An area of tension between Christian theology and Jungian psychology addressed by Eugene C. Bianchi in "Jungian Psychology and Religious Experience," is that which Bianchi labels "religious-demonic." (See The God of Synchronicity for my initial comments on this article and the book it is in, Carl Jung and Christian Spirituality: A Reader, edited by Robert L. Moore.)The late Swiss theorist of the human psyche Carl Gustav Jung had it that there are numinous, alluring powers in the unconscious mind. These powers, which he called archetypes, are common to all humans. The central one of these archetypes, he called the Self.
He identified the Self as the image of God within the soul. As such, the Self works behind the scenes to foster psychic healing and wholeness.
The opposite of wholeness is one-sidedness, an attribute of the psyche that is likewise common to us all — for the conscious mind couldn't really learn to function properly unless certain energies of the psyche were walled off from conscious awareness. This walling off takes place from early childhood on, as we grow into competent adults with codes of behavior that render us both morally grounded and socially adept.
The center of our conscious awareness, called by Jung the ego, is assisted by the repository of attributes we present ourselves as having, called the persona. The two work together to develop "who we are," and in so doing are responsible for making us one-sided. Moreover, this is natural and normal; there is nothing intrinsically "bad" or "wrong" with it. We couldn't become valued members of the community without it.
Then at midlife we are apt to grow restive and feel a sort of "is that all there is?" feeling. The Self is calling us to deal with the energies of the psyche that have been walled off and held in the depths of the unconscious.
To do this, the Self uses indirect means: symbols. Symbols that a skilled interpreter can recognize as standing for the wholeness and healing that the Self would engender in us appear insistently in our waking imaginations and nighttime dreams. Some of these symbols I have already mentioned in earlier posts:
These are just three examples of symbols that draw us in the direction of the Self ... and of God. They do so by representing the ideas of wholeness, symmetry, balance, unity, healing, and beauty.
But, as Bianchi points out, there are numerous reasons why many lay Christians and theologians resent Jung's seeming identification of the Self archetype with God.
One of these reasons is the tension Bianchi identifies (pp. 29ff.) between the truly religious and the demonic. If Jung was right, and the numinous archetypes (including the Self) are responsible for our deep-and-mystical religious experiences, Bianchi asks,
How do we determine an authentic religious experience from those of magic, superstition or insanity? In this area of criteria for testing the value of a subjective happening, any test will be relative and partial. The descriptive signs of a religious experience may resemble those of insanity. Moreover, a temporary insanity, as an ego disturbance via encounter with the Self, may be both numinous and healing for an individual. (p. 29)
Jung used the word "numinous" when discussing the power which the various archetypes have to break into our rational, everyday consciousness and command attention. As with the everyday one-sidedness of the rational ego that I mentioned earlier, such assertions of archetypal potency are not necessarily "wrong" or "bad," to a Jungian. They can be "both numinous and healing." Or, they can bring us to madness and evil.
How do we tell the difference? Bianchi writes:
The classic Christian testing of the inner spirits revolved around the doctrine of agape. Does the experience in some way contribute to a fuller life of charity, that is, of self-giving love? (p. 29)
The very next thing Bianchi writes is something I have a problem with:
In the Jungian perspective, the traditional Christian of experience can be too one-sided, overly stressing self-giving in benevolence to others. The Jungian criterion would ask: does the experience contribute to wholeness in a person's overall life? Does it foster the reconciliation of opposites in the psyche? (p. 29)
I don't agree that these two criteria are, at the end of the day, different.
In my own personal experience, movement toward Jungian wholeness in my inner life has brought about greater agape, charity, and self-giving love in my orientation toward others.
(The Greek word agape, by the way, is pronounced OGG-uh-pay. It is a word long appropriated by Christians from the Greek language of the New Testament to represent what has also been rendered as the Latin caritas: the idea of a charitable love toward others that is in no way either lustful or self-serving.)
I have found that wholeness à la Jung — to the limited extent that I have attained it — is a remedy for the problem I spoke of in the posts in my Existential Guilt topic. I have long suffered from a "free-floating guilt" that has, frankly, impaired my life. I am not alone in this — though in my case, "existential guilt" has been more of a problem in life than it is for most people.
Bianchi describes the reason for it:
... as each person in the course of life moves away from infancy's union of undifferentiated consciousness (the participation mystique of womb life and early childhood), specific ego identity is fashioned. ... the self-conscious ego realizes the precariousness of existence in the face of death and other threats. Just as the ego incurs existential guilt in the necessary process of alienating itself from identity with its original maternal source, it also ignores or struggles against the promptings of the Self that call to wholeness. The all-absorbing quest [is rather] for survival, material comfort and self-valuation through outward acclaim ... .
Yet the depths of the Self will not be denied ... . (pp. 26-27)
Alienation, existential guilt, free-floating guilt ... these can result from the very process by which the ego tries to deal with the "precariousness of existence" on its own terms, while holding the Self at arm's length.
I have personally found that trying to be a "good Christian" has not been enough to deal with my existential guilt. On the other hand, seeking Jungian wholeness has, quite ironically, made me a better Christian. It has let me become a better exponent of caritas, agape, and Christian love.
This change has not been something I am just putting on for others' benefit. I have noticed, furthermore, that other people are treating me differently than before. They seem to be more interested in being around me. They seem to just assume that I am more empathetic to their needs and concerns than was ever the case before. They can talk to me less guardedly and more "humanly" than before.
There seem to be fewer times when they "get me wrong" and behave as if I am an entirely different sort of person than I think of myself as being.
Better yet, it seems as if my personality, or whatever you want to call it, now tends to bring out the best in the people I meet. People on the whole seem to be kinder and gentler when I encounter them than would seem to be generally the case, judging by the culture. Yet I don't get the sense that people are putting on a false front. It's just that we, all of us, seem to respond to other people according to some subliminal cue that they emit. If the cue says "this person is one I like and I needn't fear," then people act accordingly.
People who have attained some degree of Jungian wholeness are people that others instinctively respond to with the self-giving behavior patterns of a "good Christian." That's perhaps the key lesson I've learned.
That I think was what made Jesus special. Before his crucifixion and resurrection, after which it became apparent he was God in human form, he drew people to him as he traveled about not just because he was a miracle worker — he always was reluctant to do miracles. He was, I think, what Jung would call "fully individuated," "fully self-realized." People instinctively responded to him as such: he brought out the "better angels of their nature."
Not that I identify myself with Jesus: I admit I am far from fully self-realized.
One big reason I'm not "all the way there" is what Bianchi brings out immediately after he draws what I consider to be his problematic distinction between benevolent self-sacrifice in the traditional Christian mode and the reconciliation of opposites in the psyche, in the Jungian mode.
The latter process is long and arduous, Bianchi says, and fraught with danger and pain. It involves coming to terms with the Shadow, another key archetype which "represents that part of a personality whose traits we neither perceive nor wish to perceive" (p. 30). If the Self is the image of God within the psyche, the Shadow is the image of Lucifer or Mephistopheles. It is also the "portal to the unconscious" (p. 30), and we can't realize the Self without confronting the Shadow ... even at the seeming peril of our death. As Jesus was tempted thrice by the Devil, we have to encounter the Shadow en route to the Self.
Jung discovered that the secret to dealing with the Shadow is to find constructive ways to "channel the energy of our negativities" (p. 30). This can be done by taking advantage of "the transformative polarity of opposites in the psyche" (p. 31). That is, we need to balance the positive and negative — good and evil — aspects of the unconscious psyche off against one another. The result, mysteriously, is not zero, but personal transformation.
After discussing the Shadow, Bianchi returns to his theme of the tension between the Christian call for benevolent, virtuous self-sacrifice and the Jungian call to acknowledge the Shadow en route to the Self. He calls the Jungian outlook "Socratic" or "Greek," while the Christian outlook is "Hebraic."
In the former view, the process of individuation and Self-realization, by reducing our conscious ego's need to perpetuate its own existence, can defang death itself and make us calm and steadfast in death's very face. In the latter view, we cannot defeat our inner proclivity to evil on our own, and death is a very real tragedy and threat to us, unless we accept Jesus Christ as our personal savior.
I think the two views can be reconciled by noting that the traditional Christian view makes perfect Jungian sense for people who are not yet ready for the call that can be expected "in mature life," and that will be proclaimed in symbolic form by the numinous forces of the psyche's unconscious, "to experience the depths" (p. 31).
This needs to be done "with a fully formed ego identity," Bianchi writes (p. 31); otherwise, it is too dangerous.
The "fully formed ego identity" is something we develop during the first half of life: prior to, say, age 40. But in Jesus's day, and in the classical/medieval European culture in which Christianity first flourished, how many people lived into what we would today consider the "second half of life"?
Accordingly, how many of the people Jesus addressed, either directly or later on through the Gospel stories and the New Testament, were ready to go beyond "a fully formed ego identity" on their own (or with a Jungian therapist by their side)?
We can reconcile the traditional Christian outlook with the Jungian if we recognize the validity of the former for all people who have not (yet) felt the call to go beyond "a fully formed ego identity." The validity of the latter is for those who need to get beyond establishing the ego's identity as the prime exigency of the first half of life ... some of whom are still young, perhaps, but most of whom will be in middle age or beyond.
In so doing, Self-realizers will still need to keep in mind the Christian call to agape and caritas. The litmus test: do others instinctively respond to you with the self-giving, other-honoring behavior patterns of a "good Christian"? If so, you're probably on the path of angels and not of demons.
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