THE RELIGIOUS FUNCTION OF THE PSYCHE Traditional concepts of God are no longer tenable for many people who nevertheless experience a strong sense of the sacred. These people require an approach to religion that recognizes its actual manifestations within their own lives. The Religious Function of the Psyche offers an examination of divinity that focuses on its unique, personal manifestations within the psyche, the body, relationships and the world at large. Using the language and interpretive methods of depth psychology, particularly those of C.G.Jung and psychoanalytic self psychology, the author, Lionel Corbett, offers an introduction to Jung and religion and a bridge between the transpersonal and the personal levels of the psyche. Lionel Corbett suggests a psychological model for the relationship between the divine and the human, and offers an alternative approach to spirituality than that found in traditional religious systems. Problems of evil, suffering, and the notion of human development as an incarnation of spirit, are dealt with in this book by a religious approach to the psyche that can be applied in both everyday life and within the practice of psychotherapy. Lionel Corbett is Professor of Depth Psychology, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, California, USA. THE RELIGIOUS FUNCTION OF THE PSYCHE Lionel Corbett First published 1996 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. © 1996 Lionel Corbett All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Corbett, Lionel The religious function of the psyche/Lionel Corbett. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Psychology, Religious. 2. Psychoanalysis and religion. 3. Jungian psychology. I. Title. BL53.C657 1996 200´. 91–dc20 95–25778 CIP ISBN 0-415-14400-0 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-14401-9 (pbk) ISBN 0-203-13017-0 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-17640-5 (Glassbook Format) CONTENTS List of figures vi Acknowledgements vii Introduction: The new psychological dispensation 1 1 THE RELIGIOUS ATTITUDE IN PSYCHOTHERAPY 5 2 PERSONAL SPIRITUALITY BASED ON CONTACT WITH THE NUMINOSUM 11 3 THE TRANSPERSONAL SELF: A psychological approach to the divine 39 4 THE ARCHETYPE AS SYNTHETIC PRINCIPLE 57 Making psychology and spirituality synonymous 5 MYTHICAL, SYMBOLIC AND IMAGINAL ASPECTS OF THE PSYCHE’S RELIGIOUS FUNCTION 84 6 A PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF SOME TRADITIONAL RELIGIOUS IDEAS 105 7 A DEPTH PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING 126 8 SUFFERING 152 The search for meaning 9 SIN AND EVIL 185 A psychological approach 10 PSYCHOTHERAPY AND SPIRITUAL PRACTICE 204 11 THE RATIONALE FOR A CONTEMPLATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 220 Appendix 229 Notes 240 References 246 Index 252 v FIGURES Figure 1 ‘The King and Queen’ 230 Figure 2 ‘Immersion in the Bath’ 231 Figure 3 ‘The Conjunction’ 232 Figure 4 ‘Death’ 233 Figure 5 ‘The Ascent of the Soul’ 234 Figure 6 ‘Purification’ 235 Figure 7 ‘The Return of the Soul’ 236 Figure 8 ‘Rebis’ 237 Figure 9 ‘The Risen Christ’ 238 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book could not have been written without the support and encouragement of my wife, Cathy Rives, MD, to whom I am very grateful. My friend Kate Jones read an early version of the manuscript, and made innumerable suggestions about style and content which greatly improved the clarity and accuracy of the text. The comments and suggestions of my friend Andrew Samuels were also very useful in this regard. I am indebted to the many patients and friends who have allowed me to describe their experience of the numinosum within these pages, as well as to the innumerable people at conferences and lectures on this subject who affirmed that this approach to the psyche had personal validity. Acknowledgement is also due to Routledge for permission to reproduce material from The Collected Works of C.G.Jung, translated by R.F.C. Hull. I would also like to thank Eve Daintith for her meticulous copy editing. vii To Zachary, Ashley and Gabriel INTRODUCTION The new psychological dispensation Edward Edinger (1984) has suggested that we are beginning a new chapter in our religious history. He believes that humanity’s relation to the divine mystery is no longer simply mediated by means of law or faith, as it was in the Judaeo- Christian era. We now have a new psychological dispensation, a new manner of understanding the relationship between the divine and the human. Our felt sense is that we are addressed by transpersonal levels of the psyche. This dialogue has become the ‘new context, the new vessel with which humanity can be the carrier of divine meaning’ (p. 90). I hope to clarify some of the ways that the idea of a new dispensation may be implemented in practice. This book grew from two sources. The first was my personal frustration with traditional concepts of divinity. Although I have always been a religious individual, I have never been able to make much use of the ways in which traditional religious systems conceive of God. These ideas seemed to have little to do with my own experience. The second source was the realization that many of the people I work with in psychotherapy also experience the sacred in ways that have little to do with established religious systems. Many people have a deeply personal or private sense of what is really sacred to them, while they maintain an outward adherence to a traditional church or synagogue, for reasons such as family allegiance or simple sentimentality. In some such cases, I find that the individual’s real spirituality has never been expressed until it emerges in the consulting room —it is like a secret life. This book is dedicated to the idea that many people with a strong sense of the sacred require an approach that recognizes its actual manifestations within their own lives. Widespread disenchantment exists both with traditional notions about God and also with the doctrinal systems to which these ideas belong. Orthodox systems of thought are often out of harmony with individual needs for, and experiences of, the sacred. We have long had to rethink the traditional ideas about God as an Old Man in the Sky who is benevolently watching over us. The events of recent generations, such as genocides, environmental catastrophes and nuclear weapons, together with the advent of feminist thought, have forced us to abandon the traditional anthropomorphic images of the divine as an invisible Superior Being who requires a certain type of behaviour. The divine is not 1 INTRODUCTION necessarily experienced as a celestial mechanic, lawyer, caretaker, parent or any other entity that is comparable to some human concept. No concept of divinity that is not the result of personal experience will ultimately hold sway. There have been many attempts to tell people what God requires of them that are based on authority rather than personal knowledge. These are doomed to provoke reactions of disbelief, as the reality flies in the face of the theory. The illusory image of a God who is an allgood, protective but invisible spirit can no longer be maintained with a straight face. It is time to acknowledge that the divine manifests itself to individuals in unique ways, some of which cause great suffering. For an approach to divinity that has personal relevance, it is necessary to focus on its manifestations within the psyche, in the body, in relationships, in the world at large or in any other way that matters. The problem is to locate the Other in the person’s life. The availability of a usable depth psychological approach to the experience of divinity actually encourages us to define ‘God’ in an individually meaningful manner, rather than confining us to the worship of someone else’s idea of what God means. Seen from within the depth psychological paradigm, God is always experienced in unique ways. And like the mystics, the depth psychologist, and especially the psychotherapist interested in practising with a religious sensibility, is mainly interested in the God of direct experience. Since the psyche is the essential medium for religious experience, within the psychological approach to divinity any conceptual distinction between God and the psyche’s expression of the divine is purely theoretical and of little practical significance. In other words, as some of the Eastern traditions have long held, at the subjective level— which is the proper province of psychology—the divine is indistinguishable from Mind or Consciousness itself. The religious approach to the psyche avoids all speculation about the essence of divinity beyond the psyche, or at best regards this kind of speculation as merely a comment on the personal psychology of its proponents. It is of course nothing new to focus on the radical immanence of divinity, or to suggest that the human and the divine are inextricably mixed and that both are to be found within the person. What I believe to be useful about the approach suggested here is that it allows us to describe the dynamics of this interaction in increased detail, using the language and hermeneutics of pure psychology rather than theology. For this reason it is a method that may be directly relevant to the consulting room, in which case nothing need be lost in attempting to translate between personal psychology and theology.