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The essays collected in this volume are selected from papers presented to a ‘Consultation on Jungian Psychology and the Study of Religion’ at the 1979-1981 annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion. They fall into three groups.
The first presents four differing views on Jungian psychology and the study of religion. Ann Ulanov argues that Jung's psychological hermeneutic can link the archetypal meaning of religious expressions, which have their own history, to the immediate experiences of both scholar and student. She writes as both analyst and teacher. Peter Homans questions whether Jung's epistemological shift from the social and traditional to the inner and personal translates Christian images into a psychology acceptable to modern man or explains traditional Christianity away. (This paper is substantially identical with the concluding sections of his book Jung in Focus.) William Paden relates Jung's central concern with religion to European phenomenology. Luther Martin considers Jung's debt to Gnostic imagery.
The second group of papers represents two areas of religious study which Ulanov suggests can most benefit from the Jungian hermeneutic: the understanding of texts, and the history of religions.
Wayne Rollins studies the place of Biblical scripture in the life and work of Jung. He reminds the scholarly community that (in Jung's words which the editors have quoted at the beginning of their preface), ‘religion is not only a sociological and historical phenomenon, but also something of considerable personal concern to a great number of individuals’. James Goss uses Jungian insight to complement a post-Bultmann understanding of Jesus's eschatological proclamation of the Kingdom of God. Mokusen Miyuki offers an interpretation of the ancient Buddhist Legend of Ajatasatru as an illustration of how the Jungian hermeneutic can help interpret non-Western texts.
Luther Martin's second paper is concerned with the effects of the Jungian perspective on the study of