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The contribution that psychology can offer to the post-modern western
men’s need to find a greater equilibrium between the material dimension
and that spiritual is related to its ability to help them to understand
the individual and group factors that bring them to desire in a way and to
act in the opposite way, to feel the longing for individualization and
contemporarily to want for enlisting to institutions and cults, to aim
towards the personal freedom and at the same time to remain slave to
consumptions, to want the peace and instead to practise the war. If
psychology can give a contribution to the recovery of the spiritual
dimension it is only helping man to become “what one is” [Friedrich
Nietzsche, «Hecce Homo», Adelphi, Milano, 1969, p. 52] and to project
himself in the future without losing the cultural matrixes of his own
Self.
Psychology about the problems of the spirit, during its also short history
as autonomous discipline, has undoubtedly derived all the better from the
Jung’s special interest towards that aspects of the individual and
collective psychology connected to archetypes, oriental philosophy,
synchronicity, sense of the divinity, alchemy, esotericism and such.
Certainly, Jung has passed on his passion for these studies to his
disciples. After all, the post-modern actuality of the Jungian analytical
psychology draws its luck from its “borderline” capacity to face many,
for so to say, “esoteric” themes in comparison to the “excessively
logics” categories that most of the remaining psychoanalytic schools use
for explaining the complexity of the human one. If nothing else, the Karl
Gustav Jung’s thought, as Roderick Main affirms, clearly makes an
ontological distinction among “different kinds of phenomena: material
phenomena such as tables and trees, psychic phenomena such as thoughts and
fantasies; and spiritual phenomena such as moments of insight and
creativity or senses of numinous presence” [Roderick Main; The rupture
of Time, Brunner-Routledge; Hove and New York, 2004, p.172].
The attention towards the spiritual life has always shown notable
oscillations in relation to the historical period, the place and the
emerging culture. In Western culture, the search for a new spiritual
dimension has found, recently, the most definite expressions in the New
Age movement, under the influence of the Jungian psychology and the
speculations of some modern eminent theologians. Today, however, after the
conclusion of the Karol Wojtyla’s pontifical route, the Christianity
returns to resurface. We will see below why this return owing to John Paul
II.
We, human beings, let's say frankly it, we live in mystery and although we
have the tendency to give an ostensible rationality to our progress in the
world, although we can attribute scientificity to our attempts to discover
the laws that regulate the Universe, although we arrogate to ourselves the
ability to know God and his will, at long last we feel nevertheless to be
dipped in mystery, an ambiguous term that just expresses two only
apparently opposite possibilities: revealed truth and incomprehensible
event. It is our to live immersed in the irrational that produces the need
of the irrational, this probably for not-losing the contact with the
primordial matrix at the beginning of our “Universe-Self”; even if
without any certainty that the “ours” is the only possible Universe.
Besides it needs to consider, that really the most recent scientific
theories tend to confirm quite unusual phenomena as the virtual reality,
the quantum mechanics, the laws of the chaos, the epistemology of the
complexity etc.
Today, as Paul Heelas affirms, we are more capably to clearly distinguish
between religion - that is totally God-centred, regulated and transmitted
by religious authorities who prescribe rituals and establish ways of
believing - and spirituality: it is deeply personal as interior or
immanent experience of relationship with the sacred, so that “at heart,
spirituality has come to mean 'life' . . . Life, rather than what
transcends life, becomes God (thus contemporary spirituality may more
precisely be termed 'spirituality of life’)” [Paul Heelas «The
spiritual revolution: from “Religion” to “Spirituality”, in Linda
Woodhead, Paul Fletcher, Hiroko Kwanami, David Smith; «Religions in the
modern world: traditions and transformations»; Routledge, London and New
York 2002; 358-9].
Gordon Kaufman, [«On thinking of God as Serendiptious Creativity», in
Journal of the American Accademy of Religion, 2001], examining the history
and development of the word or symbol ‘God’ “identifies three
important strands in its meaning, the first being the intermingling of the
anthropomorphic and philosophical images of God, the second being the
relation of "God" to subjectivity and the realization that God
or awareness of the infinite resides in the soul or is part of human
experience, and the third is the use of negative theology to understand
God”. Kaufman “seems to rely almost solely on negative statements
about God, content to assert that almost all positive statement of God is
anthropomorphizing, is inadequate, is a human creation or projection.
Finally, he is able to make only the most basic and minimal statement of
God, as being the serendipitous creativity that is manifest throughout the
cosmos. God is not like human beings, God is not personal, God is not
adequately described by the theologizing of the past, God is only dimly
reflected in the biblical witness … These statements bring Kaufman to a
place where he clings to the mystery of God, seeing God's activity as
"creative," but even in this categorization, he is nearly
helpless in articulating a clear understanding of God, because he seems to
be stuck up against a need to define "creativity …" [in
http://www.geocities.com/developingtheology/index.html]
In David Tacey’s opinion, the spiritual life is no longer a specialist
concern, restricted to those who belong to religious traditions. The
“spirituality revolution” is “a spontaneous movement in society, a
new interest in the reality of spirit and its healing effects on life,
health, community and well-being” [David Tacey; «The spirituality
revolution, the emergence of contemporary spirituality»;
Brunner-Routledge, Hove and New York; 2004, p.1]. The early scientific
era, he considers “viewed the individual as sort of efficient machine.
We now have to revise our concepts of life, society and progress, while
persevering the advances that technology and science have given us.
Significantly, the new revolution is found at the heart of the new
sciences, where recently discoveries in physics, biology, psychology and
ecology have begun to restore dignity to previously discredited spiritual
visions of realty. Science itself has experienced its own revolution of
the spirit, and is no longer arraigned against spirituality in the old
way”; therefore, improbably the society could “return to organised
religion or dogmatic theology in their old, premodern forms”, also in
consideration of the “recent upwelling of spiritual feeling in young
people throughout the world, who increasingly realise, often with some
desperation, that the society is need of renewal».
Roderick Main clarifies that the spiritual revolution is not one that
threatens to overthrow existing social or even religious structures but,
like the counter-cultural movement of the 1960s, is nevertheless
significantly affecting mainstream culture in a continual dialectic of
challenge and assimilation. Above all - the reference to the New Age is
here an obligation – what has estranged the western post-modern man from
the traditional religious institutions has been the necessity to recover
symbols, to give a purpose and a not-ordinary meaning to the life, to
escape the role of mere performer of actions imposed by the technocracy,
to safeguard own identity and to donate again sense to the mystery.
The New Age constitutes a particularly interesting spiritual movement for
Jungians. Tacey, for example, considers the New Age “a significant
spiritual phenomenon, and Jungians should be more interested in it than
they appear to be, especially because the movement has appropriated Jung
as one of its spiritual leaders”. Nevertheless, Tacey thinks that the
New Age is a “specific and highly commercialised ‘wing’ of the new
spiritual movement”, in fact it “does not compensates our consumerist
society but simply reproduces several of its features in its industry and
enterprise, creating a spiritual consumerism”, so it is “a largely
product of American popular culture” and, to some extent, by means of
its “production on Jung” it also represents “the Americanisation of
Jung”. In Tacey’s opinion, anyway, the New Age has had the function to
counterbalance the stasis of our established religious traditions “by
forcing us to attend to what has been repressed or ignored by Western
traditional religions: the sacred feminine, the Goddess, the body, nature,
instincts, ecstasy and mysticism”. [David Tacey; «Jung and the New Age»;
Brunner-Routledge, Hove and New York; 2001; pp. IX-X, 5).
Roderick Main points out that there is “a great deal of controversy
about the use of the phrase ‘New Age’. Many of those to whose beliefs
and practices it is applied repudiate it, insisting that New Age needs to
be clearly distinguished from Wicca, neo-paganism, and other new or
revived religious movements with which it tends to be conflated. Others
who formerly embraced the label ‘New Age’ now prefer such alternative
descriptions as ‘holistic spirituality’ (e.g. Bloom 2003)”. [Roderick
Main; «The rupture of time»; Brunner-Routledge, Hove and New York; 2004;
p. 152].
If however for a moment we neglect the phenomenon in its dimension of
event concerning a part of the collectivity and we considers the
psychological aspects from the point of view of the “New Age”
individual we can perhaps discover some more intriguing thing. For example,
Wouter J. Hanegraaff says that “the New Age movement tends to make each
private individual into the center of his or her symbolic world” [Wouter
J. Hanegraaf; «New Age religion and western culture: Esotericism in the
mirror of secular thought »; E. J. Brill, Leiden,1996 – republished:
State University of New York Press, Albany, New York; 1998], so that the
personal experience is preferred to every institutional creed and the
authority of the spiritual Self becomes primary in comparison with every
faith, besides the source of the well-being is interior and reached when
one is in contact with the inner energy or the cosmic energy. All that
rouses the official religions’ (Christian, Jewish, Islamic) worries and
above all the worries of Christian religion since it is the religion
prevailing just in that Western countries where the New Age has had a
greater development.
In a document edited by The Pontifical Council For Culture and by The
Pontifical Council For Interreligious Dialogue, titled «Jesus Christ the
Bearer of the water life - A Christian reflection on the New Age», the
Catholic Church recognizes that the “New Age is attractive mainly
because so much of what it offers meets hungers often left unsatisfied by
the established institutions”. A notable prudence appears through this
document “the attraction that New Age religiosity has for some
Christians may be due in part to the lack of serious attention in their
own communities for themes which are actually part of the Catholic
synthesis such as the importance of man's spiritual dimension and its
integration with the whole of life, the search for life's meaning, the
link between human beings and the rest of creation, the desire for
personal and social transformation, and the rejection of a rationalistic
and materialistic view of humanity … It is essential to try to
understand New Age correctly, in order to evaluate it fairly, and avoid
creating a caricature. It would be unwise and untrue to say that
everything connected with the New Age movement is good, or that everything
about it is bad ... New Age is a witness to nothing less than a cultural
revolution, a complex reaction to the dominant ideas and values in western
culture, and yet its idealistic criticism is itself ironically typical of
the culture it criticizes” [in
http://www.cesnur.org/2003/vat_na_en.htm].
The mentioned Roman Curia’s Pontifical Councils instead appears to go
with a particular emphasis really against Jung and Jungians: “Jung
emphasized the transcendent character of consciousness and introduced the
idea of the collective unconscious, a kind of store for symbols and
memories shared with people from various different ages and cultures.
According to Wouter Hanegraaff, … [Jung contributed to] a «sacralisation
of psychology» … indeed, ‘not only psychologized esotericism but he
also sacralized psychology, by filling it with the contents of esoteric
speculation. The result was a body of theories which enabled people to
talk about God while really meaning their own psyche, and about their own
psyche while really meaning the divine. If the psyche is «mind», and God
is «mind» as well, then to discuss one must mean to discuss the
other’. His response to the accusation that he had «psychologised»
Christianity was that ‘psychology is the modern myth and only in terms
of the current myth can we understand the faith’ … A central element
in his thought is the cult of the sun, where God is the vital energy
(libido) within a person. As he himself said, “this comparison is no
mere play of words. This is «the god within» to which Jung refers, the
essential divinity he believed to be in every human being. The path to the
inner universe is through the unconscious. The inner world's
correspondence to the outer one is in the collective unconscious” [in
http://www.cesnur.org/2003/vat_na_en.htm].
At the base of the criticism to Jung by the Catholic Church there is also
an “astrologic question”: the precession of the equinoxes that happens
every 2160 years and that would be transporting us from of the Pisces’s
Era (dominated by the suffering, by the senses of guilt, by the so-called
“original sin”) into the constellation of Aquarius. Just Jung had
predicted “a great change” “would occur with the advent of the Age
of Aquarius”: “a long-lasting transformation of the collective
psyche” [Roderick Main; «The rupture of time»; Brunner-Routledge, Hove
and New York; 2004; p. 165], marked, presumably, by solidarity and harmony
among peoples.
Are we to the beginning of such radical changing of the collective psyche
indeed? Is it coming true the Jung’s great prophecy? Or are darker
centuries on the way under the push of macro-business interests and
revived religious wars? What does it have to change in the social world
from now so that the advent of the hoped happy Era of Aquarius comes? Is
Pope Wojtyla the symbol foreboding a such transformation of the humanity?
We haven’t the pride to be able to give answers to so imposing and
complex questions. However we desire to continue our thematic thread, that
moves along the tracks of the analytical psychology, so that such
fundamental questions, above all for the future generations, doesn't
easily fall in the oblivion behind the not-innocent indolence of our
ordinary life; a point of forced passage of this discursive run is to
mention the role of the institutions.
The technological achievements, the discoveries of the quantum science and
the “informational philosophy” has brought us to develop a conception
of God as a perfect computer, as a primordial choice between yes/not, 0/1,
here/not-here, I am/I am-not; God as the affirmation of a Supreme Bit: an
Almighty Yes, I AM, One, I Exist.
As an individual is a reality (within the bounds of our possibilities of
knowledge), also the Papacy (as institution) is a reality - but only in
the sense proposed by John Roger Searle [«The construction of social
realty», Free Press Pub. New York, 1995] who distinguishes “between
‘brutes facts’, or rather facts which exist independently of the
language that describes them, and ‘institutional facts’, or rather
facts whose existence is linked to men. From this perspective, the
structures and the phenomena that characterize the society don't have any
intrinsic reality: they are ‘facts’ only by virtue of an accord among
men, or rather because they believe in their existence. The reality of the
natural facts, of the mountains or of the molecules, it is independent
from our representations, while the money, the private ownership, the
family, achieve ‘reality’ following conventions that men establish
among them. The power of the governments is a concrete and real power, but, unlike the power of the winds or the volcanic
eruptions, it exists
only because someone recognizes its existence and adjusts to it his
choices and the own actions [in www.ildiogene.it/EncyPages/Ency=Searle.html]).
About institutional facts one could say: “there are plenty of other fish
in the sea”!
God is an invisible reality and as such he “is/is-not”. Now it is
clear that all institutions that have invested themselves with the power
to manage the truths on invisible (not-imaginable, not-describable and,
besides, reputed eternal and unchangeable) entity, they do soon to
individualize a “sacrificial lamb” (see Renè Girard, [«Le bouc
emissaire» le Editions Grasset & Fasquelle, Paris, 1982]) on which it
is easy to reverse aside their inadequacy for the evolution of the times.
What can understand institutional people or apparatus - whose mission is
to maintain an eternal and unchangeable truth - about the belonging to the
psychoanalyst reality that is an exploring continually the unknown one of
Itself and of the other, in a perennial researching and becoming? The main
Jung’s worth has been to point out the importance of the
individualization process that is a without end itinerary; furthermore,
what was not exactly his merit for his contemporaries - to go over the
Freudian hyper-rationalism, giving relief to spirituality - is the
principal motive for Jung has achieved a so great value among the
following generations.
However, really, all the great religious institutions have historically
strong interlacements with the politics, while it is known that just many
psychoanalysts have always looked at the political world without any
liking. Thomas Singer [«The Vision Thing»; Routledge Pub., Hove and New
York, 2000, p. 4] delineates a continuum between myth/archetype and
politics, a series with the psyche on the centre. Singer wrights: «At one
end of the spectrum is the purely mythological or archetypal realm with
its grand themes of death and rebirth, inner transformation and outer
renewal, man and God. At the other end of the imaginary spectrum is the
realm of everyday politics with its power plays, deals, persona
appearances and deception, and a quite substantial knowledge of the
practical world”. About that, in conclusion, nothing yet again, Singer
says, really “The Upanishads, the Koran, the Bible and just about every
other sacred scripture of the World’s great religions wrestle
continuously with the of man as political animal against the backdrop of
deep archetypal encounters with the spirit”.
Eli B. Weisstub [«Reflections from the back side of a dollar: myth and
the origins of diversity », in Thomas Singer «The Vision Thing»;
Routledge Pub., Hove and New York, 2000, pp.143-144] shows as, after all,
“Religious reform may also occur in response to political oppression.
The need for spiritual and religious renewal often underlines social and
political change. Historically, major religious movements have evolved out
of difficult political circumstances … Power and wealth are not
sufficient in providing for a deeper sense of security and well-being.
Political change is inevitably tied to spiritual need”.
In a heartfelt writing, Roberto Gambini [«L’anima del sottosviluppo -
Il caso del Brasile», Psicologia Dinamica, I, 2-3, 1997, pp. 42-43],
discusses about the concept of “underdevelopment”, a word that allowed
a secular manipulation: “Soon they will are five centuries since we
began as a Nation [Brazil] under the spell of another sentence, this time
by the Pope: ‘There is no sin below the Equator’ … This assertion
reveals that the shadow would reigned in the society laying out the
recently discovered lands. In the Catholic 16th century Europe the shadow
was kept under relative control by ethical institutions and civil law, so
extreme abuses such as human exploitation, slavery, manslaughter - in one
word, explicit Evil - were condemned an punished. The shadow, kept in a
corner, pressed for a way out, to be lived and projected. So when a vast
geographical area is opened in the historical horizon under the heading
‘here it is allowed’, the shadow disembarks on the shore and runs
gladly free, proclaiming: ‘I made it! This is home!’ … If we analyse
this shadow and this talk that there is no sin below the Equator, step by
step, we acquire a psychological (and not only socio-economic)
understanding of slavery first of Indians and later of Africans, since
upon these two races Christianity’s shadow was to fall. In short,
Indians and Africans were seen as naturally inferior and ruled by the
Devil - in a time, in fact still actual, in which so-called civilized man
had not reached enough psychological maturity to admit the barbarism and
destructiveness of his own shadow. And beyond that, our analysis has to
take into account the greedy, rapacious attitude of white man behaving
towards America as if it were a tree full of fruit just waiting to be
plucked off, or the cornucopia of abundance - which by the way you can see
in many allegorical paintings and tapestries of the Baroque period in
Europe. ‘Take all you can’ - this was the motto that drove the
conqueros, who just took away, expropriated, kidnapped and violated as if
the land belonged to no one until they arrived. Our first anti-ecological
act, in 1500, was cutting down brazil-wood, much in use then as a red dye
for fabrics. I consider this the starting point of forest devastation, but
our children won’t learn it at school: civilization begins as
destruction of nature and of the land’s ancestral soul - especially by
means of an enforced conversion of the Indians to Catholicism”.
Dale Mathers [«Religion, politics and the collective unconscious», in «An
introduction to meaning and purpose in analytical psychology»,
Brunner-Routledge, Hove and Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia, Pub.,
2001, p. 217-220] about the institutional involvements observes:
“religion or politics look like this, they’re mere ‘arrangements of
rules’. Unable to give depth and meaning to life, their social,
boundary-marking (hermetic) activity fails. Culture-myths, religion and
politics define and determine power gradients: who is master, who is
slave, who says playing a harp all day is ‘paradise’… If spiritual
and material interfuse, then their social manifestations, religion and
politics, go together. Both were once a prerogative of Lords (temporal and
spiritual) but are now our co-responsibility; we share one planet, have
the same archetypal meaning-making strategies - and a common human spirit.
Analytical psychology comes from a philosophical position of
epistemological idealism - we ‘give authority to the reasons in the mind
in order to guarantee a moral world order and/or (we) grant authority to
the thing of the mind because of the moral order which is thought to
exist’ [Marilyn Nagy, «Philosophical Issues in the Psychology of C.G.
Jung», Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 1991, p. 45]. About
the «governance» Dale Mathers says that “religion and politics are two
sides of one coin, one meaning-system … this meaning-system protects
boundaries”, in reality for Mathers jointly “Religion and politics
form an archetype - ‘Governance’, a social form of the transcendent
function … this idea derives from Hegel’s idea of dialectic: the
dialectical materialism of Marx, and the ‘dialectical spiritualism’ of
Jung. Religion and politics (often seen as thesis and antithesis) can be
synthesised into a whole - governance … Governance arises as culture
myths interact with personal myths to form socially coherent meaning
patterns, validating certain percepts (and precepts) over others. It
creates these patterns using totems (numinous signifiers, like the Star of
David) and taboos (like kosher food). Individual and groups obtain meaning
validation by acts of closure and opening. For example, for Christians,
baptism closes into membership and opens up the benefits of membership”.
The revolutionary “soul” (a cultural revolution) of the Analytic
Psychology sure take origin from its founder, in fact Jung showed a
constant tendency to break with the traditional culture just because he
attributed to the Analytical Psychology the value to bring new light to
the understanding of the human being in its different dimensions,
particularly the spiritual one and the religious, and he went to the point
of reinterpreting the sacred texts, particularly the Bible, and the
relationship of man with the divinity. About this, it is interesting to
read, by Paul Bishop, «Jung’s answer to Job» [Brunner-Routledge, Hove
and New York, 2002], it is a detailed commentary on one Jung’s very
difficult writing [C.G. Jung, «Answer to Job», in C.G. JUNG, «Collected
Works», V. 11, Princeton University Press, Princeton]. For Jung, on the
one hand, God needs the man to become conscious and to have a space-time
delimitation, on the other hand, contemporarily, in the modern man it is
emerging a greater centrality of the conscience and an experience of the
"numinous" mostly linked to the psychic experience, all this
determines in such way a different encounter between the man and God,
that, beginning from the God's transformation in man, finds in Christ the
paradigm of the process of individuation, that is the encounter between
Self and Ego [Edward F. Edinger, «Christ as a paradigm of the
individuating Ego, Spring, 1966].
The “psychological theology”, started by Jung, has not only has
created many deep controversies between psychoanalysts and theologians,
but also various controversies among the same Jungian psychoanalysts. From
this point of view it is very interesting the collection of papers -
edited by Robert Withers, [«Controversies in analytical psychology»,
Brunner-Routledge, Hove and New York, 2003] – of which now we will
mention below some written.
Elizabeth Urban [«Response to commentaries by Julian David and Robert
Hinshelwood», in op. cit., Robert Withers, 2003, p. 43] affirms that
“in Jungian psychology there are two organizing centres in the
personality, the self and the ego” and that for Jung the Self is
certainly “more fundamental than the Ego”; this, Urban explains,
because the “Jungian concept arose from Jung’s long-standing interest
in the psychology of spiritual states of mind, not as expressions of
infantile states of mind or the defences against them but as irreducible
states in their own right. Jung’s first reference to what would become
his idea of the self was in a paper describing psychic phenomena in which
opposites - good and evil, love and hate - were transcended … Given his
vertex, he related this to certain notion of God, such as those of the
early Gnostics and the Hindu concept of Atman, both of which conceive, via
non-rational means, an ultimate that transcends opposites. Jung understood
these to be expressions of an essential part of mankind, which he terms
the self, projected into religion, as well as science and psychology. It
represents the intrinsic wholeness of the individual beneath and beyond
the conflict of the opposites”.
Roderick Main [«Analytical psychology, religion and academy», in op.
cit., Robert Withers, 2003, pp. 192-199] comments that “at the beginning
of the twentieth-first century, religion remains a major player on the
world stage; it is neither disappearing nor, looked at from a global
perspective, declining. It is true that some manifestations of religion
… may have waned, but others, such as the numerous forms of
fundamentalism and alternative spirituality appearing throughout the
world, are currently burgeoning … Quite apart from these explicit
manifestations of religion, there is also a growing awareness of
‘implicit religion’ where a religious-style commitment informs secular
activities. Both explicitly and implicitly, religion remains inextricably
bound up with politics, economics, ethics, health, life-styles, and
culture generally”. About the many points of similarity between the New
Age spirituality and religious aspects of Analytical psychology, Main
signals: “both have an ambivalent but largely oppositional relationship
to secular modernity. Both tend do react against the reductive tendencies
of modern science while at the same time selectively appropriating ideas
from modern science. Both place considerable importance on notions of
psycho-spiritual transformation. Both engage eclectically with
non-Western, pre-modern, and esoteric traditions. Both frequently frame
contemporary experience in terms of myth. Both prioritise personal
experience over institutional beliefs. Above all, both locate authority in
the individual self”. About some points of similarity between Religious
Fundamentalism and religious dimensions of Analytical psychology Main
remarks that for the religious fundamentalism “there is a transcendent
reality, that the knowledge can be divinely revealed, and that emotional
commitment to revealed knowledge can justifiably override rational
criticism of it. Here, in this terrain that fundamentalism holds in common
with much mainstream religion, there is some affinity with analytical
psychology. For analytical psychology also recognizes and attends to a
transcendent reality, accepts the possibility of revealed knowledge, and
acknowledges the validity if non-rational modes of apprehending and
evaluating truth. To be sure, major differences remain. In analytical
psychology, there is less dogmatism and certainty in the characterization
of the transcendent, the revelations (e.g., in the form of dreams) are
individual and relevant primarily to very specific circumstances; and the
valuation of emotional awareness is a helpful complement rather than a
defensive alternative to reason. However, that analytical psychology
respects these principles … provides some participatory access to the
world of thought of fundamentalism”. However, Main remarks as while
religion is “a multidimensional phenomenon”, the “analytical
psychology have tented to focus only some … dimensions (in particular
the experiential and the mythic), while paying less attention to others
(such the social, economic, and political)”.
Melanie Withers [«Religion and the terrified», in op. cit., Robert
Withers, 2003, pp. 207-209] underlines as for “vast numbers of the
world’s population, adherence to a sacred deity provides the major focus
of daily life. Islamic thinking continues to rise, whilst evangelical
Christianity and the New Age belief as noted by Main continue to attract
devotees. Paradoxically, by forgoing individualistic thinking, by
surrendering personal independence and acknowledging powerlessness,
believers are given the tools to live and structures to survive all
eventualities. The benefits are threefold. The faithful can expect relief
from the burden of the responsibility and security from life’s anxiety
by continuing to hand over such concerns to omnipotent being. Moreover,
that most annihilating of visions - the endless void of death - can be
avoided by the security of an afterlife. It is understandably
seductive”. What is less understandable, according to Melanie Withers,
it is the tendency among some psychoanalysts to found figures to elevate,
after Freud, for so to say, to a superior “all-seeing deity … Jung is
elevated to the status of jet another cult figure [R. NOLL, «The Jung
Cult: the Origin of a Charismatic Movement», Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1994]. About institutions, Melanie Withers exposes the
convincement that “Church, temple and mosque, government, school and
workplace provide the setting for our daily lives. In providing the
illusion of existential order through highly structured arrangements
regulating behaviour, thoughts and action, institutional hierarchies
clarify the ambiguities around our status and place on the world stage”.
Further Melanie Withers, paying attention to the question concerning the
“subjugation to human ruler”, considers that “in most societies
individuals and groups subject themselves to a human ruler perceived as
being wise, compassionate and benevolent. In seeking the protection of
leaders thought to be more intelligent, skilful and powerful than them,
people aim to have individual burdens and responsibilities, lifted from
their shoulders, though at the same time they long to be free. Freud of
course, would interpret this as a desire to replicate the parent-child
relationship with which we are so familiar and which we have all used to
deal with underlying aspects of existential anxiety, albeit with varying
degrees of success. It remains the case that from childhood we become
conditioned to follow our parents’ dictums. Exchanging safety and
security, if not love and care, for obedience and subordination is
difficult over time, however; Jung’s notion of individuation versus
subordination here represents something of this struggle. As adult we may
well attempt to renegotiate the power balance”.
Dale Mathers [op. cit., 2001, p. 220] says about psychoanalysis that
“Theories are our ‘best truths’, but we cannot have freedom to
theorise without responsibility, or responsibility without freedom to
chose to be responsible of our actions … The goal is what Andrew Samuels
[«The Political Psyche», Routledge, London, 1993, p. 111-34] calls
‘resacralisation’ – revisioning the sacred (the numinous) in
ordinary life - ‘Glory to God in the High Street’. We [psychoanalysts]
do not create compliant, socially adjusted ‘happy workers’ or
Neitzschean Supermen, but enhance personal and social integration, the
finding of personal and social purpose, by increasing an individual’s
skills at making meaning”.
David Tacey [op. cit., 2400, pp. 11, 154-155] is of the opinion that a
“spirituality revolution is taking place in Western ad Eastern societies
as politics fails as vessel of hope and meaning. This revolution is not to
be confused with the rising tide of religious fundamentalism, although the
two are caught up in the same phenomenon: the emergence of the sacred as a
leading force in contemporary society. Spirituality and fundamentalism are
at opposite ends of the cultural spectrum. Spirituality seeks a sensitive,
contemplative, transformative relationship with the sacred, and is able to
sustain levels of uncertainty in its quest because respect for mystery is
paramount. Fundamentalism seeks certainty, fixed answers and absolutism,
as a fearful response to the complexity of the world and to our
vulnerability as creatures in mysterious universe. Spirituality arises
from love of and intimacy with the sacred, and fundamentalism arises from
fear and possession by the sacred. The choice between spirituality and
fundamentalism is a choice between conscious intimacy and unconscious
possession”. Tacey thinks that the modernity stretches out to a new
image of God “‘He’ won’t return in the same form as before, in
fact the pronoun ‘he’ may be dropped altogether, since we no longer
believe that God is a man (if we ever did), nor even ‘masculine’ as a
cosmic principle. Yet God will return because God is an archetypal idea,
and such ideas are eternal and enormously valuable, although at times they
are debunked and declared redundant”, but also the new science, “open
to the possibility of mystery” once more it will be “forced to reopen
the case about the existence of God”.
To deal psychologically with spiritual revolution and to focus it on the
more popular movements – which have had life certainly out and beyond
the traditional institutional religions – it could certainly result less
arduous before the apostolic Karol Wojtyla’s itinerary was completed.
Many people are probably able “to feel” that something is changed, but
it is not an easy task also find the reasons of it because they are too
many recent events in which all we are directly (as Catholics) or
indirectly (as historical testifies) involved. Perhaps, once more, we can
resort to psychology to find useful interpretative keys.
It is evident that difficulties would have been lesser if Karol Wojtyla
had been a typical a “messenger of the spirit”, or better, a “hero
for the faith” (very rarer heroic kind in comparison to the classical
“warlike strength-vigour” heroes [Alfredo Anania, «The myth of the
hero between the past and the future», Psicologia Dinamica, III, 1-2-3,
1999, p. 59]) who, generally corresponds to an extremely “humble”
person without any power (institutional, political, religious) if not the
“mana” which emanates from every deeply spiritual and rich in
“humanitas” person; it suffices to think to Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
On the contrary, in this case, the “hero for the faith”, Karol
Wojtyla, is/has been even the head of Saint Roman Church! This, history
teaches us, is an absolutely exceptional situation. It is by virtue of his
double role that Karol Wojtyla has had the possibility to prelude the
renewed advent of the Christian spirituality.
The unintentional alchemic operation completed by Karol Wojtyla has been
that of a his transmutation, through the death, from a sort of “living
myth” to symbol (symbols in relation to myths are more alive and more
overwhelming, because they are the fundamental metaphors through which the
humanity represents to itself the laws of the life and the death). New
epiphany that has again gathered “shepherds” and “magi” coming
from far and wide; but the first Christian epiphany coincides with the
Christ’s birth, whereas this second epiphany coincides with the
Karol’s death. But Karol from the symbolic point of view is a new Christ
in an diametrically opposite form to that of his predecessor who appeared
2005 years ago, namely Karol is not symbol of “passion and death” but
symbol of the “Eternal Wanderer” and as such he is symbol of the
searching and of the hope through the knowledge, an “Ulysses-Socrates”
lacking in dogmas and full of faith in the meeting and in the
communication with the other. The “communion” that previously favoured
the return to God, during the public celebration of the “hierogamy” by
means of the blessed Host like totemic food, now has become the
“communication” that surrounds in an one great embrace (like the great
colonnade of St. Peter’s symbolizes) the believers and the infidels, the
belonging ones and the others, the different ones, the foreigners and
through such embrace it re-establishes the coming closer to God. The
quadrangular [here there is not any direct reference to the Jung’s
interpretation about the collective transformation of the God image from
Trinity to quaternity (including body, instincts, earth, material domain
generally)] whose vertexes are God, Virgin Maria, Christ and Spirit Saint
has found, with Karol, an extraordinarily innovative readjustment, turning
into “circularity” of the “communication”, which symbolically
abolishes every vertex because mother, father, child and brother occupy an
equipollent and dynamically interchangeable place-space. The advent of the
“itinerant communication” produced by Karol Wojtyla abolishes not only
every pyramidal order between man and man and between man and God, besides
not only abolishes every hierarchical-institutional power able to make
unequal among themselves the human beings, but also and above all it
abolishes every enmity among different faith people, so ending up beating
“in accordance with the most Christian way” the Islamic religion. Pope
Wojtyla has, definitely beaten, maybe, the Islamic fundamentalism. That,
above announced, “Living Water” has found a new source in Pope John
Paul II and he is particularly loved by young people!
We don't know if the Karol Wojtyla’s search, one could say “his
longing”, for the other, betrays in reality an unconscious search for
the mother (and therefore for the feminine or for the God’s
“feminine”) whose he has precociously suffered the loss, in that case
still more suggestive it could appear his predilection for circularity –
which belongs to groups - if it is true what Fornari affirms: the
“maternal imago”, as phantasmal invisible presence, emerges “like
illusory body of the group that holds united the individuals as real
limbs” [Franco Fornari, «Psicoanalisi della guerra», Feltrinelli,
Milano, 1970, p. 121]. We don't know if the Karol Wojtyla’s love towards
humanity - that in its choral quality can represent a phantasmal symbol of
the maternal imago and, therefore, of the “feminine” in general – is
the exact opposite of the possible unconscious hate by Bush or Bin Laden
towards the “paternal imago”, presumably it felt as invasive and
hostile. What we can state with certainty it is that paradoxically who,
likewise Pope Wojtyla, has experienced the true love only he/she can
accept without fear to cross the dark threshold of death.
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