A Jungian and Psychoanalytic Approach to Biblical Myth and Religion

This discussion will describe some of the psychological processes that underpin various biblical stories and much of the theological speculation to which they have given rise. The book is based on Jung’s ideas that “religious statements are psychic confessions” and “statements made in the Holy Scriptures are also utterances of the soul.” That is, religious experiences, biblical stories, and the theology to which they give rise are products of the psyche. Using a combination of Jungian and psychoanalytic theory, I will show how some biblical material arises from human psychodynamics, while some originates in the archetypal level of the psyche and is given color and texture as it passes through the human level of the psyche. Religious material of this kind does not need to be seen as emanating from a metaphysical deity in a transcendent realm. The experience of transcendent reality reported by characters in biblical stories is the result of contact with non-ego, archetypal or transpersonal levels of the psyche, which Jung believes is the actual source of sacred experience. According to Jung, the metaphysical or theological elaboration of biblical material also has its sources in the psyche. I suggest that Jung’s psyche-centered approach is an alternative to theological understanding of the Bible, based on doctrine and dogma. Jung’s approach is also an evolving mythology of the sacred that offers an alternative to traditional forms of spirituality. I believe that the Bible is best read and interpreted symbolically as a mythic text and not as literal history, focusing on apocalyptic imagery and a psychological interpretation of the story of the Garden of Eden. I will discuss various manifestations of psychopathology in the Bible, focusing especially on the book of Ezekiel, misogyny, the psychological roots of religions’ suppression of the feminine, and the projection of human narcissistic traits onto the divine.