D11

XI. PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION

By Stephen Palmquist (stevepq@hkbu.edu.hk)

31. Freud on Psycho-Historical Origins

This is a course on religion, psychology and personal growth, yet we have given very little explicit attention to religion up to now. By the end of this week I hope you'll recognize that much of the course has been implicitly religious. As you may recall, I mentioned at the end of Lecture 4 that one of my chief goals is to present a view of psychology that is compatible with and conducive to a religious way of life. Now that we are approaching the heart of Stage Four, the butterfly itself, the time has therefore come to examine religion in a more direct and sustained way. This week we'll focus particularly on how Freud and Jung viewed religion in general and Christianity in particular. (For a brief summary of their differences, see the last three rows of the table in Figure VI.3.)

Jung and Freud are the Plato and Aristotle of the unconscious-except perhaps that the former pair appeared in reverse order, with the realist preceding the idealist and regarding himself (however wrongly) as the latter's teacher (cf. Lecture 4). Freud's mechanistic, deterministic view of science made him highly skeptical of all religious truth-claims, whereas Jung's more idealistic approach fit more naturally with a religious outlook. We shall examine their psychologies of religion independently in this and the following lecture. Lecture 33 will then consist mainly of some critical reflections on the implications of their views for anyone who wishes to maintain a Christian outlook.

Freud treats religion as a product of "civilization" (or "culture"). As he explains in his book, Civilization and Its Discontents (e.g., CID 69), civilization arises out of the struggle between the two basic instinctual drives in the human psyche: sex (from the id) and aggression (from the superego). The former includes all expressions of the libido, but especially "Eros" (love as the energy of life). The latter expresses itself first externally, as an assault against outer objects, such as one's parents, then internally, as the death wish (aggression toward oneself, producing the superego's sense of guilt [70f]). The struggle between these two conflicting drives ("Eros and Death") produces ambivalence-i.e., the experience of holding two contrary emotions at the same time, such as love and hate, or happiness and sadness. The ego's job, as you may recall from Lecture 8, is to maximize pleasure by striking a balance between the two opposing drives that produce ambivalence. The superego prevents us from simply acting out our unfulfilled wishes (such as those we find reflected in our dreams): for most people this would produce far too much guilt to tolerate. Those who attempt such a one-sided resolution of the problem of ambivalence often end up engaging in highly self-destructive behavior. Instead, we must find ways of channeling our sexual energy (or libido) into culturally appropriate forms.

"Civilization" is the term Freud uses for culturally-approved ways of resolving the tension or "combat" between the id and the superego. Because it encourages the superego to maintain its control over the id, in effect keeping the ego enslaved to our unconscious guilt and suppressed sexual desires, civilization produces unhappiness (CID 81). We create civilization "to protect ourselves" from the suffering produced by nature; yet ironically, "our civilization is largely responsible for our misery" (33). This is because happiness arises only when a person satisfies a sexual or aggressive drive; but civilization's task is to limit the expression of individual instinct (44). This pessimistic view of civilized life results largely from Freud's own bias toward the id. Remember that his form of therapy attempts to put the patient back in touch with the id, empowering the ego to allow a maximum experience of pleasure with a minimum of guilt. Religion, like art, philosophy, and any other product of human culture, develops as an essentially futile attempt to solve the problem of civilized discontentment; yet as we shall see, Freud has nothing better to offer us, for he doubts the very possibility of any genuine solution to human unhappiness.

The key word here is "genuine": religion often does make people happier, but only at the expense of a realistic view of human life. In his book, The Future of an Illusion, Freud argues that religion is actually a psychological trick based on an infantile desire to have parents who will fulfill one's every wish. Religious ideas originate "from the necessity of defending oneself against the crushingly superior force of nature" (FI 30). In most civilized forms of religion, God is viewed as a great father-figure who personifies both the positive and negative aspects of nature's superior force. When examined with the clear eye of reason, Freud claims, "the fairy tales of religion" (45) can all be seen for what they are: mere illusions (18). "An illusion is not the same thing as an error; ... illusions ... are derived from human wishes" (48). Freud admits that an illusion might very rarely turn out to be true, citing as an example "the illusion of the alchemists that all metals can be turned into gold" (49). He insists, though, that unless science provides empirical confirmation of such beliefs, they remain both unprovable and irrefutable (50). Thus he hastens to reject as "a lame excuse" the claim that scientific ignorance of God gives us a right to hold religious beliefs (51), for such beliefs boil down to nothing but mere wishes (52-53).

Freud's conviction is that civilization would be better off if people just gave up their religious wishes and channeled their energy into more realistic (scientific) cultural pursuits. Having "ruled human society for many thousands of years", religion has had ample time to show how little it can achieve (FI 60). As knowledge increases, dependence on the wishes of religious illusion decreases. To guard against the danger that morality may crumble when religion disappears, we must therefore find non-religious ways of justifying civilized morality, and educate the masses accordingly (61-68). Religious symbols merely disguise the truth in a way no different from telling children a new baby is brought by a stork (73); they ought therefore to be replaced by a totally nonreligious approach to education, an "education to reality" (81). Freud admits that he too could be "chasing an illusion" (79). But he claims his "illusions are not, like religious ones, incapable of correction" (86). With "Logos" (Reason) as God, education can have the same goal as religion, "namely the love of man and the decrease of suffering" (88).

One of the (few) benefits of religion, according to Freud, is that its "psychical infantilism" draws believers "into a mass-delusion" that safeguards them "against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one" (FI 72; CID 32). Of course, Freud believes an even better protection would be provided by depending instead on "the rational operation of the intellect", as in psychoanalysis. The two have in common the recognition that guilt is the primary problem humanity must overcome in order to be happy; the difference is that religion (or at least, Christianity) "claim[s] to redeem mankind from this sense of guilt, which they call sin" (83), whereas psychoanalysis merely teaches us to live with the unhappiness civilization creates. The tendency of religious people to picture God as "an enormously exalted father" is in Freud's opinion (21) "so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life."

How then did religion arise? In Totem and Taboo, Freud develops a theory based on the assumption that the history of human civilization mirrors the history of individual human beings (see e.g., TT x). Once this is recognized, he later explains, religion can be understood as "the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity" that "arose out of the Oedipus complex" (FI 71). The neurosis Freud has in mind is "man's sense of guilt" (CID 78,86), which he believes humanity first acquired in prehistoric times as a result of "the killing of the father by the brothers banded together." Freud goes to great length to defend this claim in Totem and Taboo (see e.g., TT 143). His basic idea is that in primitive cultures people lived in clans, each headed by one powerful man (the father-figure), who controlled all the women. Eventually, out of their frustration at not having access to the women, the "brothers" (i.e., the younger men in the clan) banded together and killed the father. This enabled them to take possession of the women, who were in a sense all (at least potentially) their "mothers".

This primitive enactment of the Oedipus Complex is, according to Freud, what first gave rise to religion. For after killing their father, the brothers realized they actually had a deep affection for him; their action therefore filled them with a strong sense of guilt (CID 79): "This remorse was the result of the primordial ambivalence of feeling towards the father. His sons hated him, but they loved him, too." In order to forget (i.e., repress) their guilt, the clan developed "taboos" (i.e., strict moral prohibitions) against the very acts they had committed: incest (i.e., sexual relations with blood relatives) and murder. Freud claims that these taboos, corresponding directly to the two instinctual drives repressed in each individual's unconscious (i.e., sex and aggression), are the only two crimes in a primitive society (TT 143). To compensate for their forgotten memory of these primal acts, the people established "totems", usually particular types of animals that would be regarded as holy and closely identified with the entire clan. As a symbol of the dead father, this type of animal was not allowed to be killed. The only exception was during periodic (e.g., yearly) festivals, when the murder taboo would be relaxed, so the primal father-murder could be reenacted: the people would hunt and kill the totem animal and eat it as a ritual expression of their identity with it. Freud believes all the basic myths and rituals of primitive religions can be traced back to this original expression of the early distinction between id (totem) and superego (taboo).

In his late work, Moses and Monotheism, Freud applies this theory to more developed religions as well. Just as polytheism corresponds to the stage of childhood development leading up to the emergence of the superego )the stage when the id is gradually being repressed), monotheism corresponds to the stage of human life when the superego exerts the primary control. As a result, monotheistic religions, such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all emphasize morality far more than primitive religions. Nevertheless, Freud shows that even developed religions contain traces of the primal father-murder. He argues, for example, that Moses himself was actually killed by the people of Israel in a revolt before they entered the Promised Land (MM 113-114). A less controversial example is the Christian ritual of the Holy Supper, where Jesus' "body" and "blood" are symbolically consumed by his followers. Freud regards Jesus' sacrificial death as a slight improvement over Judaism: whereas Judaism's rigid ethical standards stem from an intense unconscious guilt, Christianity's belief that in Jesus God's son died reveals some level of awareness of the guilt incurred from having killed the father (109-113). Like recalling forgotten memories in psychoanalysis, repeating this ritual at the Holy Supper can have a healing effect.

Although monotheism is in some respects an improvement on polytheism, Freud is no more satisfied with it than he is with allowing the superego to maintain its control over the id. Just as the ideal goal of psychoanalysis is to put the ego in control of the psyche, so also Freud believes the best response to religion is to transcend it through a purely scientific (and therefore atheistic) view of the world. Figure XI.1 summarizes the three stages of religion that can be inferred from Freud's reflections:

Figure XI.1: Freud's Three Stages of Religion

Atheism requires us to recognize that religion has no "material truth", but it does not require us to deny its "historical truth" (MM 166). That is, having no scientific confirmation, religious beliefs must be regarded as illusory wishes; yet the deep roots they have in the human psyche indicate that these wishes stem directly from real historical events that once happened to our pre-historic ancestors.

Does this mean Freud believed the primal father-murder really happened? He normally writes as if he believes it did happen, probably many times over, despite his rather meager evidence. But occasionally he reveals that the historical truth of his claims is not essential to the validity of his argument. For instance, in CID 79, he says:

Whether one has killed the father or has abstained from doing so is not really the decisive thing. One is bound to feel guilty in either case, for the sense of guilt is an expression of the conflict due to ambivalence, of the eternal struggle between Eros and the instinct of destruction or death.

This insight about guilt is indeed far more significant than any debate about whether or not Freud's historical speculations have any degree of accuracy. Guilt is the primary factor that gives rise to all civilization. An individual's superego can become harsh by having parents who are either too strict (so that the child responds by becoming overly strict with himself or herself) or too loving (so the child has no outlet for aggressiveness and therefore internalizes it) (77n). Culture gives us devices that enable us to hide our guilt from ourselves. But in the end these are all futile attempts to avoid the basic human condition: unhappiness.

Freud's view of the human situation in general and of religion in particular makes the "butterfly" of the human Self look more like a dull gray moth! In MDR 174, Jung makes some discerning observations about the psychological reasons for Freud's pessimism:

I had observed in Freud the eruption of unconscious religious factors.... Sexuality ... was something to be religiously observed...

... Freud, who had always made so much of his irreligiosity, had now constructed a dogma; or rather, in the place of a jealous God whom he had lost, he had substituted another compelling image, that of sexuality.... The name alone had changed, and with it ... the point of view: the lost god had now to be sought below [in the sexual instinct], not above.

That Freud was "a tragic figure" (176) can be evidenced in many ways. In Moses and Monotheism, for instance, he comes very close to recognizing the profound fact that Jesus' death is fundamentally different from the primal father-murder. (As shown in Figure XI.2 [adapted from CTP 84], Jesus, by willingly giving up his own life, provided a perfectly complementary solution to the problem of the Oedipus Complex.) Yet Freud shies away from facing up to its symbolic depth.

Lecture 33 will examine in more detail some of the shortcomings of Freud's reduction of religion to psychological illusions. For now, I'll conclude by pointing out what I believe is his major error: his monoperspectival approach to truth. One of the main points made in The Tree is that truth is always based on a specific perspective, and that perspectives are always defined by boundaries that function as "myths" (i.e., basic

Figure XI.2: Oedipus vs. Jesus-12 Differences

metaphysical presuppositions, not unlike Freud's use of the term "illusions"). Yet Freud condones scientism-i.e., the (mythical!) belief that myths are always false because science is the only legitimate road to truth. Thus, he concludes The Future of Illusion by taking back his former confession that his faith in scientific education could be just as illusory (i.e., wish-based) as is religion (92): "No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere." Clearly, Freud is blind to the fact that this conviction, that nonscientific truth-claim cannot exist, is itself a nonscientific truth that serves as a myth defining the boundary of his own standpoint.

32. Jung's Religious Reformation

The only son of a Lutheran minister, Carl Jung was brought up as a Christian. In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, he describes his growing dissatisfaction with his parents' unreflective faith. The problem, as he saw it, was not that they held implausible beliefs, but that they practiced religious traditions without experiencing God. Among his own early experiences, one of the most profound was a shocking vision he saw one day after school, as he walked through the cathedral square (MDR 56):

I saw before me the cathedral, the blue sky. God sits on His golden throne, high above the world-and from under the throne an enormous turd falls upon the sparkling new roof, shatters it, and breaks the walls of the cathedral asunder.

After faithfully attending church throughout his childhood, Jung went to confirmation classes, taught by his father. Having always been interested in exploring mysteries, he eagerly anticipated the lesson on the Trinity (70). When the appointed day arrived, however, his father announced they would skip that section of the confirmation book, "for I really understand nothing of it myself." Young Carl went through his first communion service, but felt nothing special (72): "I knew that God could do stupendous things to me, things of fire and unearthly light; but this ceremony contained no trace of God-not for me, at any rate."

The "absence of God" in Jung's experience of church life (73) was offset by a profound awareness of God in nature. In place of the church, Jung began to think of nature as "God's world" (85), and to marvel at God's closeness (80): "God was, for me at least, one of the most certain and immediate of experiences." And as his vision had illustrated, God ultimately encompassed everything humans experience, including both good and evil (74): "God alone was real-annihilating fire and an indescribable grace." The problem with his father's religion was that he did not know the God of Abraham (56-57):

he had failed to experience the will of God, had opposed it for the best reasons and out of deepest faith.... 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 fulfil without reserve the command of God.

As Jung himself had experienced (e.g., in his cathedral vision), God's command can be dark and irrational, as well as light and merciful. The important thing is to be obedient to it, to be "utterly abandoned to God", so that "nothing matters but fulfilling His will" (57).

Jung's decision to study psychology was a direct response to the calling he felt to explore and understand "God's world"; natural science, he explains, "missed the factor of meaning", while religion tended to neglect "empiricism" (91). We should not be surprised, therefore, to find that Jung's psychological theory has striking parallels with certain key Christian concepts. I warned you in Lecture 4 that I would be introducing you to a psychological theory that is highly religious in its orientation, and (I believe) compatible with Christianity. Now let me show you to what extent this is the case. Figure XI.3 tabulates 12 key parallels relating to some of the Jungian themes we examined in Stages Two and Three of this course. A comparison of the second and third columns of this table reveals numerous interesting correlations between these two ways of explaining the human situation. The question is: Can both of these explanations be true, or must we choose between one or the other? For the rest of this week I shall argue that the two views can be regarded as complementing each other. Each challenges the other in ways that keep it from degenerating into an unhealthy worldview.

Figure XI.3: Jung and Christianity-12 Parallels

Before looking at how Jung's psychology challenges Christianity, let's briefly examine his view of religion in general. Jung believed religions that function properly serve as "great psychic healing systems" (CW 13.478). This is because a healthy religion (i.e., one that fulfills its true purpose) will provide a way of uniting opposites in human nature and in the experiences of individual members. Religious concepts are naturally divided into opposites, such as heaven and hell, body and spirit, sin and salvation, etc. Depending on how such oppositions are interpreted, the people belonging to a particular religious group will experience either personal growth or personal stagnation. Stressing one side of the opposition to the exclusion of the other tends to disintegrate the personality, whereas an emphasis on overcoming the opposition pushes a person toward wholeness. Jesus' teaching repeatedly exemplifies the latter. One of many good examples is his command that we must love our enemies (Matt. 5:44). The natural human tendency is to polarize the opposition between "friend" and "enemy", loving the former and hating the latter. By insisting that the unlovable (-A) be regarded as lovable (A), Jesus is utilizing synthetic logic (see TP, Ch.10) in just the way Jung suggests all healthy religion must.

Religious principles such as "love your enemy" are not mere abstractions; they can do their unifying work only when they become real to us in and through our life-experiences. Every human being, according to Jung, has experiences that are essentially religious whenever we face oppositions and respond to them. For religion is essentially our response to life. Life's key question is: What do I live for? To this there are only two basic answers: myself or others. As we have seen in the previous two weeks, to live only for oneself is to choose the path of evil, leading to disintegration, whereas to live for others is to choose the path of love, leading to wholeness. The "decisive question" in choosing our path, Jung tells us, is whether or not we are "related to something infinite" (MDR 325). Most religious people call this "God"; many psychologists call it "Self"; some poets may prefer to call it "Love". In any case, the path of uniting opposites (the authentic religious path) requires us to follow this infinite nature within ourselves, rather than to follow the "safer" option of grasping only one side of the opposition.

The problem, of course, is that religious people down through the ages have often been more guilty than anyone else of failing to unify the opposites of life. Thus Jung's comments on traditional religion, especially the Christianity of his youth, sometimes appear to be negative. Yet as we examine some of these views, we must always remember that his aim is to reform Christianity, not to destroy it altogether. The latter would be totally inconsistent with his conviction that problems must be worked through, not simply eradicated. With this in mind, let us now discuss four specific challenges Jung's psychology presents to any Christian taking this course (cf. JC 81-157): (1) learn to understand how God's guidance works; (2) take advantage of your tradition's rich symbolism; (3) live like Christ; and (4) take seriously the reality of evil. In the remainder of this lecture we shall examine the first three of these challenges, leaving a brief review of the fourth for Lecture 33.

The most basic type of religious experience in any living religion is the experience of God's guidance, sometimes also referred to as a calling. Jung's psychology teaches us that this experience can happen only if the ego is submitted to the Self. In other words, we can hear God's guidance only if we are willing to listen; and listening to God requires us to be humble enough to admit that our ego does not have all the answers. (This need for an initial recognition of ignorance when approaching God is much like that needed in philosophy when approaching metaphysical questions [see Part One of TP].) Religious people should be the most adept at hearing God's guidance-and many are. Unfortunately, there are tendencies in every organized religion that can discourage people from hearing God's voice. Let's look at two examples from the Christian tradition, one Catholic and one Protestant.

The final spiritual authority in the Catholic Church rests on the Pope, and through him, church tradition. All Catholics must (in theory) agree with and obey whatever the Pope says in his official capacity. Since the Pope is believed to be God's infallible representative on earth, subsequent Popes must respect the decisions of all past Popes. A holy tradition thus develops. This arrangement is meant to assist all ordinary Catholics in knowing what God wants them to do and believe. Unfortunately, Jung observes, this assumption is based on a complete misunderstanding of how God's guidance actually works. It does not come primarily through social structures, but through God's presence in each individual's unconscious. By trying to save people the trouble of thinking for themselves, the Church inadvertently blocks them from receiving God's guidance.

Because their tradition is far more diverse, Protestant churches normally do not suffer from the Catholic tendency to deify the human organization; instead, they replace the authority of the Pope with that of the Bible. Martin Luther's original reformation was intended to restore in each individual Christian the power and authority to hear God's guidance without needing to go through church leaders. In practice, however, he ended up replacing the Pope with a new source of external authority. For Luther would not allow believers to be completely free before God; they could only be guided in ways that were consistent with the Bible. Protestants tend to put the Bible on a pedestal, viewing it as the only source for knowing God's will; thus, they refer to the Bible as "God's Word", even though the Bible itself uses this phrase to refer to Jesus, not to a book! The result is that Protestants tend to be blocked from hearing the most authentic source of God's guidance, originating in their own unconscious-unless it happens to be expressed in Scriptural terms.

In both cases the failure of religion to assist its members in hearing God's voice is due to a false desire to know ahead of time what God wants us to do or believe. As a result, church leaders tend to use dogma and/or appeal to theologians to back up their favorite theories, presenting them as "God's Truth" without ever stopping to ask whether God might have something new to say in the present situation. Most good theologies and good dogmas originated out of a genuine attempt to listen to God's guidance for a specific situation. What Christians fail to appreciate is that God may have something fresh to say for each situation. Viewing the Pope or the Bible as the ultimate authority, rather than as a means of encouraging people to experience the ultimate authority (God) for themselves, tends to destroy the true purpose of religion. If left to its own devices, Jung claims, God's loving will (like the psyche itself) would exercise a self-regulating influence over people. But when filtered through the interpretive biases of self-serving human institutions, the tendency of God's Word to unify opposites is often perverted into a way of supporting one side against the other. (For more details on this, see my discussion of "theocracy" in TP, Ch.21; see also BT.)

Jung's principle of synchronicity (see Lecture 12) is closely related to the theme of God's guidance. As a form of "irrational regularity" (as first introduced in DA 44), synchronicity tends to be more obvious and more meaningful, the closer we come to the Self. The more we learn to unite opposites, and to hold them in tension before their genuine unity reveals itself to us, the more we shall recognize that the apparent irrationality of the soul is but a higher form of rationality-what religious people usually call the mystery of "Providence". So if you have had experiences of opposite being unified, you should keep in mind the possibility that they may have some religious significance for you. And if they occur in connection with any of your dreams, then of course you should include them in your dream diary.

As a form of symbolic interpretation of everyday events, synchronicity leads us to Jung's second challenge to Christianity: to learn to appreciate the religious significance of symbolism. Despite the fact that symbols, as suggested in Lecture 11 (see also TP, Ch.23), are a human being's primary means of communication with the transcendent (i.e., with God or the unconscious), many Christians shy away from them, as if they somehow falsify a genuine religious faith. Perhaps the worst offenders were the early Protestant reformers who, in their zeal to guard against idolatry, disallowed any physical representations of religious truths (e.g., statues of Jesus, altars, candles and many supposedly inappropriate forms of music). Some even went around smashing the "idols" in the churches. The tragedy of such movements is that, while some people may well have been mistreating the images in their churches by viewing them too literally (as themselves identical with God's presence, instead of as pointing beyond themselves to a higher realm), many others were not making this mistake. In their effort to destroy dead idols, the reformers therefore destroyed many living symbols as well.

The communion service, or "Holy Supper", can serve as a good illustration of the two ways Christians tend to misunderstand the difference between symbolism and idolatry. The official Catholic interpretation of the bread and wine (called "transubstantiation") is that when the priest prays for the elements, their substance actually changes into the body and blood of Jesus. More scientifically-minded Protestants, reacting against the magical connotations of this view, have interpreted the ritual in a more mundane way, as little more than a chance to remember the death and saving work of Jesus (and perhaps also to feel remorse for one's sins). Yet both these interpretations tend to transform the symbol into an idol by interpreting it too literally: the Catholic view sees only the transcendent aspect of the symbol (i.e., that the bread and wine actually put us into contact with the real body and blood of Jesus), while the Protestant view sees only its empirical aspect (i.e., the bare historical fact that before Jesus died he requested that his followers perform this ritual). The former on its own would be like a meal consisting only of sweet desserts; the latter would be like eating nothing but vitamins. Both amount to a spiritual starvation diet.

The Jungian alternative to the two overly literal approaches, both of which tend to cause religious believers to treat the bread and wine as if they were mere signs, would be to emphasize the uniquely symbolic character of this ritual. The opposition between the two alternative interpretations can be unified by viewing the bread and wine as ordinary material objects (as in the Protestant view), but as mysteriously pointing beyond themselves to Jesus' body and blood, in such a way that eating them enables us to "assimilate, to integrate them" (DA 12) into our own psyche (as in the Catholic view). Viewed in this way, the point of the ritual is not to effect some magical change nor to jog the memory, but to stimulate the imagination so that we participate in the suffering and death of Jesus as we eat the bread and drink the wine.

This second challenge, then, requires us to learn the skill of "living in a myth" (i.e., being religious, like the Catholics) while still recognizing that it is a myth (i.e., being scientific, like the Protestants). This in turn can help guard against the over-literal way of interpreting the Bible that tends to block Christians from hearing God's guidance. Instead of throwing away all the great truths of the Bible in an attempt to "demythologize" them, we can learn to appreciate their genuine, symbolic value, thus making even old dogmas come alive again, yet without treating them idolatrously, as if they represent absolute Truth.

"Live like Christ!" At first this third Jungian challenge might seem redundant, since Christians should already be well aware of their need to be like Christ. But for Jung, living like Christ means much more than just obeying his teachings and receiving his gift of salvation. Jesus listened to God's guidance so intently that he regarded himself as one with God (see John 10:30); as a result, he discovered his true calling and lived his life as an authentic expression of the Self that was higher than his ego. Jung challenges each individual Christian to live his or her own life story as authentically as Christ lived his life story. Too often Christians treat Jesus as an idol, forgetting that his status as God's "Son" does not put him in a totally different category from the rest of humanity, but gives all human beings the status of sonship: Jesus is "the firstborn among many brothers" (Rom. 8:29). To "live like Christ" therefore means a radical shift of consciousness, from mere reliance on one's religious tradition to a deep conviction that individual guidance is a necessary and sufficient basis for living out one's life story.

Jung looked forward to what he called the "Christification of many" as the only lasting means of healing the problems of contemporary society (see JC 151). This will require an increasing conviction that God's ultimate salvation of humanity does not require an external uniformity of tradition or belief. Religious leaders may find this difficult to accept, because it takes the power completely out of their hands. A world full of Christs-remember that "Christian" means "little Christ"-would leave little room for self-serving religious leaders. It would be a world of perfect unity in diversity, because each person would realize that their own individual revelation of God's will (like the ego) must be submitted to a higher reality (like the Self) and therefore cannot be imposed tyrannically onto other people, as if it were God's Word to everyone. (Once again, this vision is basically the same as what I called "theocracy" in TP, Ch.21, as fully elaborated in BT.)

The contrast between Freud and Jung could not be more stark than it is here. Freud openly advises us to adopt his "technique guided by science" as a way of promoting "the attack against nature and subjecting her to the human will" (CID 24). Ironically, this view is very similar to one frequently associated with the "old" Christian stance Jung is challenging. For Jung argues that the best way to overcome the problem of life's meaning is to cooperate with nature, not to stand over against it, as Freud suggests. The extent of Jung's faith in the wisdom of cooperation is never more evident than in his fourth challenge, that we take seriously the evil we find in the world. We examined this topic quite thoroughly in Lecture 26; but I'll say a bit more about it in the next lecture.

33. Quaternity and Christian Critique

In the previous lecture we saw that many of Jung's key concepts have direct correlations with traditional Christian concepts. Other examples than those cited in Figure XI.3 could also be given. For instance, Jung points out that psychotherapy normally requires patients to give a "confession" that is much like the "older confession of the Church" (MHS 53-54). We also saw how Jung's psychology challenges traditional religious organizations to be more effective in stimulating spiritual growth. Again noting the "analogous" relation of analysis to confession, Jung explains with a touch of irony (DA 22) how he has had to do the job religious leaders should be doing: "I have often taught Catholic patients how to confess." Likewise, if we had more time we could explore many of the interesting applications Jungian psychology has to the interpretation of Scripture. Anyone interested in this may wish to read the work already done by Rollins (JB) and McGann (CJCS).

Last time we discussed only three of Jung's four main challenges to the Christian Church: understanding how God's guidance works, taking advantage of traditional symbolism, and living like Christ. The topic of the fourth challenge, taking seriously the reality of evil, was already thoroughly discussed in Lecture 26. Today I'll briefly summarize that topic, then mention a few additional points. The rest of the lecture will offer suggestions as to how Christians might respond to Jung's challenges with a critique of psychology's own dangers. Assuming you've now been recording dreams in your dream diary for about ten weeks, I hope you can just relax and enjoy the last few lectures in this course.

In Week IX we saw how seriously Jung himself treated evil, especially the personal evil that prevents us from growing as long as we pretend it doesn't exist, but paradoxically provides the stimulus for growth once we take up the challenge to call it by name. Facing up to the evil within us can transform the very thing that would destroy our soul into the source of our greatest strength. In Lecture 26 I explained Jung's theory of the "dark side" of God-i.e., his view that, insofar as God relates to human beings, God can also be regarded as having a shadow that needs to be integrated before wholeness can be realized. This view is actually part of Jung's larger theory of the "quaternity" (see Lecture 21). On one level a quaternity is any fourfold pattern (e.g., any "mandala") that represents wholeness. Through his detailed study of religious and mythical symbolism, Jung concluded that every division or set of three will contain a hidden fourth. Every trinity is a quaternity in disguise.

Jung also applied the term "Quaternity" more specifically to his revision of the traditional Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Like Jung's father, most Christians believe (often without giving it much thought) that God is one being who exists in the form of three "persons": the Father (called "Yahweh" in the Old Testament), the Son (called "Christ" in the New Testament), and the Holy Spirit (called "the Paraclete", or "Comforter", by the early Christians). In order to take evil as seriously in doctrine as they do (or should do) in practice, Christians need to incorporate God's shadow (called "Satan" throughout Scripture) into the very nature of the Godhead, as shown in Figure XI.4.

Figure XI.4: Jung's Divine Quaternity

Here Satan is pictured as inaccessible to human beings (like God the Father), as the contradictory opposite of Christ (+- versus -+, using the symbolism introduced in The Tree, Ch.11), and as the polar opposite of the Holy Spirit (in line with the contrast between "devils" and "angels").

Jung wholeheartedly agrees with the Christian principle that love conquers evil. The question is: how does it work? The doctrine of the Trinity seems to imply that love simply destroys evil outright. But two thousand years of putting this view into practice has shown that it tends to reduce religion to an "opium of the people", as Marx claimed. That is, by teaching people that evil does not "really" exist, and that even God, in the end, does not need to treat it seriously (aside from simply getting rid of it), Christian doctrine has contributed to an unhealthy form of religion that replaces the genuine need for personal growth (love in action) with a false hope for "pie in the sky when you die". Jung's Quaternity doctrine is the highest expression of his claim that evil must be integrated with good before its negative influence can be discharged. He believes this is just what Jesus did on the cross: by refusing to run away from Satan's temptations, by facing evil even to the point of death, God (in the form of the man, Jesus) "withdrew the projection".

If we interpret God's individuation according to the developmental diagram used to depict love in The Tree (see Figure 25.1), then we can see clearly why the Holy Spirit (the manifestation of divine wholeness on earth) could appear only after Jesus faced Satan on the cross (John 16:7):

Figure XI.5: God's Individuation

An important point to recognize here is that Jung is not saying God is evil. Rather, he is proposing a new, radically psychological explanation for both the genesis and the exodus of evil in and from the world. His position can be regarded as an effective response to Freud's claim (CID 67) that "one can hold God responsible for the existence of the Devil just as well as for the existence of the wickedness which the Devil embodies." God appears in four persons not metaphysically, but only psychologically -i.e., only in relation to humanity. Evil has the power to dis-integrate the world only as long as Christ and Satan are estranged; once the opposites come together on the cross, a re-integration of all opposites in divine love becomes possible. In other words, evil exists only as long as Satan is not reintegrated into God's nature.

How then should a Christian respond to psychology in general and to Jung's challenges in particular? Although this obviously depends to a large extent on what kind of Christian one is, I'd like to offer some guidelines for making a healthy response. As a Christian, I believe Jung's challenges can be welcomed with open arms, provided we view them as reforms, intended to complement a genuine religious faith, rather than to contradict or negate it. Just as Christians can benefit from dialogue with the unconscious as long as we view it as a way of enriching our sense of communion with God, rather than as something that competes with our prayer life (see Lecture 24), so also we can grow into better Christians by treating Jung's challenges seriously without giving up our fundamental convictions. Let's look briefly at how this approach would affect our response to each challenge in turn.

We can respond positively to Jung's first challenge, learning to appreciate the constant presence of God as a guiding force in our unconscious and yet at the same time put our full trust in the Church and/or the Bible (depending on our tradition). We need not throw away these tools, nor the dogmas that stem from them, as long as we are always aware of the danger they hold for our souls, the minute we reverse the proper order of priority between individual guidance and the social norms that ought to remain subordinate. Likewise, the second challenge does not imply that we must see everything as symbolic instead of "really believing" in (for example) the presence of Christ in the Holy Supper. Rather, it simply gives us a new way of understanding what it means to hold the traditional beliefs. And the third challenge mustn't be taken to imply that we can simply ignore the teachings, example, and saving work of Jesus, as we seek to live as truly to our Self as Jesus lived to his Self. Instead we can see these as necessarily complementary: following Jesus' teachings must promotes an authentic lifestyle. Jung's challenge can effectively help us guard against the complacency that comes from interpreting the doctrine of salvation as an excuse to stop growing spiritually.

Finally, even Jung's highly unorthodox interpretation of God's relation to Satan need not be rejected by Christians simply because it is different. For, as I suggested in Lecture 26, Jung's interpretation does not force us to reject the idea that Jesus' death and resurrection saves humanity from the curse of sin. Rather, we can accept both as genuine reflections of limited aspects of the situation. To use Jung's own terminology, we could even suggest that the two ways of interpreting evil compensate for each other. The idea that we must face evil and even incorporate aspects of it into ourselves (as Jesus did on the cross [see e.g., 2 Cor. 4:21]) must not be interpreted to mean that we can "go along" with evil or cooperate with its harmful tendencies. An appropriate humility, recognizing that we cannot actually see things from God's point of view, should help us appreciate Jung's position as potentially a very powerful solution to the problem of evil-a solution that could be used effectively to bring certain types of people closer to a living faith.

On the other hand, as a Christian I would offer a set of counter-challenges, pointing out how easy it is to regard Jung's position as more radical than it needs to be, as reducing religion to nothing but a psychological phenomenon. The overly-radical interpreter of Jung should consider the following sets of questions, in order of the four challenges. First, what purely psychological tool can successfully guard against a totally fraudulent appeal to "God's guidance" as an excuse to enact all sorts of excessive behavior? Granted that God speaks first and foremost to the individual. But is there any human tradition that can provide a better set of "checks and balances" for our own assessment of such claims than that provided by the Bible and by church tradition? Surely membership in a living community of faith is needed, not only to protect us from illegitimate claims, but also to encourage us to keep listening for God's voice.

Second, can psychology alone tell us when to employ religious symbols and when to set them aside? Surely there are some occasions when even a well-intentioned use of symbols might not promote spiritual growth as well as a willingness to do without the symbol. On this point, Merton acknowledges that the function of images and symbols in worship "is to open up the inner self ... in the totality of the self-orientation to God"; but he also warns that a religious person who has "reached the limit of symbol and idea" must go "on to a further stage in which he does without them" (CP 85). Their use can be "very dangerous in a climate of egocentricity and false mysticism" (87). A purely psychological use of symbolism can easily degenerate into either of these.

Third, would psychology have been able to teach someone to "live like Christ" without the story of Jesus' own life, death and resurrection showing the way? And is there anything about the way Jesus lived that was unique, or could we substitute the name of any person who achieves psychological wholeness? Could we, for instance, challenge Christians to "live like Jung"? If not, then surely the challenge that we be true to our "own story" (though legitimate) must be balanced by a clear recognition of what it is about the unique person, Jesus Christ, that makes his life worth emulating. Once again, we need the Christian community to help us here in making accurate judgments about how successful we are being in living up to Jung's laudable challenge.

Finally, can psychology prevent people from interpreting the call to "integrate your shadow" as an excuse to commit blatantly evil acts in the name of "personal growth"? Would not a community of friends-i.e., a "church", in the best sense of the term-be much more effective than the best-trained psychotherapist in helping people learn how to deal in appropriate ways with their shadows? And how can psychology alone prevent the new doctrine of the Quaternity from degenerating into the most outrageous form of Satan-worship? Without in any way denying that Jung has made a profound contribution to Christian self-understanding, this (as all of the above) question(s) can be answered far better from within a religious community, than from the supposedly objective position of psychological theory alone.

Before concluding with a few observations about the benefits of a religious application of psychological insights, I would like to make some further comments on Freud. Obviously, his preoccupation with sex and resolute refusal to recognize anything genuine about the spiritual world or the religious life are hardly compatible with a Christian worldview. And his highly speculative claims about prehistoric patricide are not only unsupported but insupportable, since they refer mainly to events that supposedly happened before any historical records were being kept! Moreover, his insistence that scientists "outgrow" the need for religion (and presumably, so also the need for personal growth) is naive in the extreme. Nevertheless, in spite of such serious shortcomings, we needn't go so far as to reject everything Freud said about religion.

The basic parallel Freud assumes between one's early childhood experiences and one's subsequent religious disposition certainly has a significant measure of truth. Christians need not interpret this fact reductionistically, as evidence that belief in a Father-God is nothing but an illusory way of fulfilling one's childhood longing for more loving parents. We could just as well regard it as God's way of insuring that all human beings are aware of their need for God. Moreover, by taking a close look at our childhood relationships with our own parents, we may be able to obtain significant insights about why we tend to view God in one way or another. For instance, a child whose father was always traveling away from home would be likely to grow up experiencing God as remote and distant. We can mature significantly in our spiritual lives by learning to free God from such childhood preconceptions, while at the same time freeing ourselves from condemnation, should our natural disposition be one that many people regard as illegitimate.

Even the broader parallel, between the personal growth of individuals and that of the whole human race, can be instructive. For if we take Freud's view (see Figure XI.1) in conjunction with Jung's claims about quaternities, this suggests that a fourth stage of religion should emerge, after the so-called "atheist" stage. In this case, Freud's critique of religion would be an indictment on anyone who believes in an overly-literal or dogmatic view of Christianity. A temporary conversion to atheism might not always be entirely bad, if the person concerned is giving up a false, primitive view of religion. Like the four stages of this course, we could then regard Jung as calling us beyond the dark cocoon of Freud's third stage (the stage where he, sadly, remained his entire life) to a brighter and more complete fourth stage, where religious expression of the fullest and most profound kind will emerge like a butterfly. As Figure XI.5 suggests, this fourth stage is a time when God's "individuation" (so to speak) becomes complete as the Holy Spirit is made manifest in the heart of every human being. Many Christians believe such a metamorphosis is, in fact, taking place right now.

If a fourth stage of religion is not recognized in this way, Freud's psychology really becomes a form of religion. Whether or not such an accusation is justified is a matter of hot debate (see e.g., LIPN 217-221). But it does seem valid at least in the sense that any science, when raised to the status of an absolute truth that rejects all myths, itself becomes a myth (see TP, Ch.2). Freud's conviction that childhood experiences are merely illusions that need to be dispelled is a good example of his religiously anti-mythical stance. For anyone who appreciates that mythical thinking can be a means of conveying truth, childhood is more likely to be regarded as the most real time of our lives. Along these lines, even if primitive historical events occurred the way Freud says they did, this could just as well be interpreted as confirming their meaningfulness to contemporary religious traditions-a possibility Freud himself comes close to acknowledging at times (see LIPN 202-203 and DA 12).

Finally, let me raise a very general observation about the relationship between psychology and religion, followed by a warning. Healthy religious people and/or organizations that are willing to learn from psychology have the potential to do a far better job than psychotherapists at accomplishing any goal psychology sets for itself in promoting personal growth. I mentioned Jung's acknowledgment of the importance of confession at the beginning of this lecture. If Catholics consciously begin using the sacrament of confession and Protestants, their weekly small ("cell") group meetings, to apply psychological insights such as facing the shadow and discovering the guiding voice of the anima/ animus, these existing religious structures would have the potential to increase their members' personal/spiritual growth far beyond what any psychotherapy can produce. Moreover, religious beliefs such as the promise of life after death can help us put in context the otherwise unreachable goal of individuation: the insight that our experiences in this world will always be broken is much easier to accept if our religion enables us to catch a glimpse of the wholeness that is yet to come.

The most significant benefit of applying psychological insights in a religious context is that it puts the search for one's own "Self" in the wider context of one's experience of being sought by God. This gives an ultimate purpose to the individuation process that would otherwise be absent; it enables us to maintain hope amidst any failures or successes that may come our way. Without this religious foundation, the greatest "success" in achieving wholeness would paradoxically result in a feeling of total emptiness and failure (just as Tillich points out that the fulfillment of love brings great happiness and the end of happiness at the same time [see TP, Ch.25]). Consider these melancholy reflections from the very end of Jung's autobiography (MDR 391-392), written at the close of his long life of relentless searching for psychological self-understanding:

The older I have become, the less I have understood or had insight into or known about myself.

I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself. I am distressed, depressed, rapturous....

... In fact it seems to me as if that alienation which so long separated me from the world has become transferred into my own inner world, and has revealed to me an unexpected unfamiliarity with myself.

I shall return to this passage briefly in Lecture 35, when we discuss how a living religious faith can help avoid the danger of making psychology into what could be called a cult of self-worship. For now I would simply like you to reflect on how this amazing confession of self-ignorance by the 20th Century's greatest psychologist might relate to these well known words of Jesus, from Luke 17:33: "Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it."

DISCUSSION AND APPLICATION QUESTIONS

1. Is Freud's psychology really just a religion in disguise?

2. Do you think the quotation from MDR 391-392 shows that Jung failed to realize his dream of becoming a "whole person"? Why or why not?

3. Use your own personal experiences with religion (positive or negative) to assess the legitimacy of Jung's "four challenges".

4. Do you think God can actually guide us through our dreams? If possible, use examples from your own dreams to illustrate your answer.