Description
The fundamental importance of Christianity for Jung is well documented in his writings and letters. For the whole of his long career the great psychologist had wrestled with what he called “…the great snake of the centuries, the burden of the human mind, the problem of Christianity.” By comparison, his statements about Hegel are quite scarce. Both topics, nevertheless, have in common that they elicited from Jung radical accusations, accusations not presented in the calm tone of a psychological scholar, but fired by a deep-seated personal affect that propelled Jung to wish “to dream the myth onwards,” that is, to move to a new, his own improved and corrected version of Christianity. Rather than merely portraying and elucidating Jung’s views, this volume critically examines his theses and arguments by means of a series of close readings and by confronting his claims with the texts on which his interpretations are based. The guiding principle, in the spirit of which the author’s investigation is conducted, is the question of the needs of the soul and the standards of true psychology. While constantly bearing these needs and standards in mind, diverse topics are discussed in depth: Jung’s interpretation of a dream he had had about being unable to completely bow down before “the highest presence,” his thesis concerning the patriarchal neglect of the feminine principle, his views about the alleged one-sidedness of Christianity, the “recalcitrant Fourth,” and the “reality of Evil,” his understanding of the Trinity and the spirit, his rejection of Hegel and of speculative thought, and his reaction to the modern “doubt that has killed” religious faith. A companion to the preceding volume, The Flight into the Unconscious, the essays collected here continue its radical critique of Jung’s psychology project, yielding not only deep insights into Jung’s personal religiosity and into what ultimately drove his psychology project as a whole, but granting as well a more sophisticated understanding of the psychological potential and telos of the Christian idea.
