You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Charles Hanna is an American pastor who, after graduating from the Union Theological Seminary, worked in America and in Greece, and is now at the International Protestant Church of Zürich. His book is an admirably lucid attempt to collect Jung's religious ideas, in a form suitable for students and clergy, especially those ideas which may still be challenging to a conventional Christian outlook. It is a book of under 200 pages, and must therefore be expected to set quite severe limits to a survey of Jung's ideas about religion.
Concentrating on Western religion, the author presents the central ideas developed by Jung in his lifelong struggle with Christian orthodoxy. He uses mainly the first part of Psychology and religion; Symbols of transformation; Structure and dynamics of the psyche; and Psychological types, and has grouped his comments in chapters, each prefaced by quotations, and clearly set out under titles. For instance, in God and god image, he gives a good summary of Answer to Job, and in ‘Psychology of the soul’ traces the legend of the Grail and shows how Jung used this to illustrate and understand problems encountered in masculine and feminine psychology, especially in the later stages of life.
In a later chapter, ‘The present crisis’, Jung's concern with man's abrogation of personal responsibility and his plea for self-knowledge assume a contemporary vividness not only in the light of Vietnam, Israel, and the daily newspaper headlines, but also in conjunction with much thoughtful writing from current scientists and sociologists. It is, I think, this aspect of Jung's work as set out in Hanna's book that may carry most conviction to the general reader.
In reviewing a short book which surveys so large a subject it may be ungenerous to stress omissions, but I was struck by the imbalance which is an inevitable result of confining discussion of Jung's religious ideas almost wholly to Western insights. This not only loses the dimension given by Eastern religions,