This book describes the development of images of God, beginning in antiquity and culminating in Jung’s notion of the Self, an image of God in the psyche that Jung calls the God within. Over the course of history, the Self has been projected onto many local gods and goddesses and given different names and attributes.
These deities are typically imagined as existing in a heavenly realm, but Jung’s approach recalls them to their origins in the objective psyche. This book shows how Jung’s approach avoids many of the philosophical problems produced by traditional anthropomorphic images of God and describes the myriad symbolic ways in which the Self may appear, independently of doctrinal images of God. By focusing on the empirical, psychological manifestations of the Self, Jung’s approach avoids arguments for and against the existence of a metaphysical God.
Table of Contents
Preface
Chapter 1: The Existence of God in an Age of Science
Chapter 2: The God-image in Jung’s Psychology
Chapter 3: The God-image in Archaic Religions and Antiquity
Chapter 4: The God-image of the Hebrew Scriptures & the Post-Biblical Tradition
Chapter 5: The Development of the Christian Image of God
Chapter 6: The God-image from the Renaissance to the Twentieth Century
Chapter 7: Psychological Approaches to the God-image
The Soul in Anguish presents a variety of approaches to psychotherapeutic work with suffering people, from the perspectives of both Jungian and psychoanalytic psychology. An important theme of the book is the impact of suffering—suffering may be harmful or helpful to the development of the personality. Our culture tends to assume that suffering is invariably negative or pointless, but this is not necessarily so; suffering may be destructive, but it may lead to positive developments such as enhanced empathy for others, wisdom, or spiritual development.
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.
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 a professor of depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, in Santa Barbara, California.
He is the author of five books: Psyche and the Sacred: Spirituality Beyond Religion; The Religious Function of the Psyche; The Sacred Cauldron: Psychotherapy as a Spiritual Practice; The Soul in Anguish: Psychotherapeutic Approaches to Suffering; and Understanding Evil: A Psychotherapist’s Guide.
He is the co-editor of four volumes of collected papers: Psyche’s Stories: Modern Jungian Interpretations of Fairy Tales; Depth Psychology: Meditations in the Field; Psychology at the Threshold; and Jung And Aging: Possibilities And Potentials for the Second Half of Life.
