason can illuminate our understanding of human sexual and gender diversity. Focusing on the intersection of theology and science and incorporating feminist theory, God, Science, Sex, Gender is a much-needed call for Christian ethicists to map the origins and full range of human sexual experience and gender identity. Essays delve into why human sexuality and gender can be so controversial in Christian contexts, investigate the complexity of sexuality in humans and other species, and reveal the implications of diversity for Christian moral theology. Contributors are Joel Brown, James Calcagno, Francis J. Catania, Pamela L. Caughie, Robin Colburn, Robert Di Vito, Terry Grande, Frank Fennell, Anne E. Figert, Patricia Beattie Jung, Fred Kniss, John McCarthy, Jon Nilson, Stephen J. Pope, Susan A. Ross, Joan Roughgarden, and Aana Marie Vigen.




Why Christianity Must Change or Die


Book Description

An important and respected voice for liberal American Christianity for the past twenty years, Bishop John Shelby Spong integrates his often controversial stands on the Bible, Jesus, theism, and morality into an intelligible creed that speaks to today's thinking Christian. In this compelling and heartfelt book, he sounds a rousing call for a Christianity based on critical thought rather than blind faith, on love rather than judgment, and that focuses on life more than religion.




Paul Tillich, Carl Jung and the Recovery of Religion


Book Description

Is religion a positive reality in your life? If not, have you lost anything by forfeiting this dimension of your humanity? This book compares the theology of Tillich with the psychology of Jung, arguing that they were both concerned with the recovery of a valid religious sense for contemporary culture. Paul Tillich, Carl Jung and the Recovery of Religion explores in detail the diminution of the human spirit through the loss of its contact with its native religious depths, a problem on which both spent much of their working lives and energies. Both Tillich and Jung work with a naturalism that grounds all religion on processes native to the human being. Tillich does this in his efforts to recover that point at which divinity and humanity coincide and from which they differentiate. Jung does this by identifying the archetypal unconscious as the source of all religions now working toward a religious sentiment of more universal sympathy. This book identifies the dependence of both on German mysticism as a common ancestry and concludes with a reflection on how their joint perspective might affect religious education and the relation of religion to science and technology. Throughout the book, John Dourley looks back to the roots of both men's ideas about mediaeval theology and Christian mysticism making it ideal reading for analysts and academics in the fields of Jungian and religious studies.




Carl Jung and Alcoholics Anonymous


Book Description

The author visited the archives of the headquarters of A.A. in New York, and discovered new communications between Carl Jung and Bill Wilson. For the first time this correspondence shows Jung's respect for A.A. and in turn, its influence on him. In particular, this research shows how Bill Wilson was encouraged by Jung's writings to promote the spiritual aspect of recovery as opposed to the conventional medical model which has failed so abysmally. The book overturns the long-held belief that Jung distrusted groups. Indeed, influenced by A.A.'s success, Jung gave "complete and detailed instructions" on how the A.A. group format could be developed further and used by "general neurotics".Wilson was an advocate of treating some alcoholics with LSD in order to deflate the ego and induce a spiritual experience. The author explains how alcoholism can be diagnosed and understood by professionals and the lay person; by examining the detailed case histories of Jung, the author gives graphic examples of its psychological and behavioural manifestations.




Jung's Answer to Job


Book Description

Greeted with controversy on its publication, Answer to Job has long been neglected by many serious commentators on Jung. This book offers an intellectual and cultural context for C.G.Jung's 1952 publication. In Jung's Answer to Job: A Commentary, the author argues that such neglect is due to a failure to understand Jung's objectives in this text and offers a new way of reading the work. The book places Answer to Job in the context of biblical commentary, and then examines the circumstances surrounding its compositions and immediate reception. A detailed commentary on the work discusses the major methodological presuppositions informing it and explains how key Jungian concepts operate in the text. Jung's Answer to Job: A Commentary unravels Jung's narrative by reading it in the chronological order of the biblical events it analyses and the book to which it refers, offering a comprehensive re-reading of Jung's text. An original argument put across in a scholarly and accessible style provides an essential framework for understanding the work. Whilst taking account of the tenets of analytical psychology, this commentary underlines Answer to Job's more general significance in terms of cultural history. It will be invaluable to students and scholars of analytical psychology, the history of ideas, intercultural studies, comparative literature, religion and religious studies.