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“The Return of the Soul”: Psychology, Theology and Soul-Making
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
Psychologists have recently once again started using “soul-language” in their anthropological investigations. This paper will explore some of the attempts to “re-soul” psychology over the past few decades, especially in the work of Bruno Bettleheim, Otto Rank and James Hillman. Having explored the strengths and weaknesses of these positions the paper ends with an account of the self taken from the work of St Teresa Benedicta a Cruce (Edith Stein) which, it argues, enables the Christian Trinitarian perspective to resolve tensions inherent in the other psychological models.
- Type
- Catholic Theological Association 2015 Conference Papers
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © 2016 The Dominican Council. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd
References
1 Interview with Jan Marlan, IAAP Newsletter 26:2006.
2 Strachey's 24 Volume “Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud” appeared between 1953 and 1974 published by the Hogarth Press and now published by Penguin. Most of Strachey's editorial choices were taken up by later editors and created the climate by which Freud's works were, and still are, discussed in the English-speaking world.
3 In Strachey's translation for the Standard Edition, “of the soul” (seelische) is omitted: “Sie werden es wahrscheinlich beanständen, daß wir zur Bezeichnung unserer beiden seelischen Instanzen oder Provinzen einfache Fürwörter gewählt haben, anstatt vollautende griechische Namen für sie einzuführen” (GW: 14.219).
4 Perhaps this may no longer be the case with psychoanalytic training but it is sadly all too apparent still amongst university graduates wanting to apply post-Freudian concepts to academic arguments, often without recourse to personal analysis or experience of the terms explored by Freud.
5 “Einem Stand von weltlichen Seelsorgern, die Ärzte nicht zu sein brache und Priesten nicht sein dürfen.”
6 For an analysis of Jung's ambiguous attitude to Christianity see Tyler 2015.
7 Throughout the book Hillman is largely critical of Wittgenstein's approach, without going into much detail of the consequences of Wittgenstein's analysis for psychology.
8 The source of Hillman's notion of “archetypal psychology”: “the fundamental ideas of the psyche are to be expressions of persons: hero, nymph, mother, senex, child, trickster, amazon, puer etc. They give us our psychic functioning” (RVP:128).
9 When, for example, Hillman states that “psychology reflects theology, but a pagan and polytheistic theology” (MA:196) I feel he is (as Tacey concurs) taking a polemical position to annoy both atheist psychologists and Christian theists. As to his actual beliefs, I would prefer to leave that to the biographers such as Russell (2013). My task here is simply to observe the phenomenology of his philosophical psychology and see how coherent his system is on psychological, theological and philosophical grounds.
10 “Ist ein persönlich-geistiges Gebilde, darum ist ihr Innerstes und Eigentlichstes, ihr Wesen, aus dem ihre Kräfte und das Wechselspiel ihres Lebens entspringen, nicht nur ein unbekanntes X, das wir zur Erklärung der erfahrbaren seelischen Tatsachen annehmen, sondern etwas, was uns aufleuchten und spürbar werden kann, wenn es auch immer geheimnisvoll bleibt” (WP:67).