Hostie, Raymond. Religion and the Psychology of Jung. Translated by G. R. Lamb. London & New York:  Sheed & Ward, 1957. Pp.  249.

…

Whatever the defects of Hostie's exposition, it does have the merit (not universal among Jung's critics) of fully appreciating Jung's empirical methodology. And it does stress the variety and contrariety of the empirical data, as well as the primacy of the practical therapeutic concern, which have led Jung to formulate, and constantly to review and revise, his distinctive hypotheses and concepts. Just because Hostie seems to understand all this so well, the irrelevance of much of his criticism is surprising. Especially in his chapter, ‘Synthesis or compromise’, he appears not only consistently to miss the target he has just so carefully reconnoitred, but to aim at a quite different one of his own construction. It seems, notwithstanding his own previous assurances to the contrary, impossible for him to suppose that Jung is not, after all, a philosopher propounding philosophical solutions to philosophical problems. And of course he has no difficulty in showing that Jung is a very poor philosopher, and that his solutions are philosophical failures. Reading Jung's psychological statements as attempts at philosophical synthesis he logically enough charges him with ‘psychologism’, not noticing that it is he himself who has unaccountably lapsed into ‘philosophism’. He rightly emphasizes Jung's constant preoccupation with pairs of opposites, but this is now attributed to some ‘underlying idea’ of a philosophical character, instead of to the simple fact that, as a psychotherapist,