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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.
Jungian Analyst Jakob Lusensky engages in dialogues and research at the intersection of psychology and religion, for the purpose of individual and cultural transformation.
“What does it mean for Jung to be a Christian? Those symbols of the Christian church continued to matter to him deeply. The crucifixion remained a central image in his thinking. And the idea of resurrection, well, he reframed it in terms of winning through to a resurrected body while one is still alive. But that is the kind of language that he would not use if he had abandoned the Christian mythology, the Christian story.”
(0:53) Jakob Lusensky: Welcome to Psychology and the Cross. In this episode, I engage in a dialogue with Ann Conrad Lammers. Anne 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. She’s a co-editor of The Jung–White Letters, The Jung–Kirsch Letters, as well as an editor and co-translator of Erich Neumann’s two-volume work, The Roots of Jewish Consciousness. She is currently the English-language editor and assistant translator for a selection of Emma Jung’s previously unpublished writings and artworks. 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 for anyone interested in a deepened dialogue between human psychology and Christian faith. With the [Jung–White] relationship as a backdrop, Anne shares her view on Jung as a Christian; the proposed idea of Jung as a therapist of an ailing Christian tradition; as well as the necessity of Jung’s relativized Christ for continued conversation between Jungian psychology and the cross.
But we start from the beginning. How did it all begin?
(2:26) Ann Conrad Lammers: How did it start? There’ve been so many chapters in my relationship to C.G. Jung. I think my first hint about C.G. Jung probably came while I was a senior in high school. So, seventeen years old. The wife of one of the senior faculty at the boarding school where I was studying put me up to thinking about Jung’s writing about the feminine, because I had given myself an assignment to write an independent study paper, a scholarly paper that was far beyond me. It was more than I knew how to do at that age, but I was fearless and I jumped in. And I wanted to write about how women are portrayed in literature. (Laughs) Rather a small topic.
Once I got to studying in seminary, I gravitated immediately to courses on theology and psychology. By that time, I was already a mother of two children, and divorced, and quite invested in the prospect or possibility of ministry, especially therapeutic—therapeutically understood—a healing. How would healing come to people from both the psychological and the theological side? I took more than one course on schools of depth psychology, in relation to theology. And that gave me a chance to sink my teeth into some of Jung’s writings in graduate-school context, where it was possible to ask difficult questions and get some kind of guidance in how one would approach those answers. It was Jung that took me by the lapels and dragged me deeper; I couldn’t stop reading. When I began to think about further graduate study, I was still not through digging into the marriage or bridge or combination that I wanted between theology and psychology. And by the time I had done three years at seminary, I had a fair idea about schools of theology. I knew how many different voices there were in the room, even to do any kind of exegesis of a biblical passage. There were many voices in the room. By then, I was in my later thirties, when I began doctoral work at Yale, in their religious studies department—bless them, they gave me lots of rope to hang myself with. I did an independent program that was permitted under their generous understanding of what their department was for. It included some pretty demanding theological seminars for which I’m ever grateful. And I had to decide for myself what to do about the psychological side of my study program. Well, it was going to be C.G. Jung—there was no question about that. I needed to find some way to make the theology side of the equation and the psychology side talk to each other. And that meant I had, essentially, I had to find a case study. I was guided to the letters that Jung wrote to Victor White—but at that point, we only had Jung’s side, and only three quarters of Jung’s letters to White had been published. But that was already a lot.
(7:28) Jakob Lusensky: For the people who don’t know much about Viktor White, maybe only that he was a priest, or that he was a Dominican. Or maybe not even that. Could you give a short introduction to Victor White?
(7:42) Ann Conrad Lammers: Victor White was the son of an Anglican priest. He and his father were estranged. There are some clues that make me think that his father was a pretty hard man: hard to love, a hard man to be the son of. And White, who had a calling from early on towards theological study and the ministry, decided to become a Catholic, and did. By the time he was nineteen, he was already a Dominican. He had joined the Dominican order, and he was getting a thorough grounding in philosophy (four years of philosophical coursework before three years, I think, of theological coursework), the very rigorous training that Dominicans were given who came into the order as young people, as White did. He was born in Croydon, part of London now, but his resting place, his permanent place to do his study and teaching, was the Oxford Blackfriars house.
Victor White with a systematic theologian. He was a good, orthodox Thomist. He had done a fair amount of study in neo-scholastic writings, but his own leaning was towards a part of St. Thomas’s teaching that prepared him, in a way, to work with Jung, because one of his very important papers was on the concept and process of affective knowledge. You know, most of St. Thomas’s writings are propositional and discursive and logical and rational. But there was a side of Aquinas that dealt in direct, intimate knowledge of God, a leaning towards mysticism, if you like. And it was known for Victor White’s purposes as affective knowledge. This was very important to White, and it prepared him to be open to the experiential and experimental side of learning that made Jung’s work congenial to him. But it made him congenial to Jung.
White went through some personal turmoil during the Second World War, and began doing Jungian analysis. But with an analyst in London, John Laird, rather a colorful, colorful personality, but he was helpful to White, when White first went to see him, it was really an eye-opener for him. He hadn’t heard of Jung before. And John Laird began informing him about concepts like the shadow. Well, during the Second World War, which is when all this is going on, you couldn’t send a letter to Switzerland, or a package. The mails were not open during the war. And it wasn’t until 1945—August—that White was able, finally, and he’d been preparing himself to write to Jung, and he finally got his chance. And he sent Jung four off-prints of papers that he had written about Jung’s thought, and about Thomas Aquinas, and I mean, you know, he tried to make a blend, or to bridge over between orthodox Catholic thought in the Thomistic world, and Jungian psychology, depth psychology. And he found several ways that Jung and Aquinas were soulmates. They’re both teleological in their thought. They’re looking at a final cause. For Jung, the self is pulling the ego towards its wholeness. That’s teleology—the telos, the goal.
And for Aquinas, following Aristotle, God works teleologically. The whole salvation history is teleology. It’s all going towards the ultimate revelation of the kingdom. And for White the payoff would have been that he wanted to make Catholicism—orthodox, theological Christianity—acceptable, usable, helpful to modern human beings, human beings as they are today. Not as they were in Aquinas’s day, but as they are now. And so he wanted to bring Jung into his Thomistic world in much the way that Thomas Aquinas brought Aristotle into his theological world. Only problem was, Aristotle had finished his writings by the time Thomas got to him. C.G. Jung was very much a work in process, a man in process. He was still working on things.
(14:10) Jakob Lusensky: And when Victor White reached out to Jung with the first letter, what was Jung seeing in Victor White, then?
(14:20) Anne Conrad Lammers: When Victor White showed up and sent him those four papers that he had written, Jung thought, this was it: he had the collaborator he’d been looking for.
(14:33) (Narrator reading from Jung) Fifth of October, 1945. My dear Father White, in the meantime I have finished reading the pamphlets you kindly have sent me. My first reaction was, what a pity that you live in England, and that I don’t have you at my elbow, when I’m wandering in the wide field of theological knowledge—excuse the irreverential pun: you are to me a white raven. And as much as you are the only theologian I know who has really understood something about what the power of psychology in our present world means, you have seen its enormous implications. I cannot tell you how glad I am that I know a man, a theologian, who is conscientious enough to weigh my opinions, on the basis of a careful study of my writings. It is a gigantic task indeed, to create a new approach to an old truth. More than once I have put the question to my theological friends. What about a new wine in old skins, the old way of interpreting has itself to be interpreted, this time with the help of science. I do not combat the Christian truth, am only arguing with the modern mind. We have known, for long and sufficiently well, how things ought to be, but we don’t know how to bring them about. This is my main concern.
(16:24) Ann Conrad Lammers: Victor White was open to the experimental and pragmatic and empirical science of psychology. Victor White would hear him without distorting the message. And he would learn, in turn, how to use the language that Victor White was an expert in applying. So both of them had a sense of urgency. Jung because he was reaching the last years of his life already. I mean, their relationship lasted for fifteen years at the ends of both of their lives. White died very young of cancer—well, pretty young, in his fifties. And Jung died of old age, but they died within a year of each other. When they began their collaboration, they both thought that they could save the Christian West. I mean, you know, putting it very boldly. They wanted to help the culture, help the civilization, which had just come through this terrible war.
(17:49) Jacob Lusensky: So what about the white raven? Jung’s description of Victor White? Could you—
(17:57) Ann Conrad Lammers:—well, he’s making a nice little pun. But he’s also referring to the passage in, um, Kings, I think, the Book of Kings. Elijah is fed by ravens. He’s out in the wilderness, dying, and ravens bring him his food. So White was a gift from God, bringing Jung out in the wilderness all alone, the voice of, you know, the voice of the prophet who is not wanted in his own country. White was bringing him his sustenance. That’s why White is a white raven. And of course, it’s important that it should be a white raven, not a black one. Black ones are bad luck, as we know, and a portent of death.
(18:51) Jakob Lusensky: Right. When you when you said that now, I’m thinking of that famous picture, the photo of the two, that you also have printed in your book. We’re actually, Victor White is in his black dress and Jung is dressed in white.
(19:05) Ann Conrad Lammers: Yeah. And when Victor White looked at that photograph, according to one of his friends, Edwin Squire, he pointed to that picture and made of wisecrack about it. He said, “There’s God and the unconscious.” God and the Unconscious is the name of one of Victor White’s books. Okay? So here’s a picture: Jung is God; White is the unconscious, the one in the shadow.
(19:39) (Narrator reading from Victor White): Twenty-third of October, 1945. My dear Professor Jung, it is quite impossible for me to express my gratitude to you for your letter, or to tell you how much it has meant to me. For some time past, I found myself playing a rather lonely furrow, painfully aware of the inadequacy of my experience on the psychological side. And for my need for an expert in understanding guidance, at least to the extent of some reassurance that I was not positively on the wrong lines from the psychological standpoint. How very much do I also wish that I could indeed be at your elbow, though very much aware that the benefit would be far greater on my side. I am afraid, however, that this is impossible, and that I must try to be useful where I actually am. But perhaps I may have the boldness to say that nothing on earth could please or profit me more than to be able to visit you. If only for two or three days.
(20:41) Anne Conrad Lammers: They had about five years of really positive collaboration. What happened right away was that, extraordinarily, he invited White to come and stay with him at Bollingen, at the tower. That just didn’t happen off the, off the bat, with every stranger who wrote to him. That tells you something about how earnestly Jung wanted to engage with this man. And White was delighted, and came, of course, and they spent time talking to each other and sailing. And White went home from that visit with a dream, that he wrote to Jung, that they were out sailing. And Jung was smoking his pipe, and not paying attention to the helm. He was just letting the wind carry them. And they were being carried through rocks. And Jung wasn’t upset about that, in the dream. And they somehow or other came up on the shore. And the boat had developed wheels and rolled on the shore—it was amphibious! So this was how White’s unconscious greeted the relationship. And Jung wrote back, saying it is indeed a dangerous—an exciting but a dangerous—journey that we are on. And the wind is in charge. Which, as a sailor, would be a horrifying conclusion. You don’t let the wind be in charge, you keep your hand on the helm, and you work your sails, and you guide your boat, especially if there are rocks. But Jung himself was a bit euphoric, I think, about the prospects of this relationship. After this, they both did a good deal of important writing.
Victor White chose to ignore certain things in Jung’s writings that he had access to. There was a lecture that Jung had given at Eranos, about the Trinity, that White got hold of and read. And he chose to overlook the section of that lecture that says the Trinity is incomplete without the fourth. The fourth has to include evil. Well, that was going to be extremely problematic, and White ignored it, at that point. In 1948, when Jung was busy writing his lecture for Eranos for that summer. The title was “Über das Selbst,” “About the Self” or “On the Self.” And that was another of his writings that went pretty deep into the issue of God needing, or God having, an evil side. God being both good and evil, complexe oppositorum. Victor White couldn’t make sense of it. White was being shown, at that point in ‘48, a kind of red-hot revelatory process that Jung was going through, that Jung was very excited about, and it fell with a thud. White could not assimilate it. He couldn’t make sense of all these positive and negative polarities within what was meant to be sacred. That just didn’t scan for White’s orthodox Thomistic mind. He couldn’t make it—he couldn’t assimilate it and digest it. He couldn’t greet it with joy, which is what Jung would have hoped for, I think.
And what White did instead was to write an extremely critical review of “On the Self.” And he said, Jung is falling into Manichaeism: I believe that there are two Gods, a good and a bad. Or something like that. It’s a dualistic error, a heresy, basically. He gave Jung some, in his review, he gave Jung some advice about readings that he might do that would straighten him out. And it is so condescending, what White right wrote. It sounds like the kind of advice that you would give to a first-year theology student who hasn’t done his assignment. And his next letter to White, where he took White’s argument apart in rather angry terms—he resented very much being called a Manichee. Things did not get better after that. Their letters get really almost incomprehensible at a certain point.
(26:56) And then, while this was going on, White was also encountering crisis in his life as a Dominican, because Jung came out with Answer to Job, shortly after, in 1951, and White read it, and at first, White’s understanding was that this was a piece of writing that Jung would share with his inner circle. By no means was it going to be published. But that was never really Jung’s intention.
(27:35) (Narrator reading from Victor White) Fifth of April, 1952. My dear C. G., thank you a million for Job. Though I have countless other things to do, I can hardly put it down. It is the most exciting and moving book I’ve read in years. And somehow it arouses tremendous bonds of sympathy between us, and lights up all sorts of dark places, both in the scriptures, and in my own psyche. Of course, this is not a considered judgment on all it says. The first impact is too strong for me to dare any such thing.
(28:09) Anne Conrad Lammers: “I love it. I’ve never seen anything better.” And that was White’s first reaction to Answer to Job, when he thought it wasn’t going to be published. But it was published. And then, in 1954, it was published in English. And now White really had a problem. Because his colleagues were reading it. As long as it was only in German, it could fly under the radar. But now, his English-language-speaking English Dominicans could read Answer to Job in English. And White had already hitched his wagon so firmly to Jung’s that he couldn’t separate his career from Jung’s writings. And Answer to Job was a problem for White’s colleagues, and therefore for his superiors. And therefore, for White’s career. White was supposed to have become the Region of Studies, which is a position that he earned and needed to have and should have had, and would have been good at. He would have controlled the whole curriculum for Oxford Blackfriars. For all the young men who were coming in, he would have been in charge of their learning. And he would have done a great job. But also because of an accident of history, a very highly placed Dominican in Rome, who was sympathetic to White, had died in a car accident, and was replaced by the next man in line for that job—who was extremely conservative, and didn’t like White’s work or White’s reputation or White’s connection to Jung—at all. And all of a sudden, White was not going to be the Region of Studies. In fact, he had to go take a sabbatical in California. He was kind of exiled from England. This crash in his career came at the same time that Jung’s wife was dying of cancer, and the combination of White running into a brick wall, in his professional life, and being sent away, and Jung encountering the final illness of Emma Jung, meant that neither man had any libido left.
(30:46) Jakob Lusensky: You, who have spent so much time, maybe more than most of the people on this planet, with these two men, and this correspondence and this hopeful collaboration that started so enthusiastically from both sides. You speak in your book about the bridge makers, and also that they are using the metaphor at times in their conversation of building bridges, or bridge building. I’m wondering, how do you look at the collaboration?
(31:21) Ann Conrad Lammers: Well, in my view, if one could abstract the collaboration away from the biographies of the two men, so that they would have—so that they would have infinite amounts of energy and time to commit—because they loved each other, they were real friends—and you could see that at the end, when they reconcile as much as possible before the deaths of both of them. If this whole explosion around the time of 1954 had not been made more difficult, or even inevitable, by White’s—he was a captive, at that point—he had already decided not to leave his order. He wasn’t going to make it in the outer world. He was going to stay on as a Dominican. And now he had been denied the promotion that he ought to have had. He was very angry. But he couldn’t get angry at his superiors. Not if he was going to stay in the order. Where the anger flowed was towards Jung. Jung did have a wife who was dying in 1955. And he had no more patience for this argumentative cleric who had turned on him.
(33:01) What if they had had infinite amounts of time and patience? What if they had not been, each in their own way, suffering so much in 1955? I don’t know if they would have had to fall into the silence, the distance, that they were forced into at that point. Jung basically said to White, don’t write anymore. Don’t contact me. The next question is, but what about matters of principle? Could they, in fact, have built a bridge between their two starting points? And in my book, and In God’s Shadow, I made it my job to try and sort that out. And I came to the conclusion, that because of the differences of epistemology—how do you know what you know?—they were never going to create a simple or harmonious connection between their two systems of thought. That wasn’t really within the realm of possibility from the time they began. They both got a bit carried away by their hopefulness and their excitement about finding each other. And White’s willingness to just gloss over the things in Jung’s writing that he really couldn’t agree with—I think he thought that eventually he could bring Jung around, because he underestimated how deeply rooted those statements of Jung’s were. In Jung’s experience, and his thought. He wasn’t going to leave behind—Jung wasn’t—the concept of God as the complex of opposites. And the opposites include, for Jung, evil. White couldn’t go there, and Jung couldn’t be elsewhere. So I think in the end, it was not a bridge that anybody could have built, not from their starting points.
(35:30) (Narrator reading from Jung) Thirtieth of April, 1960. My dear Victor, I have heard of your illness, and I should have liked to come to England to see you. But I have to be careful with my own health. And I must avoid all exertions. As I’m completing my eighty-fifth year, I’m really old, and my forces are definitely limited. I want to assure you of my loyal friendship. I shall not forget all the useful things have I have learned through our many talks. And through your forbearance with me. I was often sorry to be a petra scandali. It is my fate, however, not my choice. And I had to fulfill this unbecoming role. Things had to be moved. And the great crisis of our time: new wine needs new skins.
(36:40) (Narrator reading from White) Eighth of May, 1960. My very dear C.G., of course, I understand that it is impractical for us to meet at present. Perhaps we will, in another world or dimension, where we know even as we are known. I am more convinced than ever of the importance of your pioneer work for humanity, even for those who cannot agree with every word you say, but have to take part in the dialectic discussion with you. I do not know if it is true that you have been a petra scandali to me, as you say you have. But to the extent that you may have been, I think that I can honestly say that I am grateful for it.
(37:23) Jakob Lusensky: Well, I’m also thinking about Jung’s society in this collaboration. You’re writing about that also in your book. Maybe I could quote partly here: “Jung could not act as a therapist if he failed in one of the basic conditions he required of himself as a doctor. His therapeutic stance toward Christianity may therefore not be as viable as Murray Stein and others have argued. It may be too biased from the start by his rejection of the conceptual coinage of theology.” You really described really well, and in a rich way, the shortcomings maybe, or the difficulties that White had, but then also trying to understand this from Jung’s side. And also then, this quote that is shared from your book, you’re commenting on Murray Stein and others, this presentation of Jung as actually a doctor of Christianity, or he tried to treat it as you would treat a patient, that you’re saying, in a way, that he did not really maybe follow the method that he had established for himself, which was that, first you need to get to know the patient, and listen to the patient, before you—and learn the language of the patient—before any treatment can actually take place.
(38:51) Ann Conrad Lammers: I think Jung wished he could be a doctor to the Christian West. Tried his hardest to be, but the patient wasn’t asking for treatment, for this, of this kind, from him. Or maybe, some were, just as the institution that White belonged to had a power shadow. Most churches do. I don’t think you can be a doctor to an institution unless the institution as hit a crisis point and asks for someone to come in and sort them out. And then you can help to a point, but I don’t know that you can do that kind of healing and reform from outside.
(40:00) Jakob Lusensky: When I read your book, or at least in that chapter, I get the sense that you’re saying that maybe he was not interested to learn all the details, for example, around the theology or the—maybe, was he interested enough in the patient, or did he have a genuine interest in healing that patient?
(40:21) Ann Conrad Lammers: I think you when it came to individuals, that he certainly was interested in healing the patient. But I think there’s something a little grandiose and maybe, well, let’s just leave it at that. Just a little grandiose in thinking that you can heal a tradition or heal an institution. Unless you’re inside it.
(40:46) Jakob Lusensky: You have to be in the institution. You have to be inside.
(40:50) Ann Conrad Lammers: Well, I’d like to hear somebody tell the story of how an institution was reformed from the outside.
(41:22) Jakob Lusensky: But I’d also just like us to come back to spend a few minutes on something that we come back to in the previous episodes with other scholars and analysts.
And that is about Jung’s BBC interview at the end of his life. And when being asked about his faith and answering, “I don’t need to believe. I know.”
(41:47) Ann Conrad Lammers: In principle Jung knows and often repeats that God is unknowable, unknowable. This was something on which he and White agreed, by the way. One of White’s books is titled The Unknown God. So he can’t mean that. He can’t be reversing himself on that point. So what is it that he’s saying? I think he’s talking about what he elsewhere says is the impact of direct experience. Direct personal experience. His encounters with the unknown God: he knows what he himself has lived. And he doesn’t rely on a system of belief. He has no doubts and therefore he doesn’t need to believe, because the experience was direct, and personal, and intimate. And it’s part of him. That he doesn’t need to believe, that he knows. This again could become self-validating, a self-validating position. If you imitate Jung, if you take this as your standard of how to approach the divine, then any convincing experience is self-validating. And you become the authority, because you had the experience. And that could become delusional. I think we have to look at the shape of Jung’s life to decide, was he being delusional? Or was he just saying, this is where I stand, based on my experience. Well, I guess what I’m saying is that any individual imitating Jung needs to be part of a validating community. There needs to be more wisdom here than just my estimation of my own mission in life. I may get a sense of calling, but I need to have it validated by the group. There needs to be a trustworthy circle. I mean, Jung said, for heaven’s sakes, don’t imitate me. Be yourself.
(44:42) Jakob Lusensky: I’m wondering, do you then view, yourself, do you view Jung as a Christian?
(44:53) Ann Conrad Lammers: Yes, I do. Because I think he was capable of being more than one thing. But does it mean for Jung to be a Christian? Those symbols of the Christian church continue to matter to him deeply. The crucifixion remained a central image in his thinking. And the idea of resurrection. Well, he reframed it, in terms of winning through to a resurrected body, while one is still living, while one is still alive. And that’s a figure of speech. I’m not sure how, how it applies to Jung himself, or how it applied to any of his followers who heard him say it. But that is the kind of language that he would not use if he had abandoned the Christian mythology, the Christian story. So he’s still living in the Christian myth.
(46:04) Jakob Lusensky: And is there a way for you to also see his project as a sort of attempt to reform Christianity?
(46:13) Ann Conrad Lammers: I think [Jungian scholar] is perfectly right. That he wanted to transcend Christianity, reform it, if he could—transcend it, you know—he thought it might take another six hundred years.
(46:28) Jakob Lusensky: Is there a vision or is there room for Christ in that vision of Jung?
(46:37) Ann Conrad Lammers: Jung never abandoned referring to Christ. He never gave it up. He never rejected that Christian, that central figure of Christianity. So how do you, how could one answer that? Is there room? There was for Jung. It’s just that he reframed everything in terms of the soul’s individual experience. And so for the individual psyche, the individual soul, that image of Christ is a powerful inner person, a powerful inner presence. Unless it’s not, unless your roots are planted somewhere else. So if your roots are planted in Christian soil, why should the image and person of Christ be irrelevant to you?
(47:48) Jakob Lusensky: Well, I guess some people might argue that Jung relativizes Christ, makes him a symbol of many.
(47:58) Ann Conrad Lammers: Oh, yes, I think that’s perfectly true. And if one begins from a perspective of absolute dedication to—how to put it?—propositionally defined Christian thought. Then Jung becomes unappetizing, unacceptable. Jung’s—it’s not acceptable to relativize. Christ can’t be just one symbol of the self, for many Orthodox Christians, so it depends. But yeah, you asked for me. I would say what one wise priest once said to me: I think God knows more than we do. God knows what there is room for. I would love to see some spaciousness of personal conscience in this discussion, and for my conscience, there is room for Jung’s relativized idea of Christ. I don’t know if it’s how I will end my days on earth, appealing to Jung’s relativized Christ, but there is room for that in the discussion.