SPIRITUALITY AND C.G.JUNG

Integrating light and “shadow” in psychotherapy

Presented by Petra Meedt

Some Ideas on Spirituality

“Subjective experience of the sacred” (Vaughan)

“cognitive map of the world” that aids orientation and gives meaning to the world (Saucier & Skrzypinska)

derived from the Latin word “spirare” which means “to breathe” (Wullf)

“inner religious passion” (Jung)

“primal religious hunger” (Jung)

Spirituality is…

Jung’s Personal Approach to Spirituality

“The main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neuroses but rather with the approach to the numinous. But the fact is that the approach to the numinous is the real therapy.” (C.G. Jung)

Christian upbringing

Sigmund Freud

Psychiatric patients

Priests and Monks

Eastern spirituality

Mysticism

1. Personal and Professional Influences

“For the psychologist the God-image is a psychological fact. He cannot say anything about the metaphysical reality of God.”

“I don’t believe there is a God; I know there is a God.”

“Jung teaches us to live with mystery” (King)

“One must first discover one’s own hunger for God beyond all concepts to recognize the hunger in another.”

2. C.G. Jung on Spirituality

Spirituality in Analytical Psychotherapy

Dream work

Creative Art work

Mandala

Active Imagination

Therapeutic strategies

“Modern man has lost his soul”

Only through facing the “dark side” of ourselves, making our shadow (= potential for evil) conscious, we can overcome denial, recover our primal “religious passion” and enter in contact with our true self

This process of reconnecting with our soul starts with taking responsibility for our shadow (“mea culpa”)

Therapeutic Process

Modern Currents in Spiritual Psychology

Parts-Therapy (Price)

“The way to God is down” (Parker J. Palmer)

“I now know myself to be a person of weakness and strength, liability and giftedness, darkness and light. I now know that to be whole means to reject none of it but to embrace all of it.”

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION.