Description
What did Carl Jung really think about God, religion, and the inner life?
An Armchair Guide to Jung and God
In this thought-provoking 9-session course, Mark Vernon brings Jung’s most powerful ideas to life—exploring the unconscious, symbols, synchronicity, and spiritual experience in a way that’s accessible, challenging, and deeply relevant to modern seekers.
Course Format
The course includes 9 sessions:
6 one-hour recorded lectures
3 live group conversation and Q&A sessions
Carl Jung was born in 1875, just over 150 years ago. His impact upon psychology is immense, with notions such as extroversion and introversion, archetypes and synchronicities. But what lies at the heart of his psychology and how compatible is it with theistic convictions?
The course will examine the fundamentals of Jung’s depth psychology, paying particular attention to its significance for religious belief. Jung felt that psychoanalysis had emerged to fill a vacuum in the western world, with churches losing the ability to address the pressing issues of inner life.
Why is this important?
He endured a substantial crisis in the earlier part of his life, known now in his so-called Red Book, in which he describes encounters with various entities and the zeitgeist. He strove to bring the insights he gained to the wider world, in various phases of work, including personality types and alchemical concepts. He also engaged with other thinkers such as Nietzsche and Darwin and, of course, Freud.
In other words, Jung wanted to make a difference and, by any measure, he has. But his ideas about religion, and Christianity in particular, are contested. Towards the end of his life, he described not believing in God but knowing of God’s existence. He also disagreed with the classical conception of God held in traditions including the Christian. So what can be made of his work now?
Who Is This Series For?
Students and practitioners of psychotherapy and depth psychology
Religious professionals interested in psychological flourishing and how Jung might inform their work.
Those considering psychotherapy or spiritual direction as a second career
People who enjoy reading about spirituality and have a spiritual practice
Anyone who enjoys reflecting on religious questions and the inner life
