Psychology and Religion (The Terry Lectures Series) [Paperback]

Carl Gustav Jung (Author)

Book Description

Series: The Terry Lectures Series | Publication Date: September 10, 1960

In this book, Dr. Jung, who has been the 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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 138 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (September 10, 1960)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300001371
• ISBN-13: 978-0300001372
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #120,205 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #58 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Psychology

More About the Author

Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker and the founder of analytical psychology (also known as Jungian psychology). Jung's radical approach to psychology has been influential in the field of depth psychology and in counter-cultural movements across the globe. Jung is considered as the first modern psychologist to state that the human psyche is "by nature religious" and to explore it in depth. His many major works include "Analytic Psychology: Its Theory and Practice," "Man and His Symbols," "Memories, Dreams, Reflections," "The Collected Works of Carl G. Jung," and "The Red Book."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Formation of Religious Symbols and the Unconscious, September 12, 2009

By 

Barnaby Thieme (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Psychology and Religion (The Terry Lectures Series) (Paperback)

This collection of three lectures given by Carl Jung in 1937 presents an early version of his mature view on the role of the unconscious in formulating religious symbols. The three foci of this book are a case study of a neurotic man plagued by irrational fears of cancer, a natural history of the generation of religious symbols, and a consideration of the psychological consequences of the crisis of faith that was striking the heart of Europe.

Jung's case study is absolutely fascinating -- he presents and interprets a small number of the patient's dreams and relates them to the symbolic literature of the Gnostics, Hermetics, and Alchemists, three of Jung's favorite symbolic modalities. It's extraordinary to see a modern man completely disinterested in religion or esoterica unwittingly produce symbols that clearly serve the same psychological function as similar images in these somewhat obscure traditions.

His social analysis is crude and in my eyes profoundly misguided. Jung waxes nostalgic for a medieval Europe governed by the Catholic church in which the common folk could assimilate the transpersonal symbolic structures of the ecclesiastical matrix as a bulwark against the intrusion of the unconscious into their daily lives. He polemicizes in a most disagreeable fashion against the Protestant church and blasts the Utopian fantasies of Communism. In historical analysis Jung shows himself to be studiously disinterested in the material facts of history, to the severe detriment of his analysis.

Perhaps Jung can be forgiven for making a classic error of Modernism and nostalgically aggrandizing a great old Europe that never was. The tenor and focus of his occasional social critiques was dramatically different post World War II, when his primary concern rightly shifted to the conditions of nationalistic totalitarianism. But as they stand in this work his social views are repugnant and anachronistic, and lack all sense of self-awareness.

One additional quarrel I have is that Jung's protestations that he is not interested in theology and philosophy, and that he deals with religious images purely as a psychological phenomenon, are not persuasive in the face of the many metaphysical claims that he in fact makes, such as offhandedly referring to atheism as a "stupid error". Few readers will agree that he has no particular religious convictions of his own, or that they don't absolutely play a core role in shaping his scientific theories.

Despite these problems the book on the whole provides a powerful and persuasive argument that he carefully builds to a gripping crescendo. His consideration of mandala symbolism in the last lecture is absolutely riveting and offers a vital empirical glimpse at the state of the religious mind in modernity.

17 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Jungian Theological Psychoanalytical must-have!!, August 28, 1999

By 

[e-mail], Zack (Knoxville, Tn) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Psychology and Religion (The Terry Lectures Series) (Paperback)

This is an excellent work of both psychology and religion, hence the name. There have been other books by Jung that have narrower subjects or more challenging views but this one, takes my Jungian cake. It is so general but yet is exactly what one needs to study or just explore the extremely difficult topic of Psych and Religion. A winner in my book.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great book on the unconscious, December 24, 2005

By 

Angel Book Reader "book reviewer" (Morgantown, WV) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Psychology and Religion (The Terry Lectures Series) (Paperback)

The Psyche is a very important area he looks at in the whole book. I consider the whole book to be a theory on unraveling the unconscious. He argues for the existence of the psyche and he says, " the only form of existence we know of immediately is psychic." He continues that psychical dangers are much more dangerous than epidemics or earthquakes. While I accept with Jung that psychical dangers are dangerous, I believe he has overemphasized the role or place of the Psyche. This is vividly seen in the context of religion. Rather than religious faith being the deepest part of man, it is only a means aided by its symbols to understand the unconscious self.
Unlike Sigmund Freud who looks at religion as an illusion, Jung sees some usefulness in religion and holds that religion is not created by persons as escape valves but they are victims of religion. He sees religion as the collective unconscious that is present in every person's unconscious. The task of religion is to reveal what is in the unconscious and the psyche. This is the reason he validates the use of Christian symbols in uncovering the unconscious.
Jung describes archetypes as "forms or images of a collective nature which occur practically all over the earth as constituents of myths and at the same time as autochthonous, individual products of unconscious origin." Using his theory on archetypes to analyze some of his patient's dreams, he tries to return to the primordial remote times when these things existed. I find his theory on archetypes very problematic. My question is how these primordial things get into the psyche? Are these archetypes present at the time of birth of every child? His theory I believe will presuppose that if we all were helped to unravel the unconscious, we will think alike and behave alike since if we go back to a million or more years ago, we either were children of the same parents or evolved from one family of animals.
He sees in dream a means of unraveling the unconscious. Jung's book is helpful in understanding the psyche and the unconscious. It is however not helpful in understanding authentic religious experiences in people.