Internet Discussion Forum Summary

A summary of the Internet Discussion Forum postings about the papers by Anthony Storr, Sonu Shamdasani, Robert Segal and Frances Bower.

The four papers on the question of whether analytical psychology is a religion have generated responses from eight people from the UK and the USA. All the respondents agree with the overall conclusion of the original authors that analytical psychology cannot simply be considered a religion. However, the question generated a range of viewpoints and opinions, the essence of which I have tried to summarize here.

Judith Hubback wrote that she tended to see analytical psychology

with the etymology of the word religion in mind. It is said to come from one of two Latin words: either to read over (religere) or to bind (religare). So I suggest it includes, (1) reading again, i.e., taking into account, what others before us have experienced as religious, and (2) linking, e.g. binding, ourselves to something beyond our mere human nature. I have always found that Jung did both of those things, and actually found religion to be about ineffable and ultimately indescribable experiences.

For her, it is to be classified as a human science, though its temper is religious in the sense of going on trying to find meaning in the vagaries of life. Robin McGlashan pointed out that the answer to the question depends on the definition of ‘religion’ used, and suggests that one of the ways through this is to investigate

how far do Jung's successors as proponents of analytical psychology treat his system, or their own version of it, as if it were a religion? Has it become a religion for them (in Nietzsche's sense rather than Weber's, to be sure)? Jung has shown us how religions develop from some original numinous experience through its encodification in ritual and dogma into the institutional phenomena, which we see around us in the world today, which come to be supported out of a whole gamut of mixed motives.

This then led into