The Illness That We Are: A Jungian Critique of Christianity

Robert B. MacIntyre is head of the Centre for Relationship Therapy and
Education in Orangeville, Ontario.

In this small volume, Dourley, both a Jungian analyst and a Roman Catholic priest, concisely summarizes much of C.J. Jung’s writings on Christianity, Christian symbolism, theology, and the functioning of the Christian churches; and he relates this to his perception of a present and continuing need for rapprochement between this religious tradition and individual internal reality. For Jung, religious experience arises from energy-giving, sustained contact with the unconscious, and the main function of organized religion is to mediate that experience. The author, and Jung, appreciate the role of Christian symbolism and ritual as it expresses and evokes the processes of individuation and movement toward wholeness in the human psyche. However, when Christianity focuses only on the past to the exclusion of the present, on the external law rather than the inner truth, on the unbalanced conception of manifest good without the accompanying shadow side of evil, it encourages the development of the “illness that we are” and works against the growth of the individual and of the psyche. For Jung, and Dourley, the one-sidedness of organized Christianity and of many Christians needs to be expanded through individual exploration of the psyche, the process of analysis. The hopeful outcome of this confrontation with what has been obscured in traditional religion is the “divinely proffered wholeness which our nature demands must be faced in depth.” As an introduction to, or summary of, Jung’s writings on the subject, this book should encourage readers to go back to many of the source documents and, more importantly, to reflect personally on the complex issues discussed.