Psychology & The Cross: Recent Episodes
Jungian Analyst Jakob Lusensky
Psychology & The Cross is a podcast about the meaning of existence. In the first season, we dive deep into the world of Carl Gustav Jung and his wrestle with Christianity. The show is hosted by Jungian psychoanalyst Jakob Lusensky in Berlin.
For extra material visit:https://bit.ly/3B6xYKq
A letter from Carl Gustav Jung to Sabina Spielrein (1885-1942), 4th of December 1908.
My Dear,
I regret so much; I regret my weakness and curse the fate that is threatening me. I fear for my work, for my life's task, for all the lofty perspectives that are being revealed to me by this new Weltanschauung as It evolves. How shall I with my sensitive soul, free myself from all these questions?
You will laugh when I tell you that recently earlier surfacing, from a time (3-4 year) when I often hurt myself badly, and when, for example, I was once only just rescued from certain death by a maid. « My mind is torn to its very depths. I, who had to be a tower of strength for many weak people, am the weakest of all. Will you forgive me for being as I am? For offending you by being like this, and forgetting my duties as a doctor towards you? Will you understand that I am one of the weakest and most unstable of human beings?
And will you never take revenge on me for that, either in words, or in thoughts or feelings? I am looking for someone who understands how to love, without punishing the other person, imprisoning him or sucking him dry; I am seeking this as yet unrealized person who will manage to separate love from social advantage and disadvantage, so that love may always be an end in itself, and not just a means to an end.
It is my misfortune that I can not live without the joy of love, of tempestuous, ever-changing love. This daemon stands as an unholy contradiction to my compassion and my sensitivity. When love for a woman awakens within me, the first thing I feel is regret, pity for the poor woman who dreams of eternal faithfulness and other impossibilities, and is destined for a painful awakening out of all these dreams. Therefore if one is already married it is better to engage in this lie and do penance for it immediately than to repeat the experiment again and again, lying repeatedly, and repeatedly disappointing." What on earth is to be done for the best?
I do not know and dare not say, because I do not know what you will make of my words and feelings. Since the last upset I have completely lost my sense of security with regard to you. That weighs heavily on me. You must clear up this uncertainty once and for all. I should like to talk to you again at greater length. For example, I could speak with you next Tuesday morning between 9.15 and 12.00. Since you are perhaps less inhibited in your apartment, I am willing to come to you. Should Tuesday morning not suit you, write and tell me, otherwise I will come in the hope of getting some clarity.
I should like definite assurances so that my mind can be at rest over your intentions. Otherwise my work suffers, and that seems to me more important than the passing problems and sufferings of the present. Give me back now something of the love and patience and unselfishness which I was able to give you at the time of your illness. Now am ill...
In this episode, I am joined by Sarah Larkin to discuss the life and work of Christian depth psychologist Fritz Künkel (1889-1956). Sarah has a background in religious studies and a Master's in Theology. She is a poet and has created an online archive of Künkels writing online accessible on fritzkunkel.com
Künkel was a giant in psychology in the 1920s and 1930s corresponded with Jung and studied under Alfred Adler. He lived in Berlin but emigrated to California in 1939 and developed a religiously informed depth psychology that he named “We-Psychology”.
Künkel's psychology differs from C.G Jung’s in its broader emphasis on the concept of individuation and by emphasizing the importance of the collective. He also corrects Jung on matters related to evil. In my opinion, Künkel has a lot to offer depth psychology as it helps to bridge the “me” with the “we”, individuation with a social conscience, and a Christian vision for the world.
If you want to go deeper into Künkel the place to start isJohn A. Sanford’s book Fritz Kunkel: Selected Writings
The music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: Ketsa - Between Each.
Are you interested in a more intimate and in-depth exploration of the intersection of Jungian psychology and Christianity? Maybe you should consider joining the online course starting on January 10th? We will meet online for four weekly learning sessions and lectures related to Jung and Christianity.
There will also be room to discuss what we have learned between the sessions and an exchange of ideas. For more information about the course and early-bird registration go to this link.
This online course will cover:
Session 1: Following the footsteps of a Protestant. In our first learning session, we go in-depth into Jung’s childhood experiences and the Christian tradition he grew up in and how it informed his psychological project.
Date: 10 Jan 2023 8:00-9:15pm CET (Central European Time)
Session 2: Jung's Red Book & rendering of the Imitation of Christ. An in-depth study of Jung’s wrestle with Christ in the Red Book and his radical reformulation of the Christian concept of the imitation of Christ.
Date: 17 Jan 2023 8:00-9:15pm CET
Session 3: Christianity’s repression of the unconscious. With C.G Jung’s 1923 Cornwall seminars as a starting point we learn how Jung viewed Christianity's effect on the unconscious.
Date: 24 Jan 2023 8:00-9:15pm CET
Session 4: Jung’s vision of dreaming the myth onward. In our last session, we will discuss Jung’s later writings on Christianity with an emphasis on Aion and Answer to Job.
Date: 31 Jan 2023 8:00-9:15pm CET
"The opposite of sin is faith in which one responds, you might say, appropriately to the call that comes to one. So faith is a kind of response. Faith is a passion. It requires grace. It requires divine assistance."
Episode description:
If there would be a Christian type of depth psychology, a part of its foundation would most likely be founded on the insights about the human self articulated by Danish Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). Our guest in this episode, Professor C. Stephen Evans, has not only imagined but also articulated important parts of the foundations of such a Christian psychology of depth in his book Søren Kierkegaard’s Christian psychology - Insights for counseling and pastoral care.
In this episode, Dr. Evans helps us outline Kierkegaard’s view of the human self and his understanding of anxiety, despair, and self-deception's role in psychological development. He helps us understand how conscience and sin relate to individual psychology in Kierkegaard's psychology. Perhaps most importantly, he shows us how love and forgiveness are the foundations of a Kierkegaardian practice of depth psychology.
Dr. Evans is a world-leading expert on Søren Kierkegaard. He is a Professor of University Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Baylor University, Waco, Texas. A professorial research fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Society at the University of Notre Dame in Sydney, Australia. He has also published extensively on subjects including philosophy of religion and the relationship of psychology and Christianity. His latest book is Kierkegaard and spirituality: Accountability as the Meaning of Human Existence (Kierkegaard as a Christian thinker).
Music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: Ketsa - No light without darkness, Essence and Reborn.
Edited recording of live Q&A and summary of season 2 of Secular Christ with Sean J McGrath.
We would like to invite you to an online meetup and Q&A with Sean J. McGrath where we will wrap up the second season of Secular Christ. We will be meeting on Zoon on Sunday the 13th of November at 5:00 PM CET. We will start with a short lecture by McGrath and a summary of the second season. We then invite you all to converse, ask your questions and also share ideas for future seasons. The session will be recorded.
Please RSVP to j.lusensky@gmail.com
What's the point of a Christian community? Why is community important for a contemporary contemplative Christian? In the final episode of the second season of Secular Christ, Sean McGrath turns to the question of community. We discuss its importance in the contemplative tradition and its absence within psychoanalysis and Analytical Psychology. We discuss the necessity also for a communal symbolic life, Christian eschatology, reaching the razor's edge of contemplative Christianity with the question: what is our attitude to be in a world that is passing away?
For those of you who enjoyed this season, we would like to invite you to a live Q&A and summary with McGrath. The date is set to Sunday 13th of November at 5 pm CET and we will meet on Zoom first for a lecture and then for questions and discussions. Please RSVP to j.lusensky@gmail.com
Music in this episode by Xylo-Ziko - Eventide & Peril. Licensed by Creative Commons.
"The six million dollar question is, what is this God that Jung is talking about? What is Yahweh? In effect, he's putting Yahweh on the couch. That's the entire genius of what Jung's doing, is putting God on the couch. As also if one were to look at it from a faith perspective, that's the entire problem is, you don't put God on the couch."
Episode Description:
The key questions examined in the Biblical Story of Job are: How can the suffering and injustice in the world be reconciled with the image of God that was taught to us? If God is good, where does evil come from? These questions and more Jung took on to examine in his provocative and much-debated work Answer to Job. To help us understand and unpack this work of Jung, I have invited again Jungian scholar Paul Bishop. Paul has written the most extensive commentary on the book, released in 2002 by Routledge as Answer to Job - A commentary.
Through this conversation, Paul helps us to contextualize this book in Jung’s overall psychological oeuvre and to understand the main arguments Jung raises in defense of Job. We discuss the reception of the work and Martin Buber's critique of Jung as a Gnostic and his powerful reaction to this “accusation”. We discuss how to understand Answer to Job in view of the publication of Jung’s Red Book.
Music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: Ketsa - Dawn's dew & Enough.
Ps. I highly recommend you to seek out the latest publication by Paul Bishop, it’s entitled, Nietzsche's the Anti-Christ: A Critical Introduction and Guide (Edinburgh Critical Guides to Nietzsche) which was released by Edinburgh University Press earlier this year.
Church music 2029. A musical interlude by The Psychia†ry.
1. Move into our own - Nicole Mitchell
2. This and that and the other - African Head Charge
3. The carnival of the Animals R.125 The Swan - Camille Saint-Saens
4. Helgmalsrigning - The Psychiatry
5. Coconut - Mango
6. Sickness unto Death - The Psychiatry
7. Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten Arvo Pärt
8. Vorbei - Dora Gerson
9. Inat - Impérieux
10. Delicado - Rudi Lakatos
11. Awakening - The Psychiatry
Sean McGrath received an email from a young person who has been listening to Secular Christ asking: How can I keep growing spiritually through the Christ image, any words of wisdom that helped you along your path of living the contemplative life? This was Sean's reply.
This is a sample of a video recording with Jungian Analyst Robert A. Johnson (May 26, 1921 – September 12, 2018) author of books such as Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche. The interview was conducted by J. Pittman McGehee in San Diego in 2002.
For the full three-hour video visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=M0raXj8AM6M
In the third episode, McGrath takes on the self-help industry and how its ideological spokespersons such as Jordan B. Peterson misses the point of grace and self-transformation through self-surrendering. He discusses how to understand the Lord's Prayer (previously discussed with Donald Carveth) and how contemplative Christianity offers a different path of shadow integration and individuation through the kenotic and Buddhistic orientation of self-emptying.
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Contact: feedback@cross.center
Music in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org. Artist. Ketsa - Brook.
In this episode, McGrath explores the symbolic structures that underlie our search for truth and meaning. He contrasts the "going east" with a return to the "western symbolic" in order to connect with our spiritual and religious mother tongue. He examines how 2000 years of Christianity is a part of the problem and is accelerating a perversion as well as the possible political and personal remedy, by finding back to a more authentic and contemplative Christianity.
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Music in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org. Artist. Ketsa - Brook.
In the second season of Secular Christ, Dr. Sean J. McGrath continues his conversation with Jungian Analyst Jakob Lusensky about the contemplative life in a Secular Age.
I’m this episode McGrath introduces the concept of "Christ nature" and contrasts it with Buddha Nature before he turns to Paul and the Colossians and the Gospel of John to ground it in scripture.
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Music in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org. Artist. Ketsa - Brook.
An audio clip from C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, in which he explains Rudolf Otto’s classic work, The Idea of the Holy and the numinous.
In this extra material for episode 13 of Psychology & The Cross Donald Carveth and Sean McGrath discusses:
How it's possible to believe in God although he does not exist
Examines the Buddhist concept of provisional names
Offers a critique of religious hubris
Agrees that mystical or numinous psychedelic experiences are necessarily not what is needed in order for religion to become a sustainable "Erfahrung" (not "Erlebnis") and pattern in ones life.
Erfahrung #Religion #Psychoanalysis
“Somewhere Jung says that the only evil is unconsciousness and this, I think touches to your work Don, that this growth in consciousness, which psychoanalysis aims towards, has to be understood as a moral drive towards the good.”
Episode description:
What’s the role of conscience, ethics, and morals in psychological development and individuation? To investigate this question we invited again the Toronto-based psychoanalyst Donald Carveth (Episode 12) and Philosophy & Theology professor Sean McGrath (Episode 3) for a conversation. As a base for our discussion, we have read the important 1958 Jung essay ‘A psychological view of conscience’.
You can access it through our new Substack page.
Donald Carveth is the author of the book "The still small voice: Psychoanalytic reflections on guilt and conscience” (Routledge, 2013). He runs a popular Youtube channel on psychoanalysis and also make some of his readings available on his website https://www.doncarveth.com/
Sean McGrath is a Canadian philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He is known for his published work in the history of philosophy and the philosophy of religion. Major single-authored works includes for example 'The Dark Ground of Spirit: Schelling and the unconscious'. There is also a separate podcast series, Secular Christ where Jakob Lusensky discusses questions related to Christianity today.
Jakob Lusensky is a Jungian psychoanalyst with a private practice in Berlin and the host of this podcast.
Music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: "Falling Angels" and "Golden teacher" by Ketsa.
For those of you who listened to the last episode of Psychology & The Cross and got interested in learning more about Julius Spier and Etty Hillesum, we’re now making a previously unreleased essay by Alexandra Nagel available on our new Substack account.
The essay is titled Julius Spier read the Bible for guidance (Etty Hillesum followed him) and outlines how reading the Bible and Christian writers influenced the spirituality of Spier and then of course also Etty Hillesum.
In addition, here are two letters were written between Julius Spier and Etty Hillesum, the first one from Spier, sent on the 12th of August 1941.
Thank you to Wolfgang Heine and Barbara Morrill for the readings of the letters.
Music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: Ketsa - Crystal life.
“Julius Spier is a hand reader, and hand reading in itself is looked down upon, dismissed, forgotten, ignored by regular science. Jungians have not paid attention to Julius Spier.”
Episode description:
This episode is dedicated to the Jungian hand reader Julius Spier (1887-1942). Until now Spier is most known for being the analyst and lover of brilliant Jewish diarist Etty Hillesum, whose writings before being sent to Auschwitz continue to inspire religious seekers around the world.
Few people know of Spier’s relationship to C.G Jung, how he developed a psychological study of inquiry combining Jungian psychology with hand reading, and how there were Jungians trained in his technique and practicing it until the late 1900s (Albert Einstein had his hands read by Spier).
Our guest for this episode is Alexandra Nagel (PhD), a Dutch historian of western esotericism and the scholar who singlehandedly is bringing Julius Spier’s important contributions and fascinating life story to public attention. A few years ago she finished her dissertation on Spier at the Institute of Philosophy at Leiden University.
For more information about Julius Spier, I recommend the following papers by Alexandra Nagel.
Jung, Julius Spier, and Palmistry (Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche 14. No. 1 (2020): 65–81.)
Etty Hillesum, A Devoted Student of Julius Spier
The Hands of Albert Einstein: Einstein's Involvement with Hand Readers and a Dutch Psychic
Another must-read are the diaries of Etty Hillesum: An Interrupted Life the Diaries, 1941-1943
Thank you to Barbara Morrill for the beautiful reading of Etty Hillesum’s letter to Julius Spier.
Music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: Ketsa - Crystal life.
A bit more than a year into this podcast series, it felt like a good time to stop and reflect more deeply on Jung’s wrestle with Christianity, and how it is still relevant for us today. For this reflection, I invited back three Jungian scholars with whom I had spoken individually on previous episodes. Our discussion together was an opening both of insights and questions:
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When we speak of dreaming the Christian myth forward, as Jung did, whose dream do we mean? Who's doing the dreaming?
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Is Jung’s psychological project an attempt to transcend or reform Christianity?
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What might Jung's psychologizing of Christian tradition mean for those within and outside it?
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In Jungian discourse, where is the body of Christ? Where are the poor?
About the participants:
Murray Stein is a renowned Jungian psychoanalyst and the author of important books such as Jung's Treatment of Christianity and Map of the Soul.
Ann Conrad Lammers is coeditor of The Jung–White Letters, The Jung–Kirsch Letters, as well as editor and co-translator of Erich Neumann’s two-volume work The Roots of Jewish Consciousness.
Paul Bishop is a renowned British scholar who has spent the last twenty-five years researching and writing on the foundational relationship between C.G. Jung and Friedrich Nietzsche and Johann Wolfgang Goethe.
Moderating the discussion is Jakob Lusensky, a Jungian psychoanalyst with a private practice in Berlin. He is the host of the podcast and a founder of the non-profit organization Center of the Cross, working within the intersection of psychology and religion with the mission of individual and social transformation.
Read excerpts from the letter correspondence between C.G Jung and Protestant theologian and Pastoral psychologist Adolf Keller (1872-1963). An important conversation when trying to understand the difficulties and possibilities in bridging Christianity and Jungian psychology.
Recommended reading: C. G. Jung – Adolf Keller: On Theology and Psychology, edited by Marianne Jehle-Wildberger and published by the Philemon Foundation.
"I think that individuation should be in service to the community. It should lead to one's living within the larger. It's about me bringing my individuality, not my individualism, but the uniqueness of myself into the community. And in some ways, the community helps me to individuate."
Episode description:
In this episode, I speak to the pastor, theologian, and Jungian analyst in-training Kenneth Kovacs. The conversation circles around the correspondence between C.G Jung and Protestant theologian and Pastoral psychologist Adolf Keller (1872-1963).
This exchange of letters, researched by Kenneth, leads us into a conversation about the relationship between individuation and community, the dialectical theology of Karl Barth, the dark side of the numinous, the possible dangers of imitating Christ, and what the fields of psychology and theology can learn from each other. Interspersed throughout the conversation are read excerpts from Jung and Keller's letters.
Recommended reading: C. G. Jung – Adolf Keller: On Theology and Psychology, edited by Marianne Jehle-Wildberger and published by the Philemon Foundation.
Kenneth Kovacs, Ph.D., is pastor of Catonsville Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, MD (USA) and a Diploma candidate at the C.G. Jung Institut-Zurich. He is a graduate of Rutgers University, Princeton Theological Seminary, and the University of St. Andrews, Scotland (UK). Ken is the author of The Relational Theology of James E. Loder: Encounter and Conviction (New York/Bern: Peter Lang Press, 2009) and Out of the Depths: Sermons and Essays (Parson's Porch, 2016). He also serves on the board of directors of the Jung Society of Washington.
Music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: Ketsa - Between each, Essence & Blue violets.
A letter from Carl Gustav Jung to Sigmund Freud. Küsnacht 11th of February, 1910
"Dear Professor Freud,
The ethical problem of sexual freedom really is enormous and worth the sweat of all noble souls. But 2000 years of Christianity have to be replaced bv something equivalent. An ethical fraternitv, with its mythical Nothing, not infused by any archaic-infantile driving force, is a pure vacuum and can never evoke in man the slightest trace of that age-old animal power which drives the migrating bird across the sea and without which no irresistible mass movement can come into being. I imagine a far finer and more comprehensive task for psychoanalysis than alliance with an ethical fraternity.
I think we must give it time to infiltrate into people from many centres, to revivify among intellectuals a feeling for svmbol and myth, ever so gently to transform Christ back into the soothsaying god of the vine, which he was, and in this way absorb those ecstatic instinctual forces of Christianity for the one purpose of making the cult and the sacred myth what they once were— a drunken feast of joy where man regained the ethos and holiness of an animal.
That indeed was the beauty and purpose of classical religion, which from God knows what temporary biological needs has turned into a Misery Institute. Yet how infinitelv much rapture and wantonness lie dormant in our religion, waiting to be led back to their true destination!
A genuine and proper ethical development cannot abandon Christianity but must grow up within it, must bring to fruition its hymn of love, the agony and ecstasy over the dying and resurgent god, the mystic power of the wine, the awesome of the Last Supper— only this ethical development can serve the vital forces of religion. But a syndicate of interests dies out after 10 years.
Very sincerely yours,
Jung
* Fifty years later one of Jung’s pupils wrote him a letter quoting the above remarks about Christianity. In a letter of 9 Apr. 59 Jung replied:
Best thanks for the quotation from that accursed correspondence. For me it is an unfortunately inexpungable reminder of the incredible folly that filled the days of my youth. The journey from cloud-cuckoo-land back to reality lasted a long time. In my case Pilgrim’s Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am."
“Jesus was the first psychoanalyst. The most brilliant psychoanalyst of all time. The whole theory of projection is right there. Why do you complain about a mote in your neighbor's eye when there's a beam in your eye, he says. So much of psychoanalytic insight is there in the New Testament, especially in the words of Jesus and in St. Paul. So I became increasingly struck by these parallels.”
Episode description:
In this episode I speak to Toronto-based psychoanalyst Donald Carveth. We discuss how Don converted from Jung to Freud, his writing on the importance of differentiating conscience from the superego, and what we can learn from Jesus and the bible about psychoanalysis.
Donald Carveth is the author of the book "The still small voice: Psychoanalytic reflections on guilt and conscience” (Karnac, 2013). He runs a popular Youtube channel on psychoanalysis and also make some of his readings available on his website https://www.doncarveth.com/
Music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: "Reborn", "Essence", "Blue violets", "Enough" by Ketsa.
I think so much of Jung's work is his wrestling with Christianity. I think if you want to understand Jung, you need to have some understanding and engagement with Christianity. You certainly need to read the bible.Episode description:
In this episode, I speak to Jungian analyst Jason E. Smith, author of the book Religious But Not Religious: Living a Symbolic Life. We discuss Jason’s background as an actor, the difference between a religious attitude and religious belief, how he himself has navigated Jung's psychology and Christian faith, individuation's relationship to the collective, and Jung's relationship to Jesus.
For those of you interested in continuing to follow Sean McGrath’s search for secular Christ, you need to subscribe to that podcast separately. Alternatively, subscribe to our Youtube channel.
Biography:
Jason E. Smith is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. He is a past president of the C.G. Jung Institute of Boston, and currently serves as a training analyst and faculty member for the New England Institute. Jason is host of the podcast Digital Jung, and author of Religious But Not Religious: Living a Symbolic Life, published by Chiron.
Music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: “No Light Without Darkness,” “Blue Violets,” and “Hard Sell,” by Ketsa.
In this last episode of the first season, Sean McGrath continues his conversation with Jungian Analyst Jakob Lusensky, in seeking the secular Christ. A conversation that leads back to the question of antichrist and how social media and consumerism feed a life of the imaginary at the cost of the real. McGrath discusses climate change, 'Friday's for future' and Greta Thunberg and the question of saving not our planet but our civilization.
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Music in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org. Artist. Xylo-Ziko - First light, Songbird and Light.
"What we're talking about in the Christ is something that actually doesn't naturally belong in this world. It is experienced as infection in a certain way, but it's the infection that brings life and hope and new forms of community."
In this episode, Sean McGrath returns to some of the questions we initially asked in this podcast. In what way is Christ a secular figure? What is the Church in the secular age? What can anti-Christ teach us when seeking Christ in the secular world? This leads us to a closer look at how consumerism is twisting our longings for faith, hope, and love into its opposite.
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McGrath discusses these themes together with Berlin-based psychoanalyst Jakob Lusensky.
Music in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org. Artist. Xylo-Ziko - Unguja.
How to practice contemplative Christianity? In this episode of Secular Christ, McGrath makes it clear that there are no (Jordan B Peterson) rules for life needed, but what's necessary is to carve out a space in our everyday life for contemplation, meditation, and prayer. He discusses further the importance of coming to terms with our own psychological impotence and the move from the necessary solitude to a different way of being together.
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Music in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org. Artist. Xylo-Ziko, 'Eventide, First Light'.
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In the fifth episode of Secular Christ, Philosophy and Theology professor, Sean J McGrath continues his seeking for Christ in the Secular Age. His starting point this time is the work of the American Franciscan priest and writer Richard Rohr, who through his many books and public lectures has led to a rediscovery of the cosmic christ and contemplative Christianity.
McGrath aligns with Rohr in arguing that contemplative Christianity is the answer to the spiritual “movement east”, and to a rediscovery of the sacredness of our secular lives. As a former Catholic monk himself, McGrath shares a definition of what contemplative Christianity is and how it can be practiced in everyday life. McGrath discusses these themes together with Berlin-based psychoanalyst Jakob Lusensky.
Music in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org. Artist.Xylo-Ziko, 'First light', 'Dark water' and 'Songbird'.
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In this final trailer for the podcast Secular Christ, Sean McGrath continues his seeking for Christ in the Secular Age. This time his "case study" is the Slovenian philosopher and Lacanian, Slavoj Žižek. McGrath views Žižek as one of today's intellectuals who best understands Christianity but also as a representative of the philosophy of (unredeemed) human poverty. A tragic philosophy without hope or redemption and which he also contrasts with the philosophy of human potentiality.
Music in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org. Artist. Xylo-Ziko Titles: Rainbow, Brook, First Light.
In this episode Philosophy and Theology professor, Sean McGrath offers a critique of Jordan B Peterson’s archetypal take on Christianity. McGrath sees his fellow Canadian as a representative of the philosophy of human potentiality which he contrasts with a Paulian philosophy of redeemed human poverty.
Make sure to search and subscribe for the full Secular Christ podcast on the following link.
Music in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org. Artist. Xylo-Ziko Titles: Dark Water, Perile, Locomotive and First Light.
In the second episode of the new podcast Secular Christ, Dr. Sean McGrath helps us to make a necessary distinction between naive versus mature secularism. He describes what happens to religion in the secular age and how belief has turned into a consumer product.McGrath goes on to describe how Christianity in instances has become an absolute reversal of itself, the antichrist, and has brought with it a new form of evil into this world. In order to not miss any of these episodes, search for "Secular Christ" and subscribe to that podcast.
Reading: Charles Taylor - A secular AgeMusic in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org. Artist. Xylo-Ziko Titles: Dark Water, First light, Submersible & Brook.
For the coming four Sundays of Advent ‘Psychology & The Cross’ will take a break and give room for a new podcast series that we named 'Secular Christ'. The spark for this initiative came from a conversation I had in episode 3 with Theology & Philosophy professor and former monk Dr Sean J McGrath. In it, he spoke of the limits of psychology and the role of Christian faith in socio-political transformation.
So if psychology “is not the end of the road”, what’s next?
A trailer to the podcast Secular Christ with Dr. Sean J McGrath.
Send in a voice message with your questions or thoughts: https://anchor.fm/secular-christ/message
Jung's description of his schoolboy vision of God landing an enormous turd on the Basel Cathedral. The excerpts are from the biography 'Memories, dreams and reflections'.For the full text and Jung's own interpretation of this event, download the biography on this link.
“We can not have a world of individuated individuals without having also a developed and individuated community. That is where I think Christianity has a lot to teach everybody, including Jungians.”
Episode description:
David Tacey is a Jungian scholar and interdisciplinary researcher whose teaching and writing encompasses the areas of psychoanalysis, religion, spirituality studies, and literary approaches to psychology. In this episode, David speaks of his analysis with the late James Hillman, and about his former mentor's disdain towards Christianity and the Jungian Self. He addresses the importance of reading the bible symbolically rather than literally, the necessary death and rebirth of Christianity, and how Jungian individuation needs to be complemented with a Christian social ethos. Finally, we discuss Jung’s role as a prophet for the 21st century, in dreaming the Christian story onward.
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Music played in this episode licensed under creativecommons.org: 'Ketsa - No light without darkness, 'Siddhartha Corsus - Constellations.'
An audio clip from John Freeman's 'Face to Face' (BBC) interview at Jung's house at Küsnach, in March 1959. It was broadcast in Great Britain on October 22, 1959.Watch the full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AMu-G51yTY
What does it mean for Jung to be a Christian? Those symbols of the Christian church continued to matter for him deeply. The crucifixion remained a central image for his thinking, and the idea of resurrection, well, he reframed it in terms of winning through to a resurrected body when one is still alive. But that is the kind of language he would not have used if he had abandoned the Christian mythology, the Christian story.
Episode description:
Ann Conrad Lammers is a Jungian scholar who has worked and written at the crossroads of theology and psychology for the last forty years. Her doctoral work at Yale University led to the book In God’s Shadow: The Collaboration of Victor White and C.G. Jung, and she is the editor of their correspondence.In this episode, Ann guides us through the creative and complex relationship between C.G. Jung and Dominican priest Victor White: a foundational relationship for Jung, and crucial to a deeper understanding of how Jungian psychology relates to Christianity.With read excerpts of the Jung–White correspondence as a backdrop, Ann shares her view on Jung as a Christian, the proposed idea of Jung as a therapist of an ailing Christian tradition, Jung’s relativized Christ, and the potential dangers of an Imitatio Jung.
A special thank you to Jungian analyst Paul Brutsche for his beautiful Basel accent in recording the voiceover of C.G. Jung.BiographyAnn Conrad Lammers is co-editor of The Jung–White Letters, The Jung–Kirsch Letters, as well as editor and cotranslator of Erich Neumann’s two-volume work, The Roots of Jewish Consciousness. She is currently English-language editor and assistant translator for a selection of Emma Jung’s previously unpublished writings and artworks.
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Music played in this episode"Dawns Dew" and "Mind" by ketsa.uk. Licensed under creativecommons.org by NC-ND 4.0.
A letter from C.G Jung To Count Hermann von Keyserling,
Küsnacht, 2 January 1928
"Dear Count,
Your return to yourself, enforced by illness, is on the right track and is something I have wished and expected for you. You identify with the eternally creative, restless, and ruthless god in yourself, therefore you see through everything personal— a tremendous fate which it would be ridiculous either to praise or to censure!
I was compelled to respect Nietzsche’s Amor fati until I had my fill of it, then I built a little house way out in the country near the mountains and carved an inscription on the wall: Philemonis sacrum— Fausti poenitentia, and “ dis-identified” myself with the god. I have never regretted this doubtless very unholy act.
By temperament I despise the “ personal,” any kind of “ togetherness,” but it is so strong a force, this whole crushing unspiritual weight of the earth, that I fear it. It can rouse my body to revolt against the spirit so that before reaching the zenith of my flight I fall lamed to earth. That is the danger you too must reckon with. It is also the fear that prevents our friend X from flying. He can be nothing else but intellectual.
You have paid a salutary tribute to the earth with your illness. Let’s hope your gods will be equally gracious to you next time!
With best wishes for the New Year,
Yours sincerely,
C.G Jung"
Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 49-50
In this bonus material to episode four of Psychology and the Cross, you get to hear the full dream of C.G Jung about how his dream-father leads him to the "highest presence". A dream that Jung made his own interpretation of but which has also been analyzed by other scholars such as Wolfgang Giegerich.
The dream was first shared by Jung in the Aniela Jaffé biography 'Memories, dreams, reflections'.
Reading recommendations:A. Jaffé & C.G Jung, Memories, dreams, reflections (Internet Archive)
W. Giegerich, Jung’s Millimeter - Feigned Submission (Article)
What do we do if God is dead? British scholar, Paul Bishop examines the links and relationships between Nietzsche's Zarathustra and C.G Jung's Red Book. Understanding Jung's visionary work as an anti-Zarathustra, replying to Nietzsche that, God is not dead, “Er ist lebendiger denn je.” He is more alive than ever.
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Recommended reading: Shamdasani, Hillman (2013) Lament of the Dead : Psychology after Jung's Red Book
I’ve learned an awful lot from Jung. I feel I have an immense debt of gratitude to him, in that way, in that, if you read Jung, you’re really getting a little education in itself. What Jung is trying to do is to reinvest that notion of redemption with meaning. Not in a way that abandons its theological term, but to make it meaningful: an existential redemption in a world where God is dead.Episode description:
Paul Bishop is a renowned British scholar who has spent the last twenty-five years researching and writing on the foundational relationship between C.G Jung and Friedrich Nietzsche and Johann Wolfgang Goethe. In this episode, we dive into Jung’s relationship to both these figures but with a special emphasis on the latter and the legend Faust as an archetypal motif. Goethe's Faust struck a chord in Jung and its foundational story when trying to understand Jung’s own inner struggles, motivations, creative contributions, and wrestling with the religious question. We explore an “Imitatio Fausti” in contrast to an “Imitatio Christi” and the seeking for psychological transformation. How the question of finding redemption in a secularized world is portrayed in the story Faust, and transmitted through Jung’s life and psychology.
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Music played in this episode:'One has another' and 'Blue Violets' by Ketsa. Licensed under creativecommons.org by NC-ND 4.0.
Islam basically is acceptance. And this acceptance is not exactly identical with the Christian faith. Islam has—this is what interests me very much—in the Islamic perception of the mystery, I would say it is more open to the mystery: that God can also destroy. There’s no happy end guaranteed.
Episode description:
Bernard Sartorius is a Jungian Analyst based in Zurich and a scholar of Islamic Studies. In this episode, we’re investigating individuation and Islamic faith, in relation to Christianity. We discuss psychological agnosticism, religious fundamentalism, and Jung’s difficulties with surrendering. How Jung, in the context of a dream shared in the biography ‘Memories, dreams, reflections', grapples with bowing in front of the mystery.
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Music played in this episode:‘Roam’, ‘Chrystal life’ and ‘Aimless by Ketsa. Licensed under creativecommons.org by NC-ND 4.0.
Recommended dream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLBa_nu0kPY&t=32s
In this extra material to the third episode of Psychology & The Cross, philosopher and theology professor Sean McGrath speak on how to advance the Jungian paradigm and what is needed to "dream the dream forward". McGrath also talks of how he thinks that Professor Sonu Shamdasani single-handedly made Jung academically respectful as well as in his belief that it's the analysands and analysts that can advance the paradigm. Last but not least, we discuss the role of the Red Book and how the proper response to is is to make your own.
What are the obstacles when trying to bridge the psychology of C.G Jung and Christianity? The obstacle according to Philosopher Sean McGrath is 'psychological absolutism'.In this extra material from the third episode of the podcast 'Psychology & The Cross' Professor McGrath discusses the work of Wolfgang Giegerich, the limitations of psychology, and Jung as a guerilla theorist.
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At the end of the day, psychological integration is not salvation. And I think that most people who have done the work will be ready enough to concede that. This is not the end of the road, it’s not salvation. What do we want? We don’t want just integrated individuals, but we want a redeemed order of being, we want justice on earth.
Episode description:
Sean McGrath is a Professor of Philosophy and Theology, a researcher of the philosophical roots of psychoanalysis, and a former professed Catholic Monk. In this episode, McGrath shares some of his learnings from the monastery, before helping us to understand how C.G Jung (mis)understood evil, and the role of the feminine in Christianity. MLast, but not least, McGrath helps us to connect how inner work and individuation link to the actions in the outer world: how by laying down your life for your community you might find the inner peace that you seek.
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Music played in this episode ‘Bed’ by Ketsa, ‘Amsterdam’ and ‘Amsterdam Blac Koyote Remix’ by Lasers licensed under creativecommons.org by NC-ND 4.0.
In this short segment, Amy Cook explains Kierkegaard and Jung's views on anxiety, despair and neurosis and the potential held in mental suffering. This is bonus material to an episode of the Psychology & The Cross podcast.
My conversation with Amy Cook about Kierkegaard and Jung in the episode of Psychology & The Cross was so rich. I, therefore, decided to share some extra material highlighting specific topics discussed in her book, ‘Jung & Kierkegaard – Researching a kindred spirit in the shadows’.
In this short segment, Amy explains both Kierkegaard and Jung's views on 'the therapeutic value of faith'.
Kierkegaard has a lot to say about self-deception. He has a lot to say about how resilient our self-deceptions are. He has an awful lot to say about authenticity… I think what Jungian psychology really needs, is a Kierkegaard.Episode description:
For this episode, I had the pleasure to speak to scholar Amy Cook who’s written a bold and beautiful book comparing the psychological projects of the Danish philosopher and Christian existentialist Søren Kierkegaard and Carl Gustav Jung. Amy helps us shed new light on the Jungian psychological project by comparing it to Kierkegaards, who she describes as a shadow figure of Jung. The conversation dives into the relationship between knowledge, religious experience, and belief, Jung’s own struggle with his Christian faith, and their respective renderings of individuation and the imitatio Christi.
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Music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org:'Ketsa - Hard sell'‘Ketsa - No light without darkness’‘The Psychiatry - Sickness unto death’
In our first episode, Dr. Murray Stein spoke of Jung's vision that a new religion will take form in about six hundred years. The context for this statement is a dream that Berliner Jungian analyst Max Zeller (who later emigrated to Los Angeles) shared with C.G Jung when they met in Zurich in 1949. In this bonus material of that episode Stein shares this story and comments on it.
It was first published in Psychological perspectives, 1975 (The journal of the Jung Institute of Los Angeles).
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You know, the reason I became an analyst—I was ordained as a minister—and it wasn’t that I lost my faith, or went sour on the Christian ministry. It was because I felt that Jungian psychology went deeper into the source of people’s needs and problems. And as an analyst, I could go there with them.
Episode description:
Dr. Murray Stein is a renowned Jungian psychoanalyst and the author of important books such as ‘Jung’s treatment of Christianity’ and ‘Map of the Soul’. Dr. Stein is perhaps the Jungian who has delved the deepest into C.G Jung and his relation to the Christian tradition. In this episode, he sheds light on Jung’s rendering of Christianity through his psychological project. He helps us understand how Jungs’ psychology is rooted in the tradition of Protestantism, expands on Jungs’ idea of “the invisible church”, and Jung’s relationship to Jesus.
Dr. Stein also generously shares stories from his own life, as well as anecdotes of Jung himself. For instance, you will hear the story of how Jung himself his whole life walked around with a bible in his pocket and how to live one's life at the center of the cross.
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Music played in this episode: Licensed under creativecommons.org: 'Ketsa - No light without Darkness', 'Siddhartha Corsus - Constellations.'
In this short trailer for the podcast, 'Psychology & The Cross, Dr. Murray Stein shares a story of C.G Jung and the cross. Subscribe on Youtube: