The Religious Function of the Psyche

The Religious Function of the Psyche
Author: Lionel Corbett
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2002-01-04
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 113476247X

Traditional concepts of God are no longer tenable for many people who nevertheless experience a strong sense of the sacred in their lives. The Religious Function of the Psyche offers a psychological model for the understanding of such experience, using the language and interpretive methods of depth psychology, particularly those of C.G. Jung and psychoanalytic self psychology. The problems of evil and suffering, and the notion of human development as an incarnation of spirit are dealt with by means of a religious approach to the psyche that can be brought easily into psychotherapeutic practice and applied by the individual in everyday life. The book offers an alternative approach to spirituality as well as providing an introduction to Jung and religion.

Psyche and the Sacred

Psyche and the Sacred
Author: Lionel Corbett
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2019-10-21
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1000031268

This book presents an approach to spirituality based on direct personal experience of the sacred. Using the language and insights of depth psychology, Corbett outlines the intimate relationship between spiritual experience and the psychology of the individual, unveiling the seamless continuity between the personal and transpersonal dimensions of the psyche. His discussion runs the gamut of spiritual concerns, from the problem of evil to the riddle of pain and suffering. Drawing upon his psychotherapeutic practice as well as on the experiences of characters from our religious heritage, Corbett explores the various portals through which the sacred presents itself to us: dreams, visions, nature, the body, relationships, psychopathology, and creative work. Referring extensively to Jung’s writings on religion, but also to contemporary psychoanalytic theory, Corbett gives form to the new spirituality that is emerging alongside the world’s great religious traditions. For those seeking alternative forms of spirituality beyond the Judeo-Christian tradition, this volume will be a useful guide on the journey.

Dark Religion

Dark Religion
Author: Vladislav Šolc
Publisher: Chiron Publications
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2018-12-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1630514004

Jungian analysts Vlado Solc and George J. Didier set out to explore the psychological dynamics and causes of religious fundamentalism and fanaticism. The book offers an in-depth-psychological analysis of what happens when a person becomes possessed by the unconscious energies of the Self. Dark Religion also reveals that spirituality is an inherent dimension of human life and one of its most essential needs. It only becomes "dark" when it denies, ignores, or separates itself from its vital roots. The authors coin the term "dark religion" to describe all forms of fanatical, radical and extreme religions. Their study shows how dark religion leads to profound conflicts on both the personal and cultural level--including terrorism and wars. surveys the vast contemporary cultural and religious landscapes. All the while discovering the emergent forms of spiritual praxis in light of postmodernism and the rise of fundamentalism in the new millennium.

Religion and the Unconscious

Religion and the Unconscious
Author: Ann Belford Ulanov
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 1975-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780664246570

In Religion and the Unconscious, Ann and Barry Ulanov provide a thoughtful study of the relationship between religion and depth psychology. An insightful contribution to the entire area of pastoral counseling, this book demonstrates how to combine religion and depth psychology in order to provide more effective counseling.

The Sacred Cauldron

The Sacred Cauldron
Author: Lionel Corbett
Publisher: Chiron Publications
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2011
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1888602511

At a time when psychotherapy seems to be a purely secular pursuit with no connection to the sacred, The Sacred Cauldron makes the startling claim that, for both participants, psychotherapeutic work is actually a spiritual discipline in its own right. The psyche manifests the sacred and provides the transpersonal field within which the work of therapy is carried out. This book demonstrates some of the ways in which a spiritual sensibility can inform the technical aspects of psychotherapy. "The Sacred Cauldron is truly a book to be read by both therapists and non-therapists, for it offers a thoughtful, intelligent, sensitive passage through the spiritual quarrels and complexities of our time and addresses our common summons, which is to treat the life of the spirit with the respect, the gravity, and the centrality it deserves. This book is instructive to all, for Corbett not only marshals a wealth of scholarship and clinical experience, but also expresses challenging insights through a calm, reasonable, and commonsense appeal. After this book, the reader will be more thoughtful, more considered, more sophisticated, more appreciative of the importance of therapy as a vehicle for healing and for engaging the numinous." --James Hollis, Ph.D., Jungian analyst and author of What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life Dr. Lionel Corbett trained in medicine and psychiatry in England and as a Jungian analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago. He is currently on the core faculty of Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California, and the author of The Religious Function of the Psyche and Psyche and the Sacred, as well as various professional articles. His main interest is in the religious function of the psyche and the ways in which this function expresses itself through the structures of personality.

Religious but Not Religious

Religious but Not Religious
Author: Jason E. Smith
Publisher: Chiron Publications
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2020-12-12
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1630519014

In Religious but Not Religious, Jungian analyst Jason E. Smith explores the idea, expressed by C.G. Jung, that the religious sense is a natural and vital function of the human psyche. We suffer from its lack. The symbolic forms of religion mediate unconscious and ineffable experiences to the field of consciousness that infuse our lives with meaning and purpose. That is why we cannot be indifferent toward the decline of traditional religious observance so widely discussed today. The great religions house the accumulated spiritual wisdom of humankind, and their loss would be catastrophic to the human soul. As human beings, we hunger for spiritual experience. To be “spiritual but not religious” is one possible response, but it often doesn’t go far enough. All too easily it can become a kind of do-it-yourself spirituality, which lacks the capacity to effect the kind of growth and transformation that is the true goal of all the religious traditions. Smith argues that we need to be “religious but not religious.” We need an approach to religion that recognizes the essential importance of the individual spiritual adventure while also affirming the value of collective religious tradition. He articulates an understanding of religion as a participation in the symbolic life as opposed to a mere content of belief. By recovering our personal sensitivity for symbolic experience together with a symbolic understanding of religion, we facilitate a profound encounter with life and with the human condition through which one may be tested, tried, and transformed.

Psychology and Religion

Psychology and Religion
Author: Carl Gustav Jung
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 138
Release: 1960-09-10
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0300166508

Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, author of some of the most provocative hypotheses in modern psychology, describes what he regards as an authentic religious function in the unconscious mind. Using a wealth of material from ancient and medieval Gnostic, alchemistic, and occultistic literature, he discusses the religious symbolism of unconscious processes and the possible continuity of religious forms that have appeared and reappeared through the centuries. "These compact vigorous essays constitute Dr. Jung's most sustained interpretation of the religious function in individual experience."-Journal of Social Philosophy

Transformation of the God-image

Transformation of the God-image
Author: Edward F. Edinger
Publisher:
Total Pages: 152
Release: 1992
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

Answer to Job, dealing with the transformation of God through human consciousness, contains the essence of the Jungian myth. This down-to-earth study evokes that essence with unequaled clarity. Originally seminars given at the Jung Institute of Los Angeles.

Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 11

Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 11
Author: C. G. Jung
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 716
Release: 2014-03-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1400850983

An authoritative edition of Jung’s shorter works on the psychology of religious phenomena This volume collects Jung’s shorter writings on religion and psychology, including several that are of major importance. The pieces on Western religion are Psychology and Religion • A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity • Transformation Symbolism in the Mass • Forewords to White’s God and the Unconscious and Werblowsky’s Lucifer and Prometheus • Brother Klaus • Psychotherapists or the Clergy • Psychoanalysis and the Cure of Souls • Answer to Job The pieces on Eastern religion are Psychological Commentaries on The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation and The Tibetan Book of the Dead • Yoga and the West • Foreword to Suzuki’s Introduction to Zen Buddhism • The Psychology of Eastern Meditation • The Holy Men of India • Foreword to the I Ching

Psyche and Symbol

Psyche and Symbol
Author: C. G. Jung
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 426
Release: 1991-02-21
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0691019037

The archetypes of human experience which derive from the deepest unconscious mind and reveal themselves in the universal symbols of art and religion as well as in the individual symbolic creations of particular people are, for C. G. Jung, the key to the cure of souls, the cornerstone of his therapeutic work. This volume explains the function and origin of these symbols. Here the reader will find not only a general orientation to Jung's point of view but extensive studies of the symbolic process and its integrating function in human psychology as it is reflected in the characteristic spiritual productions of Europe and Asia. Violet de Laszlo has selected for inclusion in Psyche and Symbol five selections from Aion: "The Ego," "The Shadow," "The Syzygy: Anima and Animus," "The Self," and "Christ, A Symbol of the Self." The book continues with "The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy Tales," "The Psychology of the Child Archetype," and "Transformation Symbolism in the Mass." Also included are the foreword to the Cary Banes translation of the I Ching, two chapters from Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, "Psychological Commentary on The Tibetan Book of the Dead," and "Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower."