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Two Theologians on Jung's Psychology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2024
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Two more theologians have recently responded to Professor Jung’s invitation to collaborate with his work. Both of them are priests. One belongs to the Belgian Province of the Society of Jesus. The other is a German Jewish convert to the Russian Orthodox Church.
Their respective books contrast sharply. Father Hostie’s book, despite its restricted (and rather baffling) title, is the more comprehensive and ambitious. It attempts a complete exposition and critique of the whole of Jung’s work, at least to the extent that it impinges on religion and philosophy. Dr Zacharias’s book is more limited in scope, and treats of some particular questions which arise from Jung’s more recent work only; but what it loses in breadth it gains in depth. The contrast however lies mostly in their respective attitudes and manners of approach. Fr Hostie expressly restricts himself to a review of Jung’s published writings. Although he is convinced that ‘repeated personal contact with Professor Jung and his closest collaborators is absolutely necessary to grasp the exact meaning of the texts’, he deliberately confines his study to Jung’s ‘official publications’. This restriction is not without its value: it is, after all, from his writings, and without the benefit of personal contact and vocal interpretations, that Jung must be most widely known and judged. Moreover Fr Hostie has conducted his examination of these official writings, comparing and collating the various editions, with scrupulous care; and has incidentally added the most complete bibliography yet made of them—it includes several early opuscula which even the editors of the Collected Works seem to have missed.
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- Copyright © 1955 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Du Mythe à la Religion: La psychologie analytique de C. G. Jung, byRaymondHostie. (Desclée de Brouwer, for Études Carmélitaines; 120 Belgian francs.) Psyche und Mysterium: Die Bedeutung der Psychologie C. G. Jung fur die christliche Theologie und Liturgie. (Studien aus der C. G. Jung‐Institut, Zurich: Rascher.)
2 Occasionally Fr Hostie offers no citations for his interpretations. We know of no passage in his publications where Jung defines the ‘psychologism’ which he repudiates as merely ‘toute théorie qui reduit la religion à n'être que la transformation d'un instinct’—on the contrary he frequently describes it as the position which maintains that religion (or indeed anything else) is ‘nothing but’ psychology, and he likens it to maintaining that Cologne Cathedral is ‘nothing but’ mineralogy. Similarly the assertion that Jung exclut à la légère toute intervention du prêtre pour ceux qui se sout libérés de leurs troubles psychiques' would be difficult to find in the opera, and is clean contrary to this writer's experience. Fr Hostie is on firmer ground when he maintains that for Jung the ‘religious function’ is ‘irreducible’ and unconnected with basic instincts, but it is difficult to understand why a Catholic critic should regard this as an ‘enrichment’. This position seems to have more in common with gnosticism or nineteenth‐century pietism than with traditional Catholic philosophy.
3 It would surely have been more to the point had Dr Zacharias distinguished between a ‘union of opposites’ in consciousness and cognition—which the baptismal ceremonies positively emphasize—and such a union in conation—which Jungians themselves can hardly advocate.
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