Robert F. Hobson

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Jung discusses dogma as a means of keeping the archetypes in projection and serving as a defence against a shattering, direct religious experience. Although in his later writings he puts an increasingly high psychological value upon religious belief, he still appears to regard adherence to a dogmatic religion as a flight from, or a hindrance to, individual development. Hostie has a very different attitude. In his anxiety to protect the dogma from irresponsible psychologists he writes as if there were a great gulf fixed between psychology and theology or even religion.… Neither Jung nor Hostie talks about dogma, as I understand it. The one describes a possible attitude towards dogmatic formulations, the other defends dogma by rejecting the Incarnation and neither seems to have studied the work that dogma does in a Christian, or heathen, who is still alive enough to think, imagine, and copulate.…

… Only in a very long account could it be shown how, in a transference analysis, this dogma can be progressively illuminated and, far from becoming superfluous, be itself the mediator of individual development. Theological formulations and psychological theory, uncontrolled phantasy and highly ordered ceremony, the orgasm and the sacraments of the Church can all be intimations of the mystery and point the way to an experience of more abundant life through the dogma. As I consider this process to be an act of divine revelation, I cannot make the theologian's sharp distinction between dogmas from God and ‘psychic utterances’.…

The most valuable and original part of Hostie's book is the first section, in which he studies Jung's empirical method and analyses his psychological contribution. In following the development of analytical psychology by careful study of the chronology of Jung's writings, and in his lucid presentation of its concepts, the priest sets an example to the psychologists. He cuts a way through much of the verbal confusion, distinguishing between hypotheses firml