"Deus Aderit": Learning from Carl Jung

Thinking Friend Dick Wilson in North Carolina didn’t know about my intention to write this article on Carl Jung when he ended his comments on my July 25 blog post, “vocatus atque non vocatus deus aderit [Invited or not, God shows up!],” words long associated with the famed Swiss psychoanalyst. 

Jung’s Formative Years

Jung was born 145 years ago (on July 26, 1875) in a city about 50 miles northeast of Zürich, Switzerland. His father was a Swiss Reformed Church pastor, and his mother was the daughter of a distinguished churchman and academic—but she was also emotionally unbalanced when Jung was young.

Carl initially wanted to become a pastor, but he decided against the path of religious traditionalism and decided instead to pursue psychiatry and medicine. Consequently, at the age of 20 he began to study medicine at the University of Basel.

In 1900, Jung moved to Zürich and began working in a psychiatric hospital. Three years later he married Emma Rauschenbach, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist.

Jung met Sigmund Freud in 1907 and the two psychiatrists had a close relationship until 1912. They met for the last time in 1913, when Freud wrote, “We took leave from one another without feeling the need to meet again.”

In 1908 the Jungs bought land near Lake Zürich in Küsnacht, Switzerland, and had a large three-story house constructed there with money Emma had inherited. That was Carl’s home until his death in June 1961. (Emma died in 1955).

Above the entrance doorway, the Jungs had these words permanently inscribed: VOCATUS ATQUE NON VOCATUS DEUS ADERIT. An alternative translation to that given by Dick (above) is: “Invoked or not invoked, God is present.” Those Latin words are also engraved on Jung’s tombstone.  

Entrance doorway to Carl and Emma Jung's house

Jung’s Productive Years

During the first half of his adult life, Jung developed an approach toward understanding the human psyche that contrasted that of Sigmund Freud. His important books during this time are Psychology of the Unconscious (1912), Psychological Types (1921), and Psychology and Religion (1938).

During these productive years, Jung introduced such terms as archetypes, collective unconscious, introvert and extrovert (originally extravert), persona, and shadow.

Unlike Freud, who understood God as a human fabrication, the infantile projection of the human need for protection, Jung was primarily positive toward religion and the reality of God.

(Click here to access my 10/15/14 blog post titled “Was Freud a Fraud?” In that article, I question Freud’s assertion that belief in God is just wish fulfillment and that religion is ““the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity.”)

Jung’s Reflective Years

While Jung’s concept of God wasn’t necessarily that of traditional Christianity, neither was it oppositional. His position seems clearly to have been starkly in contrast to Freud’s.

In 1952, when he was past 75, he wrote to a clergyman, “I find that all my thoughts circle around God like the planets around the sun, and are as irresistibly attracted to Him” (cited here in 2016).

Seven years later in a BBC “Face to Face” interview, Jung was asked if he believed in God. He replied, “I don’t need to believe, I know.”

According to psychologist Steve Myers (see here), in that statement Jung affirmed God as “a certainty” that was “based on evidence. His practice as a psychotherapist and his mythological research had convinced him of God’s existence.”

It was my reading of the highly respected (by me and many others) Richard Rohr that prompted this article on Jung. In his 2019 book The Universal Christ, Rohr has a three-page subsection about Jung and later cites the Latin inscription above the doorway to Jung’s house.

In his “daily meditation” for 1/2/15, Rohr writes about his “wisdom lineage.” He refers to “the brilliant psychology of Carl Jung,” and that is the only twentieth-century name mentioned.

The world would be better off if more people would spurn Freud and learn from Jung. Everyone needs to realize, as Jung evidently did, that Deus aderit: God is present, whether invoked or not.

Is Becoming Inclusive Even Remotely Possible?

After posting my previous blog article, I expected to hear from one or more people saying that the idea of doing away with us/them divisions was fuzzy idealism and not at all possible.

Alas, no one made such comments, so I have to do it myself! How can we possibly become completely inclusive in October, the peak of the baseball season? Right now it is us (Go Royals!) against them (the Blue Jays, which is not even a U.S. team, for Pete’s sake).

Competitive sports is based on a strong us/them dichotomy. True, there is a type of volleyball in which rotation occurs from one side to the other. While that can still be fun to play, I’m afraid it is never going to be included in the Olympic Games.

Several days ago I saw the following image on Facebook:

This is a nice thought—but, no, I can’t really imagine it. There is so little love and respect for so many people even in our own neighborhoods and cities I, can’t imagine most of us are going to be able in any meaningful way to love and respect the more than 7,000,000,000 people in the world.

Here in Tucson where June and I are visiting for several weeks, there are “We Stand with Rosa” signs in many yards I have driven past, including in the yard next to my daughter’s place (pictured).

Rosa Robles is a 41 year old Mexican woman who was originally detained in 2010 after a routine traffic stop revealed she was in the country illegally. In August 2014 she moved into a Presbyterian church here in Tucson for sanctuary after receiving an order of deportation.

Rosa said she came to the U.S. in 1999 to give her kids a better life. They were born in Mexico, but qualify for relief by the President’s executive action. She admits that she did break the law by entering the country illegally—but thinks those with families and clean records should be spared deportation.

Those who are standing with Rosa in Tucson are loving and respecting her and her family. But Rosa is just one out of millions of “illegals” in this country—and many voices cry out for “them” to be deported—and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is trying to do its job by deporting Rosa.

There is widespread clamor for securing the borders—not just against terrorists and criminals, but against all who seek to come into this country without going through the lengthy, and expensive, legal immigration process.

In a world where there is only “us” and no “thems,” there would be no borders, national or otherwise. But, sadly, that is not possible in today’s world. Most of the people in this country would fight rather than have completely open borders.

But what if we all loved and respected each another, if we loved others as we love ourselves, if we practiced the Golden Rule?

In his Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) Freud wrote that the commandment “Love thy neighbour as thyself is impossible to fulfill.” He is probably correct.

Writing five years later in Interpretation of Christian Ethics, Reinhold Niebuhr cites Freud’s words in “The Relevance of an Impossible Ethical Ideal,” the fourth chapter. Then he goes on to insist that “the law of love is an impossible possibility.”

Yes, becoming completely inclusive is, no doubt, not even remotely possible. But becoming more and more inclusive is a real possibility—and a constant challenge for all who seek to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Was Freud a Fraud?

Great Books Kansas City is a book discussion group that has been meeting monthly since 2004 “to discuss great literature that has stood the test of time.”

Last month, for only the second time, I attended Great Books KC because of my interest in the book being discussed that evening: Sigmund Freud’s The Future of an Illusion (1927).

That book is largely an analysis, and denunciation, of religion and faith in God.

I do not have sufficient knowledge of psychology/psychiatry to critique Freud’s psychoanalytical thought. But I do have some expertise in the field of theology and philosophy.

As I was driving downtown to the meeting, I began to wonder, “Was Freud a fraud?” It seems that at least in some ways he was.

In his 1927 book, he places great emphasis on science and disses religion or faith in God for being unscientific.

But as I read many of Freud’s assertions, I kept asking myself, “How does he know that?” and “How can that statement possibly be proven scientifically?”

It seems clear that much of what he wrote is theory, and many of his ideas may or may not be true. But most are not amenable to scientific proof.

Some of what Freud wrote, such as his analysis of the human id, ego, and superego, has undoubtedly helped to explain significant aspects of human behavior.

But it is his analysis of religious belief that is most questionable.

For example, in Future ... Freud avers that religious ideas are “illusions, fulfilments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind” (p. 30, 1961 trans.).

That may be true, especially for some people. But is it true for all?

Later in the same book, Freud asserts that religion is “the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity” (p. 43).

Really? Can you scientifically prove that, Dr. Freud?

Freud mainly dealt with mentally ill people, and that no doubt skewed his view of religion. Many sick people have sick religious beliefs and practices.

On the other hand, many healthy people have healthy, and socially beneficial, religious ideas.

Freud didn’t consider the great prophets or social activists whose religious faith was not for their own personal comfort but rather was an impetus for challenging the ills of society.

Freud didn’t consider the great intellectuals whose religious faith was not neurotic but the spur to lofty and creative thinking.

Freud didn’t consider the great missionaries who at great personal discomfort went to lands of danger, disease, and often disappointment for the sake of the Good News that they felt compelled to share.

From a different standpoint, some who do have knowledge of psychiatry have criticized Freud severely.

For example, a clinical and research psychiatrist named E. Fuller Torrey tore into Freud, or at least the use of Freudian ideas, in his 1992 book titled Freudian Fraud: The Malignant Effect of Freud’s Theory on American Thought and Culture.

According to Torrey, Vladimir Nabokov, the widely-known Russian-American novelist, called Freud a “Viennese quack” and deemed psychoanalysis “one of the vilest deceits practiced by people on themselves and on others.”

Nabokov (1899~1977) also contended that “the difference between the rapist and therapist is but a matter of spacing” (Torrey, pp. 200-1).

In veiled criticism of Freudian psychoanalysis, Humbert Humbert, one of Nabokov’s characters wrote about “pseudoliberation of pseudolibidoes.”

In case you don’t recognize who Humbert is, he is the protagonist in Nabokov’s best-known book Lolita, which, it so happens, is the book to be discussed at this month’s Great Books KC meeting.