DWill wrote:so a renewal of religious sentiment, reconciled with reason, is the way to overcome this deep neurosis, even psychosis, of prevailing modern life.
But is "reconciled with reason" from Jung himself, or from you?
The emphasis on reason is from Jung, who entirely rejects any irrational supernatural metaphysics in his approach to psychology. He equally rejects the modern rational argument, celebrated in
Wittgenstein’s famous dictum that “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”.
Instead Jung insists that all seemingly miraculous claims in religion must be interpreted as symbolic parables, not actual events, and that this imaginal reading supplies deep meaning. Such symbolic interpretation involves a level of respect for mythology that Jung argues is not shown by the ideology of modern science. A good illustration of this problem is Jung’s argument that the nature of the soul is intrinsically obscure, but rather than allowing this to frame analysis, the rationalistic method prefers to say that a topic that cannot be made clear cannot even be discussed.
DWill wrote: I only ask because on its face it seems that it can't be both ways if one is going to sense the world with one's whole brain, instead of intellectualize it through the cerebrum. Thus, I wonder if Jung actually insisted upon reason.
Jung did insist upon reason, recognising the validity of what is often called left brain thinking, while arguing that reason must be balanced by religion, drawing heavily on symbol and emotion, what we call right brain thinking. The two methods of thinking must be balanced with each other. Jung’s emphasis on the process of individuation, coming to an understanding of our personal identity in an integrated way, requires the reconciliation of these often opposing elements of psychology.
DWill wrote:
Carl Jung has to my mind an antique flavor, originating in a previous era of psychology before biology and data analysis had taken over the field, which includes psychiatry. His focus on "neurosis" is an example of this bygone aspect of psychiatry.
The removal of neurosis from the American psychological lexicon of DSM4 in 1980
was a controversial step.
Modern Man In Search of a Soul has a number of essays that challenge the medical thinking in modern science with its exclusion of spiritual ideas and imagery. Jung objects that much about the psyche is inherently unclear, but the modern restriction of interest to topics that are clearly amenable to scientific reduction involves a loss of therapeutic accuracy and healing insight.
DWill wrote:To "recover" him, to put him in more modern terms, would be a good idea--if this can be done at all given his bases. I think of his affinity for "as above, so below," (i.e., astrology) and the related belief in synchronicity, deterministic personality types, and the collective unconscious as possible obstacles to acceptance from most contemporaries.
I recently gave a talk on the As Above So Below idea. Obviously this idea can be lampooned as astrological magic, but equally it provides the intellectual underpinning for the scientific principle of universal consistency, the assumption that the same laws of physics apply throughout the universe, 'on earth as in heaven'. With synchronicity, I disagree with Jung’s postulation of an 'acausal' principle, but rather wonder how seemingly unconnected events may actually be connected by deeper causal processes than have as yet been explained by our level of knowledge. I regard the collective unconscious as a particularly important idea linking faith and reason, as describing the overall direction of culture discussed by Jung against the speculative religious idea of a world soul. While that may sound supernatural to some critics, it seems entirely plausible that culture obeys deeply embedded patterns that operate at a collective unconscious level.
DWill wrote: If scientific rationalism indeed reduces spiritual health, it might be that Jung's mix of psychology and religion is not the prescription that will work. But this isn't to say that Jung lacks all relevance, any more than Freud does. There is probably a distillation that would show how Jung advanced understanding of the mind or curbed the excesses of behaviorism.
I personally like Jung’s mix. For example in my recent talk I offered the following comments: “Here Jung investigates the gulf between neuroscience and psychotherapy due to the division between medical and psychic methods of treatment. Psyche is a neglected causal factor in disease, against the scientific medical focus on material causation, with its assumption that psyche did not exist. Jung sees mind as the crux of neurosis as a pathogenic factor, with the psychological challenge to construct a wholistic vision, in contrast to the reductive effort of Freud and Adler to explain neurosis by instinct.
Modern scientific method with its sole focus on material causation ignores the fictional and imaginative processes that give meaning in life, disregarding the religious view that only spiritual meaning sets us free. Science provides excellent common sense, but has no answer to spiritual suffering and inner meaning. The therapeutic challenge is to provide a patient with meaning and form to answer the confusion of the neurotic mind. At this point, the doctor must hand over to the clergy or the philosopher, or abandon the patient to unsolvable perplexity. The deep message Jung suggests for the treatment of neurosis is that illness arises from lack of love, faith, hope and insight, problems that can only be solved by great and wise teachers who grasp the meaning of life and the world. Such high achievements are gifts of grace, requiring total commitment of our whole being to liberating experience and self knowledge, but how?
The collapse of religion means clergy are incapable of providing psychological therapy, but instead in Jung’s view can provide only empty words rather than conversation about the ultimate questions of the soul. Jung sees the popular exodus from church as proof that admonitions to believe are inadequate. Meanwhile he finds it astonishing that clergy seek help in Freud and Adler theories that are hostile to spiritual values, hindering realization of meaningful experience. The majority stand in spiritual alienation, looking to psychology rather than the church, seeing theology as irrelevant to treatment of human problems. Indifference to religion grows side by side with growth of neuroses. The modern world has an ineradicable aversion for inherited truths. Jung’s outlook is that spiritual standards have lost validity, leading to the broad need to experiment in face of feeling that dogma has grown empty. He says modern people no longer feel redeemed by the death of Christ, as the story has lost its meaning and promise. This pervasive meaningless mood causes disturbance of unconscious, generating neurosis.”