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Jungian Analyst Jakob Lusensky engages in dialogues and research at the intersection of psychology and religion, for the purpose of individual and cultural transformation. Forthcoming book C.G Jung: Face to Face with Christianity is now available for pre-order on Amazon.
So, Jakob your book the title changed. I think it is now CG Jung face to face with Christianity, right? Right. And it's, it's coming out when exactly, when is the date it's out?
19th of August. 19th of August. Yeah. Very good. Well, you sent me a preliminary copy, I guess, and it looks really good. It's a good thick book and it's got a very nice cover and And I'm very pleased and honored to be in it, the interview that you did with me, and so glad that the dialogue among you and I and Sean McGrath is there.
But you interview many prominent Jungians on the topic of Jung and Christianity, including Murray Stein and others who are less well known to me, but some of those people would be very well known people in the Jungian community. I'm You know, in the Freudian community, so they're not as well known to me.
I have read Mary Stein and so who are some of the others that you interviewed and that are in the book? Yeah. I mean, I mean, first of all, I think it's, it's my book, but it's also our book because it is, they are conversations and it's conversations I had for the podcast psychology on the cross in the last years.
So it's really a collaborative work and what I've done is sort of edited, put it together and, and. I also write, I've written, I think, a substantial introduction to the theme of Jungian Christianity, and also I've written an epilogue where I sort of give myself a little bit more voice, or like I can voice my own thoughts and thinking around Jungian and Christianity.
So it's really a collaborative process, and you know, this Chiron Publications in the U. S. was happy, interested in this, so yeah, I'm happy that it's put together, with the title kind of just first, because yeah, the first name was Chiron. Sigi Jung Wrestling with Christianity. Wrestling. Wrestling. And then I changed it to Face to Face with Christianity.
And that's connecting to I mean, first of all, you know, Jung's encounter with, or his dialogue with Christianity is really face to face. It's quite intense and it's throughout his whole life. It's not something he struggled with when he was 30 or 40. It's something he struggled with until he died.
ideas, how to sort of live the Christian myth, as he called it, or how to believe in his time. And in the late, early 50s, he did an interview with John Freeman on the BBC, the British, British channel. And that interview series was called face to face. And he was then asked this question, , okay, do you believe in God?
And Jung answered, silent for a few seconds, and then difficult question. I don't believe. I know. And of course, a lot of critique. So they're sort of playing with that interview as well for those nerds like myself who are really into, you know, union stuff. So that's, but besides, you know, yourself, we have a, as we mentioned already, Sean McGrath, which I think has a very important voice and he should be heard more.
We have a Kenneth Kovac, which is a pastor in the, in the reform church, but in the US. We have Pia Chaudhary, who's an analyst, but also an Orthodox Christian. We have Paul Bishop, which is a great, I think one of the greatest scholars from the Jungian field, who spent, you know, 40 years or so really in an academic way, working with Jung's ideas written by Jung and Nietzsche and, and, and whatnot.
So there, there's, there's quite a few interesting people. You're the only one from the psychoanalytic, the you know, the Freudian field. So I was, yeah. So that's also been a voice that's, yeah, that's really important because I think my wish is also to sort of try to, yeah, to weave some, you know, ties between these fields.
There is, there is something happening. I have a colleague here, Stephen Fowler, who has written a book. He's raised in an evangelical Christian family, became a, an emergency room physician. Then he trained in our psychotherapy program and then he came for the full analytic training and I supervised a number of his cases, but he finally brought out a book about Christianity and, and, and psychoanalysis.
He's teaching a an extension course in our extension program something like a five week course that people are signing up for. So this is all within our Toronto Freudian. community. He's also very interested in Laplanche. I'm not sure of what the connection is between Christianity or his use of Laplanche in relation to Christianity.
I don't quite know how he's doing that, but in any case, I'm just saying there is interest even among the Freudians. Increasingly, I think, oh, I was invited to prepare, to give a paper to the Western New England Psychoanalytic Society. I didn't realize that that's basically Yale University. They're the Psychoanalytic Society right next to Yale.
So I'm either going there or I'm doing it online, but they asked me to speak, and they are an orthodox Freudian training institute. They asked me to speak on psychoanalysis and spirituality. I was happy to say yes. So there is interest, even among Freudians, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that, that, that is, that, that's very hopeful.
I mean, in the union field, as I mentioned to you before we started to record, I mean, in the union field to speak about religion or to speak about Christianity, there's no taboo around that. I mean, that's like, All in in Jung's writing. So it's very, you know, I guess people who seek the spiritual often sort of you know, yeah Schuss Jung before Freud probably of course having said that having said that I must say that you know when it comes to christianity There's a lot of Yeah, I think it's kind of a minefield.
It's quite difficult. Many people have had bad experiences or they've seen, you know, their sort of public, you know, persona of, you know, the church and all the scandals and such. So I think also within the union field, like Christianity and Jung, it hasn't been very, you know, like a hot topic. But I think it's, I think it's warming up again.
Of course, we have people like Murray Stein who spent his last 50 years, 60 years writing about it. But yes, so I, I'm happy to see that I'm getting emails and communications from people all over the world that sort of seem to, yeah, They are interested to go deep, they are interested to understand what's happening within them, but they're also open to this yeah, to the religion in a way that I'm surprised to hear and see.
So when I started the podcast, I was afraid that there was kind of very, very niche, but it seems like, yeah, there's a general, I don't know if there's a change. Something is building in the culture. Well, that's, it shouldn't be surprising. I mean, the world is in a total mess. And it needs a spiritual perspective.
Everything is polarized. And war is no solution. It will just lead to more destruction. I'm very worried increasingly about a nuclear war. So what do we do in the face of this? We have to do something different. And Christianity is something different, you know? I mean some kind of at least ethical or spiritual perspective has to be found in today's world.
I, I personally believe that. But I have lots of questions. Lots of questions. Can you say something on that, Don? Because I think, I mean, I completely agree with, you know, it's hard not to agree. This is, things are not looking terrible. It's just looking very difficult. But I just want to connect it back to, Jung wrote his last works in the late 1950s.
And one work was an essay called The Undiscovered Self. And that's like where he really tried. I mean, okay, imagine the fifties, Cold War, you know, communism, two sides, extremely polarized, extremely polarized, Cuba crisis and whatnot, atom bombs, you know, like, so there was all, it's kind of in a certain way, maybe similar, at least, you know, tensions between, you know, and the splits that you're describing.
So in this little essay, Jung is really arguing for Or and also asking questions about sort of what what's the role of psychological work in a time or in the world where things are burning? Like, what's the, what's, what's the role of this work that we, we're doing with our patients and on our, you know, and through our own processes.
Yes. And he speaks about , in order to not fall into the split or in order to resist what he says, the organized mass , you need to sort of anchor yourself or you need to, he says, you need to anchor yourself in God. Well, like sort of anchoring yourself in God is actually, you know, perspective wholeness.
It's a perspective that goes deeper than the split. Yes. And, and, and he speaks, of course, also a lot about projection and all of that, you know, why we're splitting and such, but just to say, I think in that book, and I think it's really important in the last works of Jung, it's not only that he's really putting his attention to the world.
And the rule of what he calls individuation in this world. And I think, yeah, I, I, I think that we are sort of at a similar stage now. Well, certainly, you know, I, I will not call myself a kleinian, but I, I suppose I used to call myself a kleinian, Freudian some, a Freudian who followed Klein's extensions of, of Freud, and of course the paranoid schizoid and the depressive reparative positions, these two mental worlds.
But splitting, I would entirely agree with Jung's statements about the polarization, the splitting. It needs to be overcome. That is the move into the depressive reparative position. And I, I believe that working with individuals, if we can move a patient from living predominantly schizoid position to helping them evolve.
into the depressive reparative position, that, in my view, is a slow conversion. It's not like Saul's conversion into Paul on the road to Tarsus. It's not, it's not a quick conversion, a dramatic conversion, but it is still a conversion because you now have a different human being who has evolved in this way.
How do, this evolution is, Go back to Freud in 1914. We need to help people overcome narcissism in favor of object love. He stopped talking that way. He wanted to medicalize everything but which was ridiculous. We've Freudian analysts have been lying for decades about the fact that we are engaged in an ethical practice, but we want to hide that and pretend it's a medical practice, which it isn't.
But so the central problem, it seems to me we can talk about it is the overcoming of splitting. That's one. And I'm with you on that. But we can also talk about it as the overcoming of narcissism. And now no one overcomes narcissism to any tremendous degree. The doctrine of the fall of man, I take completely seriously.
We are fallen. We are broken. And we are sinners and we will always be sinners, but we can become less sinful. We can make progress. We can't achieve any kind of perfection, but we can make progress. I recently become fascinated with the Greek Orthodox tradition. I'm saying, I'm, I'm, I'm praying the Jesus prayer Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
I particularly find that the reminder that I am a sinner I, narcissists find it very hard. The last thing a narcissist wants to face is his guilt. As you know, my work has been all about guilt, superego. and conscience, but I personally have a daily struggle with my narcissism. I'm a lot better than I was 30 or 40 years ago when it was really bad.
It was really bad. I shudder when I think about it. It is very difficult to fight one's way out of out of being captured by one's self centered interests. It's not easy to think about the other, to think about the needs of the other, to think about the feelings of the other. I have a very hard time remembering the birthday of people who are close to me so that I can send them a birthday message.
I'm constantly engaged in some kind of project of mine that no, these are good projects, but there's an element of, of, of, of exhibitionism, of self worship involved in pursuing these projects. So yeah, the overcoming of narcissism and, and frankly, it seems to me that that's what spiritual practice is all about.
I mean, you know, we kneel down, we say thanks, thanks be to God, thanks. It's very hard for a narcissist to say thanks. Gratitude does not come easily. Oh, I'll tell you a brief vignette. A patient of mine, very narcissistic man, not easily given to gratitude. A couple of weeks ago on a Friday night, he sent me a text through WhatsApp, and I don't have notifications on for that, so I didn't realize he had sent me a text until I noticed it just as I was about to speak to him on Monday, and anyway, he was in an ambulance.
Rush being rushed to hospital. He was having a heart attack, a serious heart attack. He'd already said goodbye to his wife because he thought he might never, he was not going to survive. He said goodbye to his wife and in the ambulance, he's texting me. Because he didn't want to die without saying how grateful he was for our work together over the past few years.
Now, that's amazing in itself that, that he would feel that and need to communicate it to me. The and the heart attack has intensified his, His his change. I just did this thing about the book by Ernest Becker. I'm very critical of Ernest Becker. It's all about denying death, you know, but but I say, well, Heidegger recognized that a brush with death can have very positive consequences.
It can awaken a person to the value of life. And this heart attack has awakened my patient and he's got gratitude towards me. He's looking at his long suffering wife and having gratitude towards her. And so I don't know. That's how I think I measure my work with individuals is, am I helping them overcome their self encapsulation?
And I think the same applies to society. We All of this polarization is because of narcissism, we have to help people get their minds off themselves. Find some humility find, find some way to make sacrifice. I mean, in this material. I was going to say, I wonder if some people would be surprised that, you know, you and me are sort of in our different ways preaching this, because I mean, I absolutely agree with what you say, but we are both working as psychoanalysts.
And many people would say that that's the most sort of, I mean, the patients are coming in and spending all their time thinking about themselves. Their feelings, you know, their inner life. I could just imagine some people sort of wondering, yeah, but isn't that just sort of feeding, you know, that culture of narcissism that, you know, that it's also been criticized for?
What would you say to those people? I would say that if you're self obsessed, sometimes it is necessary to take the self obsession in a psychoanalytic direction in order to overcome it. I mean, people who get into meditation, you could accuse them of, of self obsession too. They're sitting down, they're spending a lot of time being with themselves doing this meditative practice.
But the aim of it all is to open themselves up to otherness. Sometimes you need to double down on the disease to overcome the disease, you know, right? But I mean, also on Ernst Becker, I mean, the way I understood him was I mean, the book is called Denial of Death, but I, as I remember it, it's been some while since I read it, but that his sort of insight is that, you know, it's the fear of death that, you know, is driving, is driving a neurosis and that, that it would be facing death.
You know, he's really speaking about Kierkegaard, I think he uses Nietzsche, he uses Freud, So like my in my remembrance, it's, it's like he is sort of arguing of the importance of facing death because, you know, your patient, I mean, of course, I also seen the remarkable shifts that can happen when people are faced with cancer or loss.
Can, it can bring out the best in a person. It can bring out the worst in a person, and sometimes it brings out the best and then it just dissipates after a month. But, you know, it can really be what Jung would call a, a numinous experience. Numinous, yes. Although often, often we speak about numerous, we think more about like peak experience or like an LSD trip or meeting guard.
But, but, but like also, yeah, the dark side of, of the luminus, if you like, is, it can be very correcting, and Jung also, you know, had a heart attack in his 40s, and there he, but he was sort of in between life and death, and he had a big kind of vision, where he then was taken back to Earth, and his work was really changed after that.
Right. Well, first of all, about Becker, I think, like many clinicians, you've got a somewhat wishful vision of Becker. That's what, you wish Becker was saying. The man who organized the panel at the American Psychoanalytic is quite a fan of Becker and I think he misread Becker. I, I think a lot of people are projecting their own more hopeful and loving attitudes.
Becker was in despair. He was dying when he wrote the book. He, he's a complete Gnostic in the sense that The Bible says the creation is good. For Becker, it is a disgusting decaying realm of chaos and disorder. That's a heresy for both Judaism and Christianity. And both Judaism and Christianity have always rejected the Gnostic heresy.
You know, Becker has got a couple of good chapters on Otto Ranck and on Kierkegaard. Those are good chapters. But that's not Becker. He's describing Ranck. He's describing, especially Kierkegaard. He's describing Kierkegaard. Would that he would accept Kierkegaard. He was far, Kierkegaard was a passionate Christian, far from Becker.
And Becker is a Gnostic in the sense of, of being a complete dualist. I mean well, of course I accuse Jung of that problem too. But the splitting in, in Becker's book is incredible. He sees all of the dark side of human existence, but he sees very little of the light side. At the beginning, there's a bit of a mention of an encounter with the awe inspiring outside, you know, but it's very minor.
And even there, he says that it's so overwhelming, a human being can't function in that state and so must be defended against that state. And then he kind of moves away and, and the real becomes almost entirely associated with the. Anality with shit and decay and death and the awe inspiring element of the real is lost sight of in that book almost entirely after chapter one or two.
So I find it to be a terribly biased and despairing book. And I'm surprised that a lot of people don't read it that way. You know, I think a lot of people project their more hopeful ideas. He can't really mean this, but I think he really did mean it. I went on the panel. I wanted to quote my wife but I've refrained, but I'm going to tell you what she said.
We were on the beach. And I she just wanted to listen to the waves and soak up the sun, but I am an annoying intellectual and I am compelled to read passages to her that, and so I'm reading Escape from Evil, which came out after Becker died, and he opens the book by asking the reader to imagine the fields full of ESCAPE ROOM!!
pigs and the fields full of chickens and cows. And imagine how many of these creatures you personally have consumed up to this point in your life. And I interrupted her. I read her this passage. She looked at me and she said, Don, Ernest needs to get laid. Right. Yeah, I think he was also a bit, I don't know, was he suspicious of psychotherapy?
I just remember in that book, Denial of Death, when he says that psychotherapists should have like a warning sign, ? This could get, things could get worse. Something in that vein. And I think there's, there's also, , such a truth to that, that, it's not always, , lifting as, , all the repressions it can, you know, bring bring.
Oh, okay. You're making it, you're making it sound and making it sound as if he thought that things could go wrong in psychotherapy and it could be worse. No, he goes much further than that. He thinks that the whole therapeutic project of psychoanalysis is futile. Because the aim of psychoanalysis is to analyze defenses and get rid of illusions.
And if it's successful, what does it leave us with? It leaves us with reality that is unbearable. That is Becker's view. But he's also, he's also arguing for like, you know, having healthy type of, you know, illusions. There's, there's different layers of illusions. So I think he. Exactly. And that is a Gnostic heresy.
I mean, what, that's so cynical. He recommends people get religion because they need an illusion. You know, Christ says. You know you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Becker is completely rejecting of that. But isn't he a bit like, isn't Becker then like sort of just aligning with classical Freud, that religion is an illusion?
Oh, yes, yes, yes, exactly. But he's saying it's a healthy illusion. He's saying it's a needed illusion. You know, Freud says, grow up, you know, in a sense, I find Freud closer to Christianity. Give up your illusions. Freud also celebrates truth, as does Wilfred Beyond. They make truth value central. And that, to me, is much closer to Christianity than, than, than any defense of illusions.
Yeah, but I, I wanted to bring you back to that statement that Jung makes in that interview where he says I don't believe I know now what, what do you make of that? What do you think he's really saying there? Well, I mean, okay, first of all, there's been, you know, 50 years of discussion around this and individual analysts, Jungian analysts have sort of wrestled with this question, what did he mean by that?
Jung also wrote in a letter to someone, like, sort of clarifying that it's not like, I know God, but I think from what I understood, what he's saying, and where I also can sort of relate, on some level, it makes sense to me, I think he just had experiences. That made him so utterly convinced , of God's existence.
So that, so that, you know, that it was not a question of faith even anymore. It was just like, I know that God exists because I've experienced things. Mystic experience. Yeah, mystical experiences. Having said that, , It's also this, I don't need to believe, I know, so all through life he had this difficulties with faith , agnostic versus pistis, yeah, faith versus knowledge his father was a big man of faith.
He was and his grandfather and his grandfather and his uncle's. So that was faith. And, , when he was 14 years old, his father said, don't ask all these difficult questions, , just, just believe. So I think he did the right thing to rebel against his father and all of that.
, I think he went further than rebellion, I should also say, , he was never strong on faith or what he had faith in, you know, that's a question. Did he have faith in, he had faith in sort of the objective in reality of the psyche where he had faith in, , that there are archetypes or, but he did have faith in Jesus Christ.
No, no, but he had faith in a God. Yes, absolutely. That type of God that you had faith in was, yeah, very, it wasn't the, the pretty God of the New Testament, it was the Old Testament God, he was ruthless and loving and, you know, ambivalent and, , all these things. That's the discussion that we had with Sean, because Sean and I find that to be profoundly un Christian, the idea of the two faces of God, the dark face of God, the evil face of God.
But to me, Christianity, God is good. End of story. To, so, so, and, and then we also touched on, I think you pointed out that there, his father would, would kneel before the altar and, and, and allow his forehead to touch the ground. Jung never allowed his forehead to touch the ground. Can you fill that in a bit?
What was that? Right, yeah, it was a dream that he had later in life. It was a dream, and where they're both in a, in a type of temple, and he's with his father. It's a very elaborate dream, and it's really worth reading. You can find it in memories, dreams, reflections, in his, not his autobiography, but his biography.
And in that temple, , the father is kneeling down and really like, , committedly kneeling his head towards the, the ground. And Jung is trying to do the same. He says, I'm imitating my father, but there's one, there's one millimeter. There's one millimeter that holds, he cannot touch the head to the ground.
Right. There's many more layers to this dream. I really recommend everyone to read into it. And there's also been different type of analysis, , about what is that one millimeter. Jung has his own interpretation also in memory streams of reflection where he says That yeah, he makes it into, I mean, he makes it into some sort of some question of human freedom and, , that there's, that there needs to be, , a space for freedom and, and somehow he speaks about how man, yeah, often it's this theme of that actually man has to do the work for God.
And he would say that the work we do for God is to sort of cultivate an inner space. Like cultivating an inner space and holding space , there's no savior God in Jung's world. But what we can do is to make ourselves more conscious. And maybe also what you say, I think he would agree making conscience conscious.
But that's, that's what we can do, , but we, we cannot, Just obey, wait for, for, for a saving God. So in a way, he's also like, I don't know if you read it at the Hillism, you know, the young woman who died in the concentration camps. She was in what's her name again, at the Hillism, her diaries at the Hillism.
She was in the Netherlands and she's, she has a similar theory. She read some young as well. And she was, , she died in Auschwitz, but also like, , she didn't believe at the end in a savior God, she, but she believed in like, , this cultivating a space, , inside, you know, that we have to sort of.
Yeah, we have to sort of help God in creation, but there's no Savior God, , anymore. Right, right, right. Well, I can totally relate to that because I don't have a concept. I don't think I have always thought that the real problem in monotheism is the problem of the odyssey. How can God be all good all knowing and all powerful and how he, how can he then allow the suffering of the innocents.
So my solution is to give up on the idea of an omnipotent God. I do not believe in an omnipotent God. I think that my interpretation of Christianity is that Christianity can be, my interpretation of Christianity is that it requires us to surrender the concept of an omnipotent God because Jesus Is God on a cross?
And unless you want to say he chose to be there And that he could have come down from the cross at any time. I don't believe that he was nailed to the cross I mean he he chose to follow that destiny You know thy will be done. But it's not as if It's not as if he had the power to come down from the cross.
He did not. He suffered. God on the cross, that's not an omnipotent God. I think that's what the crucifix means. God is not omnipotent. And so forget looking for savior gods. I, if there's any salvation well, wait a minute, I was going to say, if there's any salvation, it's going to come from what we humans managed to do, I was going to say, but I don't quite believe that either.
I mean, there is a sense in which there is a salvation and the salvation, I think, comes, Partly through recognition that there is no omnipotent God, there is no omnipotent human being, there is no omnipotent ideology, which is perfectly correct there is lack of omnipotence everywhere. But can I ask you can I just ask on this because, I mean, this resonates with me, but how are you then personally thinking about a final judgment of sort?
Do you believe in that? No, I don't believe in a final judgment. I believe in a constant judgment as I live my life I'm, I am judging, I'm, I'm feeling, because we are social beings, I'm feeling judged I'm living with judgment. I don't think there's any final judgment. I'm trying to prepare myself as best I can to be as good as I can be.
Not out of fear of, of being punished. I don't believe in any. I was going to say, I don't believe in any afterlife, and I don't even think I can say that, because, okay, so recently, I'm acknowledging, and I'm attributing it to Freud. Freud, we are bringing them the plague. What's the plague? That we are contradictory beings.
Conscious, unconscious. Paranoid schizoid, depressive. We are split. Okay, Freud discovered this, but he couldn't accept it. He could never acknowledge his interest in Kabbalah and numerology. That was all woo woo, mystical. He attributed it to Jung and then got rid of Jung, you know. Freud could not accept his contradictoriness.
I have come to accept my contradictoriness. I mean, half of me is a rational, scientifically oriented person, and I don't like magical thinking, but on the level of feeling, and we, this is the split brain research. There's the left hemisphere and there's the right hemisphere. And, and Ian McGilchrist says we live in a pathological civilization with a terrible bias towards the left hemisphere.
Poetry and faith comes from the right hemisphere. That's also where love comes from. So. On the level of feeling, I think when I die, I'm going into the arms of Jesus. I feel that. I don't believe it for a minute. I don't believe it, but I feel it to be true. In other words, there is a direct contradiction between my thinking and my feeling.
And I think that's also completely incompatible with Freud's, theory that we are split beings. There is a, that's what it means to say that there's a de centered ego, right? There's, there's no unitary self. So half of me is A believing Christian My Savior Knows My Name is a favorite line from an evangelical Christian song that I love.
My Savior Knows My Name. I feel that to be true. I feel, that I'm pleasing him when I'm doing well and I'm displeasing him when I'm doing poorly, when I'm being old Adam, my narcissistic self centered self. So I feel this, but I can't say I believe it because beliefs have to do with rationality and evidence and so on.
And I will not defend what I feel on the rational level. I feel it's indefensible. It sounds when you said this, you know, I don't believe I know. I mean, you speak about feeling. You don't say knowing. Oh, thank you for that. I never thought of it that way. Well, the way that you speak about this, this, this, you know, this or you feel this And then I wouldn't use the word no though.
No, no, no, no, no. You feel, you feel. I feel it. The word no, he says, I don't believe it. I know it. But maybe he's trying to make the same distinction. I would disagree with his use of the word no, but he may be saying the same thing as I'm saying. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. Okay, the other thing, I guess we, I don't want to go over it because it's already there in the book.
I think both Sean and I, I know that when I read Memory Streams and Reflections so many years ago, I immediately diagnosed Jung, and I think maybe I got him right. Because he announces that dream, and he's looking at the cathedral in Basel, I think it is, and it's his grandfather built the cathedral, and his father served there as a minister, and above God is sitting on his throne.
We sometimes refer to the toilet as a throne. In this case, He drops a giant turd, a giant shit. He shits on the cathedral. Okay, he's shitting on Christianity. This is his anger. This is his oedipal anger at his father, his grandfather, God, Christianity. He's shitting on it. And and I think he continues to do so.
I mean, Murray, Murray Stein thinks, I think it's what the idea that that you wanted to be a therapist to heal Christianity. I think he wanted to kill Christianity. I think he wanted to heal it. He wanted to change it into something Gnostic, which is not Christian. I think he couldn't allow his forehead to touch the ground.
He's in rebellion against the father, including God the father. I think that would be like 90 percent of all psychoanalysts interpretation of it. And I mean, there's probably something to that because he was 12, 13 years old, and there was an ambivalent relationship to his father. Maybe even Jung would agree.
But I think what's more important is rather than reducing it to that, like this then became, I mean, first of all, the guy He wrote Memory Streams reflection with his secretary at old age. He decided to bring that in to his biography, which is a kind of, you know, it's a very explicit dream. And he says it's one of the most, it's not a dream.
It's a vision. It was a vision he had and he says, , and he says, is one of the most important experiences of my life. It's formed, you know, my whole thinking, it's formed, , my life. My occupation, my vocation, and I wouldn't say that his analysis, his interpretation of this is that, yeah, Christianity as it had been served to him in Switzerland in the 1910s to, you know, whatever, from 1895.
It's not working anymore. It's not, , bringing that feeling alive anymore. It doesn't agree with the experience. He went into his first, , communion and it was like said the wine was sour, you know, it was just like nothing. There was no magic. There was nothing. So I think he, this frustration, maybe anger, maybe wanting to kill his father sort of drew him to creative heights.
Just as you know, it drew him to this creative heights and sometimes he misses the point But I think actually and also if you read his last works, he's even expressing that he wishes for a reformation of Christianity And that could mean his stuff and you know, that's , he has a lot of wild ideas there but if we Taking them aside, you know, I put them aside.
I think he, he had an appreciation of Christianity. He wished it to, to continue to live. And he says, so he says it holds the, it holds the seed of the future, but it's the way he wants to go back to the early Christianity, to the early church fathers. And so there's something true in this message, but it's not true in the way that it's presented anymore.
Well, at least it wasn't for him. It didn't sort of awake his his soul. So in my mind, , I don't think I would just quote it. Sean McGrath Jung is, is a pretty terrible guide into Christianity. He's not good on that, but he's a very good guide for some people in regards to psychological integration, , finding spirituality and all of that.
So I just want to say that like sort of balancing that interpretation a little bit, but also Murray Stein agrees. He says, answer to job. It's partly a book about Jung's counter transference to his father. Murray Stein is saying this in the book. It's kind of, it's clearly, he's battling his father, but, but, Martin Luther did as well.
But still he brought a lot of reformation. So my thinking is, my belief, my hypothesis is that Jung wanted to reform Christianity. He didn't succeed, but if you would have given him 20 more years or 30, I think we could have seen a man who maybe even converting, , fully. I mean, he was probably a Christian.
He was a Christian. I mean, he, he was a Christian, but he was a very particular form of Christian. a Gnostic Christian at best, if a Christian at all, in my opinion. I think if there, in 30 years, he might have done it if he'd had a Freudian analysis during those 30 years. Maybe, maybe. But look, I am in agreement with him that Christianity needs a reformation.
The, the, the church is dying all over the, well, no, there are parts of the world where it's growing, but in, in certainly in North America and much of Europe church attendance is diminished. They're selling church buildings for condo developments. But we live in a profoundly materialist, a dead end of materialism is what we're living in.
And people have lost their souls. To the materialist culture which can only wind up in war battles over material goods. So a spiritual revolution and a reformation is completely needed. But I, I don't, I'm not sure that Jung is the one to point us in the right direction for that. I mean, for the reasons that, that I've stated.
I hear what you're saying. I hear what you're saying. What I think is really lacking in Jung and where I think Freud and the psychoanalysis is for me, it's like Jung and Freud splitting. It's like two pieces that need, , they, they belong to each other somehow. Integrated. They need to be integrated more.
And what I really take from your, your interpretation of psychoanalysis and also reading Freud, of course, in classics is, you know, Yeah, it's the message of love and the message of love is unfortunately, I would say to be critical against you. I feel like although he speaks about it, it's not as clear.
Freud is very clear, but I think, but Jung is, Jung is big on feelings. He's big on symbol formation. He's really very respectful to the unconscious. He's big on the conscience, the role of conscience. Yeah, that wonderful essay, 1958. Like three years before he, he passes. So, so just to say, but I do think that the Jungian, the Jung is He also says that he didn't dare sort of writing about love because it's too big.
And then when he speaks about it, for me, it becomes kind of a bit too mystical. And I really, but I think, , I don't know if psychoanalysis, you know, and Jungian psychology can do anything for any type of affirmation, but it is, , I think somehow it's always been, it's fascinating for me, you know, at least in Berlin, we have, you know, cues, , for all the psychotherapists, the psychoanalysts, you know, I could have, you know, five practices.
It's like such a pull and such a need for getting in contact and, , getting in touch. But at the same time, , as you also say, many of the churches, they just, you know, stand silent and empty. And my fantasy or wish is that, yeah, just having more dialogue between the two fields, . Yeah.
Well, psychoanalytic organizations are as bad as the church. They become organizations. Human organizations stop caring about the truth. They care about the survival of the organization. So the, the, the reformation and the integration that you are rightly calling for. Has to come, I don't think, from psychoanalytic organizations, Jungian and Freud, it has to come from psychoanalysts, Jungian and Freud.
I have two people who are both Jungians, one in Australia and one in London, who have asked for supervision. I've been meeting with them for quite a while. And we don't just talk about cases, we talk about many things as well but they, they reached out to me, I, I, I finally have come to realize over the years, when I give a paper to a group, say to a social work agency that asked me to come to speak to them.
The people who stand up and are interested in what I'm saying are usually Jungians. I get a very positive response from Jungians that I never get from Freudians. And yet here I am, a senior apparatchik in the, an IPA Freudian organization where I, , what I have to say isn't very simpatico to, to, but I am trying to have this influence by pushing conscience.
And that's it. The message is being picked up. I mean, people invite me to come and speak. So these ideas are gradually being assimilated a little bit. But but you know, Freud was so divided. I mean, he, in 1914, he saw the answer. The problem is narcissism. The answer is love. Okay. But then he stops talking that way.
He starts talking about pathology and health, not narcissism and love. You know, he has to suppress it. But wasn't it also, or maybe I'm speculating, but do you think it also had to do with what happened in his life, you know, after that with the First World War and, you know, everything, losing his child? Yes.
And then developing cancer of the mouth and 36 operations, living in pain. And he refused to take out anything other than aspirin because he wanted his mind clear to keep on writing. I mean, So there were many factors there. I just want to say also about the Reformation, I completely agree with you. I would just also state that I think the Reformation will come from the Annalisans.
Or, you know, I mean Partly, you know, from people, you know, the analysts, but I think also analysts are, you know, taking and I feel people are really open, you know, they're also open to, is it psychoanalysis or Jungian, there are many people today are not so like, I have to go full this path, , I believe there's something important in following a path, but I think people are quite open in this regard.
So I would just think that Yeah. Yeah. Also, Reformation is coming through, yeah, through patients sort of making sense of things and and seeing that, yeah, this makes sense. There is something to it. But having said that, you know, I'm very agnostic, naturally as an agnostic, , as a psychotherapist.
I mean, that, , I'm not here to convert people to Christianity. That's not my, I work with many, I work with many Muslim people as well, for example. Oh, of course, not to not, but I, I will, I will say I am here to convert people. Not to Christianity. I'm here to convert them from narcissism to love.
Whether they express it through their Islamic faith or whether they express it through their Judaic faith or, or through their atheism or agnostic, doesn't matter to me. You know, it just matters that they succeed through analysis. in becoming more loving people. Because to the extent that they become more loving, the more they will be able to actually like themselves.
And then they will be able to more easily be with themselves. Their self esteem will rise. They will become more creative. Liberating the true self from the false self, I think, is central psychoanalytic tasks. You know, it's not that we know what the true self is. The true self can't be known, it's non representational.
Winnicott, I think, nailed it beautifully. He called it our, the infant's going on being. Which is always going to be disrupted, because mother at times is going to be intrusive, at other times a bit abandoning, and the baby has to move from the position of faith, and, and, and, and loss of self, and just being.
The baby has to come into. a bit of a false self development to begin to manage himself and So it's inevitable that's part of the fall I guess but I I think if the analysis is successful we are moving people back closer and closer to their true self They're becoming less able to bullshit themselves.
Well, I think that, and I think in a way that fits very well with the union idea of, you know, that individuation has to do with realizing that there is a self. Yes. You can call it true self or, you know, because I was also thinking when you spoke about you Freud in 1913, 1914, you know, after the break with Jung, you know, Jung is also, that's when he went into his crisis and he said like, I, you know, my soul, my soul, where are you?
He lost his soul. He said, I achieved all these things, but I, , I, I'm empty or I have no, I don't know who I am even. I don't know what I believe in. I need, he said, I need, I don't believe in the Christian myth. It's the, you know. So he started this, , active imagination. He started to write his black books.
It became the red books and he took, , what, what, I think Freud criticized as a very narcissistic journey, but I think it was in the sake for also seeking the self and if you get in touch with the self, you're also getting in touch with others. Well, people have said that at times Jung was psychotic and maybe they're trying to devalue him, but the point is sometimes people need to be psychotic.
Sometimes people need to have a break. They, they need, they have, they need to go crazy for a while in order to begin possibly to find their soul. I'm not recommending psychosis. I mean, because sometimes they get stuck. It's the same thing. Everybody's getting interested in hallucinogenic to psychotherapy.
Ah. I'm very wary about that because someone can get lost in a psychedelic experience and, and or someone who's close to a psychotic break. Can go into the break and then the, the guides to the trip are going to send them off to psychiatry to put them back together again. I'm very wary of that. But, but it is true that sometimes the psychosis can be Can lead to a, a, a reintegration on a higher level and maybe something like that happened.
That's one way of understanding I think what happened to, to, to, to you. But I, I, I really, thanks to you, I got very impressed by the essay, A psychological View of Conscience. But I started, I read Murray Stein, I read a, a number of other. Works on Jungianism. And the concept of the individuation process makes absolute sense to me.
To me that, I like the idea that the self, what Jung calls the self, I identify with the true self, it is calling to us. It's like a magnet. It's trying to, it's trying to to bring the ego closer to the point where the ego is almost disintegrated into the self, that the self is like God calling. And the ego is like responding to the call and finally being integrated with the cell.
I think that's a beautiful metaphor and I can relate to that as a way of looking at the clinical process. Yeah, I feel like also this Jung speaks also about moving to I mean, first of all, he speaks about that there is a religious instinct in man. I mean, you should maybe read, if you haven't read his, his Terry lectures that he did in the U.
S. in the 1930s, Religion and Psychology, that's fascinating, you know, fascinating. I've read all these books. I've read all of these books, but even decades ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But just to speak about, like, Yeah, because he speaks also about individuation, the role of individuation is sort of developing itself as a religious attitude.
And that means more to become a follower of self or love or what the word that you use, but not to be the yeah, the person who's in the second half of life. I mean, the first half of life, we're building our careers, our marriages, whatever. And then and then we don't put on saffron robes and take a wooden bowl.
But the goal changes into that of finding one's soul.
Yeah. And when you speak about soul, I mean, now you seem to be in a position where you can say anything. But, but I'm thinking like in the psychoanalytic field, the word soul, are you actually using that? Oh, well, I've had a wonderful conversations recently with actually a patient who has I recommended that he look at Bettelheim's Freud and Man's Soul.
And Bettelheim, it's all about translation. He blames it all on James Strachey. If you read Freud in the German he, Psyche is the same as Soul, and, and, and it's a mistranslation of psychoanalysis to call it psychoanalysis. It should have been called soul study. And the analysts are soul doctors. That makes absolute sense to me.
Rahi translated it in a way that secularized it radically. So Bedel Heim's book is important. Do you mean it was, do you mean that it was a mistake or it was more like that? It would sound too woo woo. What do you say too, too flaky to, to use the word soul or too close to some religion. I, I, I, I think it was, I don't think it was so much a conscious Machiavellian decision.
But I think probably Straci himself was uncomfortable with maybe the religious connotations of the word soul and and I think he probably had a worldview, a secular worldview, and he wanted to keep psychoanalysis within that worldview. I mean, look at the team, the translations he came up with.
Id, ego, superego. It should have been it, I, and over I would have been better translations. So he's implicitly materializing, secularizing, medicalizing. It's a positivist reading. I, I, I don't think he set out to do that intentionally. I think it just, that's who he was and that's the way he translated, you know, and, and it was receptive.
He made it much more receptive to the secular mind. Yeah. Yeah.
What do you feel, or should we wrap up? Well, we're talking, we're talking about the value of a Freud, Freud, Freud Jung integration, getting Freudians and Jungians to, who are interested in these matters, to, to talk to one another. I gave a lecture at at at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, and my friend chose a philosopher, to be my discussant, and the philosopher was a Jungian.
And it was a very good discussion. I mean I should have been more aware. Okay, look, again, this is a measure of my narcissism. Jung has been knocking on my door for years. I started as a Jungian. I abandoned that. I went for a Freudian analysis. Throughout the years at conferences, Jungians stand up and they appreciate what I'm saying.
And they say, And, and then you reach out and you tell me about Jung's essay, and then these people in Australia and England who are Jungians are asking for supervision. And so I'm finally hearing. I'm, I'm finally hearing. So I don't know where it will go exactly with me per se. That doesn't really matter very much.
But I, this, this, this, this, This talking beyond the silos is absolutely necessary.
Absolutely.
Well, I hope the book reaches a wide audience, and I hope you get a lot of questions, a lot of feedback. Maybe you will dialogue with, with other readers, just as you're dialoguing with me, maybe you will, yeah, the book probably is, should be seen as starting something. I hope it widens and deepens. Yeah, I mean, I like that thought about dialoguing more with with readers because
, if I believe that reformation would take place from, from people who go into analysis, then I should speak to them and give them a stage or a voice and listen to them.
So I think that you put, you planted a seed. Good, very good. Okay, Jakob, good luck with it. I hope it goes well. Yeah, and good luck with all of your life. It's fantastic to have this conversation. Great, I enjoyed it immensely. I don't know whether I'll have another book in me.
I've been writing papers. I think I have enough papers to collect now, so there might be a fourth book. Who knows? We'll see. I'm very curious. I, I could imagine that happened. So then yeah, great talking to you. Great talking to you too. Take care.