Paul Tillich, Carl Jung and the Recovery of Religion

and

On Behalf of the Mystical Fool: Jung on the Religious Situation

John P. Dourley

London and New York, Routledge, 2008 and 2010, 208 and 262 pages.

If I understand half of what John Dourley is saying in these two books, we have our work cut out for us.

Dourley, an emeritus professor of religion at Carleton University, Jungian analyst and Catholic priest, presents a compelling vision of where we stand at this time in history and what we should be doing about it. The task he lays before us is daunting and, he leaves me persuaded, imperative.

However, the urgent challenge that I read in these books—or, perhaps, into them—contrasts sharply with the way his arguments are presented. The arguments are scholarly and cautious. The prose is often convoluted. What have here is an largely exposition of some of the ideas of his sources—particularly Jung, the seminal theologian Paul Tillich (1886-1965) and mystics including Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-c. 1328), Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) and Mechtild of Magdeburg (1210-c. 1285)—and of the influence of earlier ones on those who came afterward.

The two books cover much of the same ground. Readers without much foundation in academic theology might well begin with the later book, On Behalf of the Mystical Fool, which they are likely to find difficult enough.

Given the space available to me in this review, it seems best to me to take an approach much less cautious than Dourley’s. I will close the books, at least metaphorically speaking, and try to set out in simpler language the consensus among Tilllich, Jung, the earlier mystics and Dourley himself that emerges from Dourley’s careful exposition, at least as it seems to me. Perhaps this will result in some bald statements that Dourley would not associate himself with.

Dourley agrees with the widespread view that religion as we find it today is largely harmful and dangerous. It has led to a “clash of civilizations”—he goes part of the way with Samuel P. Huntington—that threatens human survival.

The powerful energies that work through religious impulses, of which the Christian Trinity is a prime example, and of which the archetypes identified by Jungians are a psychological counterpart, have been made into concrete doctrines. This denies their essential unity and renders them virulent.

So, would it be best to do away with religion altogether, except perhaps as a private consolation for those benighted souls who cannot get along without it?

This will not do. The endeavour is impossible. The roots of religion are in the depths of the psyche. Perhaps, rather, they are the depths of the psyche. The attempt to live without religion can only impoverishes life.

No, it’s worse than that. It’s dangerous. If we seek to get rid of religion, its archetypes are still there, with all their potential to foster fanaticism in ways all the more dangerous for being less conscious.

This does not, however, mean that we should prop up religion as we often find it, with all its dogmatic paraphernalia and above all with its insistence on a God external to the psyche. The elaborations and distinctions that grow out of what Christian theology knows as the Trinity and Jungian psychology as the archetypes, both of which have their counterparts in other religious and secular traditions, are enriching and indispensable, but need not always be expressed in terms of religious metaphysics. Dourley, along with Tillich, considers humanist traditions to have an important contribution to make.

What is needed is a religious-psychological approach that Dourley does not hesitate to call gnostic. He wants Jungian psychology in particular to embrace this label and be done with the ambivalence that Jung and Jungians often demonstrated and demonstrate with regard to this term. We should wholeheartedly embrace it.

We need not to escape from religion but to go into it more deeply. Following the example of the mystics from whom both Jung and Tillich drew inspiration, Dourley calls on us to plumb the depths of the maternal nothingness that underlies even the archetypes and the Trinity. The idea is not to remain permanently in this matrix, however, but to continually re-enter the world of the archetypes and meet the challenges of life. The archetypal or Trinitarian material, or whatever else it might be called, would be relativized and enriched by this process.

How is this to be done? Dourley argues that Jungian psychology in general, and dream analysis in particular, can make a great contribution here, opening up a way to the source of the vitality of myth and faith that has the openness of more secular approaches.

This does not mean just mining myth and ritual for whatever we please. The psyche, for Dourley, is total and all-embracing and has profound authority.

Still, the idea of resolving the dilemmas of the world through dream analysis seems preposterous on the face of it.

I am reminded of old saying that you can easily catch a bird by sprinkling salt on its tale. The joke, of course, is that if you could get close enough to sprinkle the salt, you will be close enough to catch the bird anyway. Similarly, if multitudes could be brought to a point where they were ready to undergo Jungian dream analysis, a large part of the battle would be won already.

But this is more easily said than done.

Fortunately, Jungians are not alone in the world. Tillich, Jung and Dourley himself hope the myths and lore of the Judeo-Christian tradition and, at least by implication, other faith traditions, can be tapped to promote deeper, non-dogmatic understanding and think this endeavour is under way.

Dialogue between depth psychology and religious tradition can make a significant contribution. Much of the work of Tillich and Jung—as well as the books here being reviewed—are attempts at this. Interreligious dialogue also has a contribution to make.

I hope that this review too is a humble contribution. However, this is not a case where a review is any substitute for the book. I feel quite inadequate to the task of trying to sum up these books in a short review, and want to finish with a plea that readers of this review go on to the books themselves.

They may conclude I have not done them justice.

–Harvey Shepherd