Uniquity

Just finished Jung's "Psychology and Religion".

On the whole, it was an enjoyable book to read. I believe that it was based on lectures...yup, just looked inside the cover, it was based on the "Terry Lectures" given at Yale in 1937. This gives the book a nice conversational feel, even when Jung lapses into obscure vocabulary. The lectures are delivered in three sections, "The Autonomy of the Unconscious Mind", "Dogma and Natural Symbols" and "The History and Psychology of a Natural Symbol"

I can definitely see the usefulness of a book club or some sort of corporate reading when it comes to books with substance, because it's easy to zip through them without getting the framework down of what the author's saying, and just coming away with a feeling or impression from the book. My first impressions without going back through it were that he had some insightful things to say about religion in general, that he's a mystic philosopher at heart (he reads like a Tozer without Christ), and that even though his scope and view is much broader and far-reaching than the materialist psychologists of today, he still seems very much in love with his method, to the point of "leading the witness" in the last section, (which I'll try to explain when I get to it), and he's very good at adapting his language to whatever point of view he's discussing to the point of sounding like an insider, even if he doesn't ultimately accept that point of view.

Having gone back over the book, and looked at my margin notes, I'll cover each section.

...
"Autonomy of the Unconscious Mind"

He opens by maintaining that he's not a philosopher but rather an empiricist, concerned with observable phenomena, in this case, psychological events. As an example, he gives the virgin birth and says

"...psychology is only concerned with the fact that there is such an
idea, but it is not concerned with the question whether such an idea is true or
false in any other sense. It is psychologically true in as much as it exists.
Psychological experience is subjective in so far as an idea occurs in obnly one
individual. But it is objective in so far as it is established by a society - by
a consensus gentium."

(that's Latin for "Agreement of the peoples", I had to look that one up.)

"Psychology deals with ideas and other mental contents as Zoology deals with
animals"

So we know where he's coming from.

He explains what he means by religion next, with a quote from another German guy named Rudolph Otto (who I think C.S. Lewis also references).

"religion is the careful and scrupulous observation of...the 'numinosum' that is, a dynamic existence or effect , not caused by an
arbitrary act or will."

- this, Jung says, is caused by either the influence of an invisible presence (say, Job 4:15), or a quality in something that is seen (say, seeing someone walk on water or raise the dead with a word); either of which changes your consciousness. (examples provided by me, not Jung)

In short, religion is the careful consideration of that thing that gives you the willies independent of your will. He actually refines and redefines his definition, ending up calling religion the attitude of someone who's had his consciousness changes by said willies. (he actually uses the term "numinous" again, which I recall C.S. Lewis as describing as the kind of fear/feeling one would get from being told there was a ghost in the next room, as opposed to the kind of feeling/fear of being told there's a tiger in the next room, so I don't think my use of "willies" is too far off).

Jung does give the benefit of the doubt to the religious, and seems with his definitions to agree that religion isn't just something people make up, it's based on something outside of us that works on us.

He then distinguishes religion from "creeds", Creeds being

"...codified and dogmatized forms of original religious experience"

Again, fair enough. I haven't seen Jesus raise the dead in person, or rise from the dead, yet having heard, I believe. Yet I would say that a "creed" should point you towards your own experience of the "numinosum" by directing you to seek out God in a specific way ("And Peter said to them, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.")

Interestingly enough, Jung says

"...even Protestantism is bound at least to be Christian and to express itself within the frame of the conviction that God has revealed himself in Christ, who suffered for mankind. This is a definite frame, with definite contents, that cannot be coupled with or amplified by Buddhistic or Islamic ideas and emotions."

Someone should tell that to Brian McLaren.

He then goes on to talk about Psychology's concern with religious ideas, especially when it comes to "neuroses". He makes a really insighful and telling comment in this section criticizing the mindset that has become the medication culture of psychiatry today:

"Our usual materialistic conception of the psyche is, I am afraid, not
particularly helpful in neurotic cases...medicine therefore feels a strong
dislike toward anything of a psychical nature-either the body is ill or there is
nothing the matter. And if you cannot prove that the body is really diseased,
that is because our present means do not enable the physician to find the true
nature of the undoubtably organic trouble"

OK. If I listed all the great quotes in the first section, this blog would quickly become a book in its own right, so I'll refrain. Except for these two:

(regarding the mindset that would tell a patient that he/she is the origin of their own neurosis)

"Such a suggestion would instantly paralyze his fighting spirit, and he would
get demoralized. It is much better if he understands that his complex is an
autonomous power directed against his conscious personality."

(He basically describes most complexes as if they're possession)

Regarding the brain/mind/soul question:

"But what is the psyche after all? A materialistic prejudice explains it as a
merely epiphenomenal by-product of organic processes in the brain...The
undeniable connection between psyche and brain gives this point of view a
certain strength, but not enough to make it an unshakeable truth...if there are
disorders of an endocrine nature it is impossible to say whether they are not
effects rather than causes."

To which I say "Amen!"

Okay, from there he goes on to say that dreams are the sort of shore of the unconscious, where the numinous and unconscious whatever-it-is can talk to us.

...

"Dogma and Natural Symbols"

In this section he starts giving examples from one case of his, which becomes increasingly suspect (to me) as he goes on into the next section. He talks a lot about different symbols in dreams, especially the significance of the number 4, and the square and circle and reveals his own "religious" sentiments through a few telling statements.

"What one could almost call a systematic blindness is simply the effect of the
prejudice that the deity is outside man. Although this prejudice is not solely
Christian, there are certain religions which do not share it at all. On the
contrary they insist, as do certain Christian mystics, upon the essential
identity of God and man, either in the form of an a priori identity, or of a
goal to be attained by certain practices or initiations..."

(in which he mentions yoga as one). So basically, Jung's running up the gnostic flag.

Amidst his loooong chatter linking all sorts of obscure references to a myriad of alchemical/pythagorean symbologies & symbols (so you know what I'm talking about, I'll give you a sample:

"... This image of the Deity, dormant and concealed in matter, was what the alchemists called the original chaos, or the earth of paradise, or the round fish in the sea, or merely the rotundum or the eggt. That round thing was in possession of the key which unlocked the closed doors of matter."

- at this point, I tend to think Jung's listened to one too many dreams) as I was saying, amidst all that, he makes a really interesting observation of a symbol very pertinent for anyone who likes the movie "The Fifth Element":

"As it is said in Timaeus, only the demiurge, the perfect being, was capable of
dissolving the tetraktys, the embrace of the four elements, that is, the four
constituents of the round world."

From which he goes on about squaring the circle and such like. Okay, I'll move on to the 3rd section in brief.

...

The History and Psychology of a Natural Symbol

In which he continues with more of the same observations about series of four, the colors blue and brown, the use of mary as the fourth psychological person of the trinity, etc, etc... All this stems from a his case-in-point, where he says he had an well-educated relapsed catholic man 'o the world write down -get this- a series of over four hundred dreams! This, he says, was done to get the context of the guy's subconscious, and the dreams he details are full of blue floating clocks withing clocks that have divisions divisible by four, and series of four pyramids of candles and much, much more. Not to say that it couldn't happen, but it seems that this guy's dreams were remarkably fecund with the sort of symbolic whatnot that Jung was looking for.

He finishes with the observation that though the religious experience along the line of "I know Jesus lives, because he lives in my heart" is very valuable in that it gives you faith and peace,

"Is there, as a matter of fact, any better truth about ultimate things than the
one that helps you to live?"

He then says that such reasons are not very convincing for the critical mind of modern people, and only work for the person with the experience, which is why he catalogs symbols produced by the unconscious mind, to document their "simply overwhelming"-ness in order to convince the critical mind of its (the thing that causes religious experiences') existence, for the practical purpose that "The thing that cures a neurosis must be as convincing as the neurosis". He ends on a feel-good note, which would be ultimately unsatisfactory, except that he warned me from the get-go that he's not interested in whether any statements of faith are true in any sense but psychologically.