Spiritual Questing
Embarked on a search for meaning, more and more Americans are turning to the
Jung found confirmation of his theories in his patients' dreams, in the myths, fairy tales and folklore of diverse cultures, in Eastern religion and Christian icons. Where Freud saw the "unconscious" as the domain of childhood ideas and wishes repressed by the conscious mind, Jung found this concept too limiting. Deeper than Freud's "personal" unconscious, Jung argued, lay the "collective" unconscious, the repository for "archetypes" or universal images and modes of perceiving the world that could not be explained in terms of a single person's life. Archetypes, Jung held, were rooted in instinct, and emerged in dreams, in the age-old stories of gods and warriors, in tales of giants and evil stepmothers. They often represented the hidden or "shadow" side of human nature, both negative and positive. "We can never legitimately cut loose from our archetypal foundations," he wrote, "unless we are prepared to pay the price of a neurosis, any more than we can rid ourselves of our body and its organs without committing suicide."
Yet by investigating and interpreting the archetypal images buried deep in the psyche, Jung maintained, an individual or a culture might grow and become whole. A man, for example, could explore the anima archetype, developing the latent, feminine side of his nature; a society might become aware of the concealed, destructive images that influence its ebb and flow. And through an understanding of the collective unconscious, the psychiatrist believed, lay the path toward inner "transforma toward women, his psychological "reductionism," his focus on early parenting. Ultimately, Freud's answers were too cynical for many Americans to accept.
Transcendental roots. By contrast, Jung's vision presents less of a challenge to the way Americans see themselves, making room for the life of the "spirit" unfettered by more iconoclastic analysis. Jung appeals, as Jungian analyst and men's movement leader James Hillman puts it, "to our Emersonian roots." Where Freud pulled back the curtains on what he regarded as self-deception in religious life, Jung went to work with an embroidery needle, distrusting any theory that robbed human beings of something transcendent in which to believe. As a result, Jungian psychology has become, for many people, a way to reclaim and enrich their religious upbringing. Says one Jungian analyst: "I left the church because it was dead and boring. Now I go back and appreciate services in a way I never could before."
Perhaps sensing this, a growing number of Christian clergy are incorporating Jungian ideas into their work with parishioners. Jungian training institutes count among their students both Episcopal and Catholic priests and ministers from a variety of Protestant denominations. Centerpoint, a network of study groups once affiliated with the Episcopal Church but now free-standing, has an estimated 15,000 members worldwide. Jung's theories are even finding their way into sermons and pastoral counseling programs. "It fits so much better than a Freudian approach, because Freud was an atheist," says the Rev. Philip Blake of the Jesuit Retreat House of Los Altos, Calif. "I live my life according to the Gospel message, not according to Carl Jung. But it's a help to me."
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