An Insufficient Truth

The Catholic Thing

By Brad Miner Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) was the Swiss psychoanalyst and founder of Analytical Psychology whose contributions to the field may end up being more lasting (and closer to the truth) than those of his mentor, friend, and antagonist Sigmund Freud. Both men believed sexual development is important, but Jung thought human personality was not driven by the libido to the extent Freud insisted it was. Jung saw a spiritual purpose in human life. His work was influenced by his Christian upbringing, and he was among the few Christians in the first generation of psychologists. I am fascinated by what Jung said about the "death of God" in modern culture, which he believed was at the heart of the modernist/nihilist project: it means not that God is rejected entirely but that He has descended into the subconscious. Maybe that's a recapitulation of the Crucifixion and entombment of Christ. So, if Jung was right, we may suppose what happens next: a resurrection. Yet when a friend converted to Catholicism, Jung wrote to him, "I am for those who are out of the Church." I have the sense that this may have also been true - so far anyway - of the contemporary Jungian psychologist, Jordan Peterson (author of 12 Rules for Life), whose wife, Tammy, entered the Catholic Church this past Easter. Whether or not Jordan will follow remains an open question, but he should. I believe Dr. Peterson may be a transitional figure. At the very least, he is - through his enormously popular books and lectures - leading many young men to reconsider the role the Bible can play in helping them improve their lives. But Peterson is also transitional because he is (or certainly seems to be) a man in transition, and to get where he is headed may require a break with Jung. Jung was a Christian in name only - and barely that. It may be better to say he was a Gnostic. His appreciation of the faith was in its utility vis-à-vis atheism (vis-à-vis was a term of art with Jung) in that the summum bonum, the idea of God, is at the center of the collective unconscious - Jung's most famous coinage. This collective unconscious is populated by instincts and archetypes that manifest in myths that have appeared in disparate cultures throughout history and around the world and, in some cases, predate any interaction among those cultures. And more than that, these myths arise through mental images in dreams, creating congruity and unity between a culture and each of its individuals. This has similarities to the work of Thomas Bulfinch (Mythology), James George Frazer (The Golden Bough), and, later, Joseph Campbell (The Hero with a Thousand Faces), and there may be much to it. But even if there's some truth in it, surely, it's an insufficient truth. In his several video exchanges with Bishop Robert Barron - some leading up to We Who Wrestle with God, Peterson's forthcoming book (November 19th), Peterson is seen nodding and taking notes as the Bishop explains the Catholic understanding of some part of Genesis, Exodus, or the Book of Job. (Take a look at their discussion of Moses and the Burning Bush.) Peterson often seems to be evoking Anselm of Canterbury's famous ontological proof - that God is that being than which no greater can be conceived, and a God that actually exists would be greater than one who merely exists in thought. Peterson, though, puts a Thomistic spin on it by saying, essentially, that God is the highest aim behind all proximal aims - the summum bonum, as Bishop Barron reminds him. The good bishop also makes clear to Peterson that God is not a small-b being, in competition with other beings, human beings especially. He is Being itself. Peterson writes that down. And as much (if not more) than the pure atheism of Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, or Jean-Paul Sartre, the soft agnosticism that rejects God as a barrier to human freedom is what's bedeviling modernity. Peterson gets this. But even when speaking of the Incarnation, one senses hedging - that...