An evaluation of Jung’s critique of religion. (Masters essay. March 2021).

Introduction

Jung’s quest to understand theology, religion and religious faith, including his own faith, was a life-long concern. In a letter to Victor White, a Dominican Priest and a professor of dogmatic theology at Oxford with whom he had a long-term collaboration and friendship, Jung enquires of himself, ‘Have I faith or a faith or not? … I have always been unable to produce faith and I have tried so hard that I finally did not know any more what faith is or means … I have respect for the Christian Truth … But I can say my life-work is essentially an attempt to understand what others apparently can believe’ (Letters, Vol. I: 501-502).

Jung is known for his dedication to science, to his career as a psychiatrist and to his enduring psychological pursuit to understand the human psyche. Some, however, suggest that religion may have been the most important project of his life. James Hillman, for example, postulates that ‘we could reappraise Jung’s life-long effort to reinterpret, not so much science, philosophy, society, or even psychiatry, but theology’ (1975: 228).

Roderick Main explores this theme further suggesting that Jung, throughout his life, ‘viewed his relationship between science and religion variously in terms of conflict, independence, dialogue, and integration’ but that ‘Consistently … he seems to have been concerned that neither should eclipse the other’ (2013: 367).

Peter Homans, in a similar vein, argues that Jung’s dual commitment to both religion and science created an enduring inner tension, arguing that ‘his psychology is an attempt … to close what most people consider the unbridgeable gap between [these] two orientations to the world’ (1995: 186). He also suggests that Jung’s treatment of religion comprises ‘a double movement of reduction and retrieval of meaning’ (1995: 183), in that Jung not only applies his psychological concepts to religion, but he also uses religious ideas to inform his psychological theories.

Jung, in his own words, said that, in psychiatry, he had found a vocation where ‘the two currents of [his] interest could flow together’ (1963: 130).

Jung was born into a religious family and was raised in an environment which was steeped in theology. His father was a Protestant pastor, there were six parsons in his mother’s family and, on his father’s side, two of his uncles were also parsons.

As well as Protestantism, the religion of his upbringing, Jung also studied many other major religious traditions such as Catholicism, Judaism, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Western and Chinese alchemy, Hinduism, Islam, Taoism and Buddhism. In addition, his thoughts on more ancient traditions, such as Egyptian, Babylonian, Mithraism and Aztec as well as esoteric, indigenous traditions such as those of the Pueblo Indians and Aboriginal Australians, appeared in his writings.

Jung’s thoughts on religion evolved over his lifetime. Main (2004), for example, identifies four broad phases in Jung’s writings on religion. The first phase (1875 to 1900), during which Jung enunciates the widening relational disconnect between the modern, secular person and traditional religion, and emphasises the primacy of personal spiritual experience over religious creed. Next (1901 to 1912), saw Jung’s increasing emphasis on the positive function of religion, a view which he further developed between 1913 and 1937 establishing his concept that religion is a naturally occurring phenomenon of the human psyche. Finally, in his mature years (1938 to 1963), Jung undertook an in-depth, critical study of Christianity, in an attempt to further the discussion around the transformation of Christianity towards a system with more relevance and meaning for contemporary man and woman.

Given the vastness of Jung’s writings on religion, it is inevitably beyond the scope of this short essay to evaluate all of his work. As such, I have chosen to explore what I believe to be certain key themes in Jung’s critique of religion and have done so primarily in the context of Jung’s writings on Christianity. In so doing, I acknowledge that there are many areas which have been omitted including Jung’s writings on alchemy, the ancient Greek traditions and Eastern religions, as well as his relationships and numerous exchanges with key figures from the religious world such as Victor White, Richard Wilhelm and Martin Buber all of which were significant in Jung’s engagement with religion.

The themes I have selected for discussion are as follows.

Firstly, I introduce Jung’s psychological approach to religion. Then, I discuss the emphasis Jung placed on religious experience over faith in creed, followed by ‘the problem of good’ or, in other words, Jung’s contention that there exist excessive expectations of goodness in religion. These two themes I explore in the context of Jung’s relationship with his father.

Next, I discuss the ‘problem of evil,’ followed by, with reference to his mother, ‘the feminine,’ both of which, along with the material, Jung believed to be important but missing aspects of the Christian system.

Then, I discuss Jung’s concept of the ‘religious function’ which is his notion that humans are, by nature, religious and that alienation from religion is a problem. This is followed by a brief exploration of Jung’s thoughts on religion at the collective level.

Finally, I provide a very brief and selective critical overview.

Jung’s definition of religion

In his definition of religion, Jung is careful to differentiate between ‘religion’ and ‘creed’, saying ‘A creed gives expression to a definite collective belief, whereas the word religion expresses a subjective relationship to certain metaphysical, extramundane factors’ (CW10: 507). Elsewhere, he describes creeds as ‘codified and dogmatized forms of original religious experience’ (CW11: 10) and religion as ‘a relationship to the highest and most powerful value, be it positive or negative’ (CW11: 137). I discuss this in more depth later in my essay. However, Jung’s view that religion is a subjective experience, rather than belief in religious dogma, is important to understand from the onset.

Jung’s psychological approach to religion

Jung said ‘Psychological truth by no means excludes metaphysical truth, though psychology, as a science, has to hold aloof from all metaphysical assertions’ (CW5: 344). Throughout his writings on religion, Jung persists in his claims that his approach is both psychological and empirical. At the very beginning of his paper Psychology and Religion, Jung’s opening declaration is that ‘religion is incontestably one of the earliest and most universal expressions of the human mind’ (CW11: 1). In addition, he claims his treatment of religion to be one of pure empiricism in which he ignores ‘metaphysical or philosophical considerations’ restricting himself solely to ‘the observation of phenomena’ (CW11: 2).

Many commentators, however, point to an immediate problem in Jung’s persistent claims of empiricism claiming that the metaphysical dimensions of his psychology are self-evident in his writings on religion. Chapman, for example, argues in his book Jung’s Three Theories of Religious Experience (1988) that Jung has three distinct ways of explaining religious experience, which he refers to as Jung’s scientific‐psychological, phenomenological‐mythological and metaphysical‐theological approaches.

This synthesis of approaches is certainly conspicuous in Jung’s use of language which is often a fusion of the theological (God, Satan, divinity, soul, spirit, good, evil, sin, redemption, resurrection and so on), as well as the mythological (light, dark, skies, rivers, waters, fires, stars, heavens) with the psychological (the unconscious, archetypes, complexes, the opposites, transcendent function, integration and individuation). In Jung’s eyes, for instance, whether we say, ‘the unconscious psyche or the “grace of God” – names make no difference’ (CW11: 779).

Main, whilst also claiming that Jung’s engagement with metaphysics is implicit throughout his works, argues that this can be seen as being complementary to his empirical approach, rather than necessarily problematic, resulting in an approach with a ‘rich and distinctive double perspective’ (2013: 366).

A central theme in Jung’s critique of religion is his belief that orthodox traditions, having become stale and outdated, are no longer able to contain the natural human propensity for meaning, something which, in Jung’s words, is ‘an authentic religious function in the unconscious’ (CW11: 3). Jung believed that religious experience is ‘one of the most natural products of our mental life, as the birds sing, as the wind whistles, like the thunder of the surf’ (Letters, Vol. 2: 252-253).

Jung thought that the decline of religion presented a problem for people in modern society, with its emphasis on science and rationalism, ‘for whom’ Jung says, ‘the light has gone out, the mystery has faded, and God is dead’ going on to claim that ‘probably all that is left us today is the psychological approach’ (CW11: 148).

In The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man, Jung goes as far as to claim ‘The very fact that we have such a psychology is to me symptomatic of a profound convulsion of the collective psyche . . . A spiritual need has produced in our time the “discovery” of psychology.’ (CW10: 159). In other words, Jung believes, the God archetype of the collective psyche has arisen, in the form of psychology, in order to compensate the current inadequacies within institutionalised religion.

Unlike Christianity and the other monotheisms, Jung’s psychological approach locates the source of religious experience in the human psyche, more specifically within the inherited archetypal patterns of the collective unconscious. Here, Jung’s notion of the ‘God-image’ becomes important, positioning it ‘as the highest value and supreme dominant in the psychic hierarchy’ and as being ‘immediately related to, or identical with, the Self’ (CW 9ii: 170). In other words, the God-image is an interior psychic symbol which points to the archetype of the Self.

The Self, according to Jung, represents ‘not only the centre but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the centre of this totality, just as the ego is the centre of the conscious mind’ (CW12: 44). It is an archetypal urge to unify what Jung calls the tension of opposites within the psyche (such as good and evil, human and divine, masculine and feminine) via the transcendent function. The teleological propensity of the Self, in tandem with the Ego, guides the personality towards the potential for wholeness and meaning, a process which Jung called individuation.

Psychologically speaking, Jung says, ‘Individuation means becoming an ‘’in-dividual,’’ and, in so far as “individuality” embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one’s own self. We could therefore translate individuation as ‘’coming to selfhood’’ or ‘’self-realization’’’ (CW7: 266). In religious terms, Jung saw the culmination of individuation as being when ‘the ego-will submits to God’s will’ (Letters, Vol. 2: 265).

For Jung, dreams are the main porthole to the archetypal world of the collective unconscious. He considered dreams to be, not only an important holder of the numinosum and a ‘basic religious phenomenon’ (CW11: 63), but also an invaluable guide on the path of individuation.

He posits that the natural and spontaneous appearance of universal religious symbols in our dreams (such as the cross, the trinity, the quaternity, the hermaphrodite, the mandala, the child-hero and the squaring of the circle) represent symbols of transformation and growth. Jung says of the mandala, for example, that it symbolises ‘a union of opposites, or of mediation’ (CW11: 150) and of the quaternity symbol that it is a representation of ‘the God within’ (CW11: 101).

In his interiorisation of God, Jung is not only distancing himself from the externalism and literalism of traditional monotheistic religion, he is also placing increased emphasis on the responsibility of the individual to find his or her own path. Organised religion, Jung argues, has the effect of unconsciously manipulating and infantilising its followers, whereas individuation promises more freedom and choice. As individual consciousness develops, Jung argues, ‘the more it will emancipate itself from the collective rules, for the empirical freedom of the will grows in proportion to the extension of consciousness’ (CW8: 344). In Answer to Job, Jung develops this notion even further suggesting that that God is a dynamic process which interacts with, and is eventually surpassed by, humankind, claiming that ‘God wanted to become man and still wants to’ (CW 11: 739).

Jung believes that this opens-up the possibility of depth psychology being a useful alternative, or additional, resource for those who would prefer to exercise the freedom to pursue their own direction of individuation.

It is important to note that, for Jung, individuation is not merely individualism. As well as culminating in personal integration and wholeness, individuation also strives for human relatedness, making it a collective as well as individual process. Individualism, Jung argues, is potentially both isolating as well as pathologising and that those who achieve a degree of wholeness should make use of their insights and ‘find a modus vivendi with society’ (CW11: 452). For Jung, therefore, individuation incorporates a reconnection not only with God but also with humanity.

The primacy of experience

In Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963) Jung describes his father as a depressed man who was prone to moodiness and anger. It was also Jung’s opinion that his father’s relationship with Christianity was one of shallow intellectuality, based on adherence to dogma and doctrine, rather than one of genuinely felt connection.

Jung said of his father, ‘He had taken the Bible’s commandments as his guide; he believed in God as the Bible prescribed and his forefathers had taught him. But he did not know the immediate living God who stands, omnipotent and free, above His Bible and His church, who calls upon man to partake of His freedom, and can force him to renounce his own views and convictions in order to fulfill without reserve the command of God’ (1963: 40).

Over time, Jung came to see his father’s underlying disconnect and lack of relationality with his religion as being the cause of his unhappiness, believing that he expended so much energy in suppressing his real feelings and religious doubts that this resulted in ‘shadows … all the longer the more my father’s conscious mind resisted their power’ (1963: 73). His father’s incongruent faith in God, his inability to integrate his shadow and his alienation from the life-enhancing energies of the unconscious, Jung thought, prevented him from living a life of authenticity and wholeness, even suggesting it may have been a significant factor in his father’s early death.

Jung’s view is that, unlike his father, a person’s relationship with religion should be deeply experiential. For Jung, ‘God is an immediate experience of a very primordial nature’ (Letters, Vol. 2: 252-253) and that this must involve direct, transformative experiences of what he called the ‘numinosum’ which he describes as something that, ‘seizes and controls the human subject who is always rather its victim than its creator. The numinosum – whatever its cause may be – is an experience of the subject independent of his will … [it] is either a quality belonging to a visible object or the influence of an invisible presence that causes a peculiar alteration of consciousness’ (CW11: 6). As I will discuss later, Jung believed that religious experience manifests in many ways, both positively and negatively as well as individually and collectively.

In his later life, Jung said of his own experience of religion ‘I don’t believe but I do know of a power of a very personal nature and an irresistible influence. I call it ‘’God’’’ (Letters, Vol 2: 274).

The problem of good

Jung thought that another issue for his father was that he suffered from the unrealistic expectations of goodness which Jung believed to be endemic within Christianity. Furthermore, in his father’s case, Jung believed his burden was made all the heavier because of the perfectionism projected on to him, as a pastor, by his congregation. Jung said of his father, ‘He did a great deal of good – far too much – and as a result was usually irritable’ (1963: 91).

The inherent one-sidedness of the Christian approach, for Jung, inevitably results in unconscious repression and symptoms of pathology. ‘The tremendous compulsion towards goodness and the immense moral force of Christianity’ according to Jung ‘are not merely an argument in the latter’s favour, they are also a proof of the strength of its suppressed and repressed counterpart – the antichristian, barbarian element’ (CW10: 20).

For Jung, individuation seeks wholeness, but religion continues to demand perfection. Individuation requires open acknowledgement and acceptance of the negative aspects of oneself (the shadow), as well as the positive. More pithily, Jung says, ‘It is much better to know that one is not perfect, then one feels much better’ (CW18: 209).

The problem of evil

The problem of evil, in relation to good, and the absence of evil within Christian doctrine was to become a consistent theme throughout Jung’s critique of religion.

Jung argued that good and evil are experienced as opposites, evil being a powerful, unpleasant and sometimes malevolent counterpart to good, saying ‘How can one speak of “good” at all if there is no “evil”? Or of “light” if there is no “darkness,” or of “above” if there is no “below”?’ (CW11: 247).

Jung says of God, ‘He is kind and terrible – both at once’ but that ‘People cling one-sidedly to His love and goodness, for fear they will fall victim to the tempter and destroyer’ (1963: 73-74). In Christianity, Jung claims, good and evil are mistakenly split-off and projected on to religious symbols, such as God and the devil. In Aion he says, ‘the Christ-symbol lacks wholeness in the modern psychological sense, since it does not include the dark side of things but specifically excludes it in the form of a Luciferian opponent’ (CW9ii: 74). Furthermore, Jung argues that the Christian dogma of ‘Privatio Boni,’ which explains evil as a deprivation of good, is merely a theological device which acts to deny the wholeness of psyche and the true reality of nature.

This naturally occurring, shadow aspect of psyche, Jung argued, must not be ignored or concealed with inflated goodness. ‘Good does not become better by being exaggerated,’ Jung says, ‘but worse, and a small evil becomes a big one through being disregarded and repressed’ (CW11: 286). Instead, Jung argues, the experiential presence of evil, alongside good, must be acknowledged, accepted and integrated into one’s overall personality, believing this to be important at the individual and societal level.

Jung also posited that, dependent on the extent to which one is individuated, so-called evil has the potential to be experienced as a source of good. ‘Good and evil’ according to Jung ‘are principles of our ethical judgement but, reduced to their ontological roots, they are ‘’beginnings’’, aspects of God’ (CW10: 846).

The feminine

In addition to the separation of evil from good, another crucial issue for Jung was his belief that Christianity was also missing the important feminine aspect.

In Memories, Dreams, Reflections Jung describes his experience of his mother, unlike his father, as having provided him with glimpses of what he was later to call the collective unconscious. He described her as possessing a deeply connected, natural mind which was as ‘ruthless as truth and nature’ (1963: 50) and being more ‘Pagan’ in character than Christian (1963: 90). Her instinctual connectedness with both her inner and outer worlds, which was completely alien to his father, convinced Jung that the essence of religious connection is feminine in nature. The collective Christian problem, he came to believe, lies in its patriarchal, male dominated psychology, alienated from its feminine qualities and, as a consequence, unable to establish an authentic connection with both the inner world of the unconscious and the outer, material world of nature.

Framed in symbolic terms, the Christian trinity according to Jung ‘is a dogmatic image based on an archetype of an exclusively masculine nature’ (CW18: 221) arguing that the feminine and the material, along with the demonic, are essential but missing aspects of Christianity.

As already discussed, Jung refers to the Self as a symbol of wholeness, rather than perfection, believing wholeness to be ‘the feminine ideal’ (CW11: 627) and perfection ‘a masculine desideratum’ (CW11: 620). For Jung, this meant the incorporation of the feminine into the God image was a vital task for Christianity and Jung, especially in Answer to Job, argued for the feminine in terms of Sophia as well as the figures of Eve and the Virgin Mary.

A landmark moment in Jung’s relationship with Christianity came in the early 1950’s with the Catholic Church’s declaration of the assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven. This recognition that ‘the feminine, like the masculine, demands an equally personal representation’ (CW11: 620) was viewed by Jung as a positive indication that Christianity was evolving.

The religious function

As already mentioned, Jung’s psychological approach to religion posits that beneath the conscious mind of all humans, there is a deeper unconscious which, by nature, possesses an instinct for religious experience every bit as powerful as any other innate human instinct. According to Jung, ‘’’divinity’’ … is a force as real as hunger and the fear of death’ (CW7: 403).

This natural, religion creating proclivity of the unconscious means that religious experience is constellated, whether we like it or not and, furthermore, it can be both positive and negative with the potential, according to Jung, to be ‘healing or destructive, but never indifferent’ (CW8: 405).

In those individuals for whom a meaningful spiritual practice or religious container is absent, this may mean that religion manifests as pathology or existential unease. In Psychotherapists or the Clergy, Jung commented ‘It seems to me that, side by side with the decline of religious life, the neuroses grow noticeably more frequent … We are living undeniably in a period of the greatest restlessness, nervous tension, confusion, and disorientation of outlook’ (CW11: 514).

Elsewhere, Jung claims that physical illness, as well as psychological, can also be symptomatic of the absence of religion, telling us ‘The gods have become diseases; Zeus no longer rules Olympus but rather the solar plexus and produces curious specimens for the doctor’s consulting room’ (CW13: 54).

Jung’s therapeutic orientation, therefore, was directed towards the numinous as well as the neurosis, claiming ‘the fact is that the approach to the numinous is the real therapy and inasmuch as you attain to the numinous experiences you are released from the curse of pathology. Even the very disease’ Jung claims ‘takes on a numinous character’ (Letters, Vol 1: 377).

The collective problem

For Jung, the absence of religion is not solely an issue for the individual, but it is also a problem at the collective level of society where, Jung argues, the archetypal powers of the God image are more likely to manifest in alternative forms of mass mentality. ‘Anyone who has lost the historical symbols and cannot be satisfied with substitutes’ Jung claims ‘is certainly in a very difficult position today: before him there yawns the void … the vacuum gets filled with absurd political and social ideas’ (CW9i: 28).

At the political level Jung cites ‘the “isms” so fanatically believed in by modern man’ (CW8: 366) as forms of mass mentality. Political ideologies such as Nazism, communism and fascism or ‘The dark gods of the state’ as Jung calls them are, ‘in other words, the dark gods of the Collective Unconscious’ (1988: 1517).

Jung believed that this form of collective, mob mentality represents enormous danger for society, arguing that powerful mass forces released the ‘beasts or demons that lie dormant in every person’ (CW11: 23) such that ‘A gentle and reasonable being can be transformed into a maniac or a savage beast’ (CW11: 25). Mass-mindedness, a form of scapegoat pathology whereby collective shadows, in the guise of ‘isms’, are projected from one group on to another, according to Jung, is the root cause of global conflict.

For Jung, this makes individuation all the more important as ‘Resistance to the organized mass’ he believes ‘can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself’ (CW8: 540).

A brief critical appraisal

Jung’s vast writings on religion attract equal measures of criticism (see Palmer, 1997: 166-96). More than anything, he is criticised for reducing religion to psychology, that some of his theoretical concepts, such as the collective unconscious and archetypes, are implausible and that, in his insistence on God as an internal image, he has replaced God as an objective external reality.

In his psychological approach, Jung is accused of a tendency to reduce religious themes as mere representations of his psychological concepts. Paul Bishop, for instance, somewhat mischievously argues that Answer to Job could be quite readily re-titled as ‘God: A Psycho-Biography’ (2014: 81) claiming the text to be not only a representation of Jung’s psychological concepts, particularly that of individuation, but also as an analytic case study of God.

Murray Stein develops this line of thought further, suggesting that Jung’s psychological treatment of religion is additionally clouded by both his relationship with his father and with Sigmund Freud and, as such, that Jung’s treatment of Christianity is nothing less than an interpretation of it through the countertransference of these two significant male figures. For instance, ‘In Answer to Job’ Stein says, ‘Jung works through his own conflicts, and as Christianity’s therapist he offers it healing for its parallel conflicts’ (1985: 170).

As for Jung’s efforts to add a fourth aspect to the Trinity in Answer to Job, whether that be evil (Satan or Lucifer) or the feminine (Mary, Sophia or Eve), Tacey argues that these are confusing and that, in the end, Jung ‘cannot squeeze evil and the feminine into the same category, or turn the Trinity into a neat, post-Christian quaternity’ (2013: 145-146).

In the final analysis, Jung still wished to leave the door open for the Christian myth and believed it to be vital for the future religious and spiritual wellbeing of Western man and woman. In Memories, Dreams, Reflections Jung said of Christianity that it ‘has neglected to develop its myth further’ and that ‘the fault lies solely in us, who have not developed it further’ (1963: 331-332). Stein, claims that Jung’s attempt to develop the Christian myth, whilst bold and creative, was ultimately unsuccessful. Jung’s ‘psychotherapeutic treatment of Christianity’ failed, according to Stein, because ‘the patient was not interested in pursuing wholeness’ (2014: 6).

Conclusion

In this essay, I have attempted to evaluate Jung’s critique of religion. As Jung’s writing on religion are deep and wide ranging, I have attempted to do so by selecting and focusing on some of his key themes and by restricting my discussion solely to Christianity.

 

References:

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Chapman, J. H. (1988). Jung’s three theories of religious experience. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press.

Hillman, J. (1975). Re-visioning psychology. New York: Harper & Row.

Homans, P. (1995) Jung in context: Modernity and the making of a psychology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Jung, C. G. (1953-83). The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, 20 vols. Sir Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, Gerhard Adler (Eds). William McGuire (Executive Ed). R. F. C. Hull (Trans). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul; Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Jung, C.G. (1963/1989). Memories, dreams, reflections. Recorded and Edited by Aniela Jaffé, Richard and Clara Winston (Trans). New York: Vintage Books.

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Stein, M. (2014). Minding the self: Jungian meditations on contemporary spirituality. London and New York: Routledge.

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