Jung, C. G. - Psychology and Western Religion (Routledge, 1988)

Jung’s principal interest was in the psychology of Western man and

so in his religious life and development. Religion, Jung stated, is

“a careful and scrupulous observation of what Rudolf Otto aptly

termed the numinosum, that is, a dynamic agency or effect not caused

by an arbitrary act of will.” He was struck by the contrasting methods

of observation employed in the religions of the East and in

those of the predominantly Christian West. In his view, the two

are radically different. An entire volume of the Collected Works,

some 600 pages, is devoted to “Psychology and Religion: West and

East,” but for a full understanding of Jung’s thesis on religion a

thorough grasp of his theory of the archetypes is essential, as well

as a knowledge of several other of the volumes, of which Aion and

Psychology and Alchemy may be singled out.

The present selection opens with two of Jung’s weightier essays

on Christian religion, devoted respectively to the Dogma of the

Trinity and Transformation Symbolism in the Mass. Both originated

as lectures at the Eranos Conference in Ascona, Switzerland,

during the dark early years of World War II, when the country

was isolated and the future doubtful. Jung subsequently expanded

both essays into the versions here published.1

Several shorter works, both earlier and later, are grouped in the

third section: a study of the Swiss patron saint, Brother Klaus; two

essays on the relation between psychotherapy and religious healing;

the two documents that originated as Communications— to a French

priest, on the subject of the Holy Spirit, and to a group of American

women, on Resurrection.