Psychology & The Cross

“I think that individuation should be in service to community. It should lead to one’s living within the larger. It’s about me bringing my individuality—not my individualism, but the uniqueness of myself—into the community. And in some ways, the community helps me individuate.”

(0:27) Jakob Lusensky: Welcome to Psychology and the Cross. In this episode, I speak to pastor, theologian, and Jungian analyst-in-training Kenneth Kovacs. This conversation takes as a starting point the lifelong correspondence between C. G. Jung and Swiss theologian Adolf Keller. Kenneth helps us outline this fascinating correspondence and its importance for bridge-building between the fields of psychology and theology. He opens up a conversation about the relationship between individuation and community, the dialectical theology of Karl Barth, the dark side of the numinous, Wolfgang Giegerich’s critique of Jung, and the possible dangers of imitating Christ. I hope you’ll enjoy this conversation.

(1:18) Kenneth Kovacs: I grew up in the Presbyterian church. My mother taught Sunday school for forty years. I was in church every Sunday morning, very active in my home congregation in northern New Jersey, just outside of New York City. I grew up with very strong religious sensibilities. I had a strong sense of the holy or the divine, the mysterious, the numinous. Things struck me at a very, very early age. I had a number of what I would call religious experiences or numinous experiences when I was very young, but of course couldn’t quite discern the meaning of them, or put them within a particular context. Today I am a pastor. That’s where I spend most of my time and energy within the church. The folks in my home church often said, “You’re going to be a minister one day. When you grow up, you’re going to be a minister one day.” And I always said in response, “Never, never. I’d never be a minister”—primarily because as I thought about it as a teenager, I could never figure out how a minister came up with so many words, week after week, for sermons. And for me, that was the big obstacle. And so I figured if I was going to be a minister, I need to figure out how to write a sermon. And so, when I was a teenager, I decided that I would write a sermon a day. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t even know how to write a sermon. But I have a notebook (which I still have), in which I would try to write down a sermon a day. And then, after three days, I gave up because I had no ideas. I had no words. So that was a real obstacle.

(3:11) A real change came when I went to university. I went to Rutgers University in New Jersey and like most university students, you know, they try to find—at least here—they try to figure out what their “easy A” class might be. What would be the easiest class to take, what would be the “gut class,” as we call it here, where you can get just easy grades and not have to put a lot of effort and energy into it. And so I decided that—you know, I grew up in the church, I knew a lot about the bible—I would take an Old Testament class. And Rutgers University is a secular university, but it has a very fine religion department. So, I took an Old Testament class, and I figured, that would be an easy A, but that class gutted me, in the sense that it threw me into a deep existential crisis. Because I was reading the bible for the first time intellectually, critically, scholarly. It really just completely opened up my world that I went into a deep kind of existential, even faith, crisis during that time. But in the end I got an A in the class (chuckles) and then I decided to take New Testament the next semester. So that started a larger process of exploring my faith from a more intellectual, academic perspective, of critically thinking about my faith, delving deeply into questions regarding my faith and my experience. I had professors who were incredibly gifted critically—critical thinkers, scholars—who (I didn’t know it at the time) also had a strong commitment to Christianity and so they taught me about the value of a thinking faith, a critical faith. So I was really grateful for that experience. But yeah, I definitely grew up within the life of the church and I think my faith was actually deepened during some of my time in the university. It was in that context that I also felt a call to being a pastor.

(5:12) Jakob Lusensky: And when did Carl Gustav Jung enter the picture?

(5:17) Kenneth Kovacs: C. G. Jung entered the picture very early when I was a university student at Rutgers. I took a class with the title Religion in Psychology. I had no idea that psychology had anything to do with religion. And I also grew up with the understanding that or the perception that psychology mediated by Freud was anti-religion, anti-Christianity, anti-faith. And so I was shocked and even stunned that religion has something to do with psychology. And in that class—which was really a pivotal class for me in my development—in that class, we read Memories, Dreams, and Reflections. So that was my first exposure to someone like Jung, with his background: here’s a psychiatrist, a child at the parsonage, a child of the manse, who valued the place of religion, valued faith, tradition, the life of the church—critically, to be sure, but they’re from his own experience—but here was someone who was open to the numinous, to the spiritual, to religious experience.

(6:33) It was around that time I also started reading theology for the very first time, and to be honest, I really didn’t know what theology was as an academic discipline. So again here I was in a very secular public university taking an advanced class on theology.

And so I was reading Schleiermacher and Barth and Paul Tillich, and reading these individuals, and first Karl Barth and then Paul Tillich just opened up my mind, opened up by thinking, opened up my heart, and I really had to come to grips with what I, you know, personally believe: not my parents’ convictions, not the convictions of my church or my tradition or of others. And it was around this time that I started reading Paul Tillich’s sermons, which are remarkable texts, and I had shaken the foundations and I was reading that very first sermon, “Shaking the Foundations,” and as I was reading that, something within me shook. There was, like, this move. And suddenly I had a compulsion then to preach. I felt like there was something that I had to say. Something was emerging within me from out of the depths, and then I discovered in that moment, Well, maybe this is how a minister comes up with words. Week after week after week after week. And so I started to sense that there are words that are mine and words that are not mine. Words that belong to me, and words that don’t belong to me. Words that emerged from someplace deep—and they’re, you know, I sensed that I had something to say around that. And so, as a result of that, I started thinking about going to the seminary, and started thinking about being a pastor at that point. So, the focus in those years was upon theology serving the church. But Jung was never very, very far away from me, even in that period. Like I said, Jung was a kind of a constant companion.

(9:03) I was at Yale Divinity School for a while, just for one term. And then I transferred to Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey, which is a Presbyterian seminary, and I went there primarily because I really wanted to work with one person in particular. And that was James Loder. And James Loder was Professor of Practical Theology. Now, Jim Loder did his PhD at Harvard on the phenomenology of Freud and Kierkegaard. And he also worked in the psychiatric clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital while he was working on his PhD. So, my time with Loder—Loder was the first person to show me how theology, Christian faith, and practice could be brought into conversation with theology and psychology, psychoanalysis, and analysis, how they could all be brought together. And it was around that time that I had what I would call today a “big dream” or an archetypal dream. And I thought I had no idea what to do with this dream, so I brought it to Loder. And we sat with it. And he listened to me. He had the wisdom, out of his background, to have some indication of what that dream might be saying to me. And it was really a life-changing dream that continues to reverberate in my own day and age, and that was more than thirty-five years ago. So Loder was the first to help me to see the value of dreams, to pay attention to dreams, to listen to dreams, to work with dreams, to listen to what the psyche might be saying in the dream—maybe even to listen to what the divine might be saying in and through a dream.

And that approach really changed my life. And I’ve been paying attention to dreams ever since that. And so that kept me close to the Jungian world. Over the last seven or eight years in particular I’ve had significant dreams that pointed me in the direction of moving toward training, particularly training in Zürich. So, I started paying close attention to these things. And then about five years ago, after a particular dream, I decided to apply for the training. And that’s what I’ve been doing part-time while working in a parish full-time—in a pretty good-sized parish.

(11:49) Jakob Lusensky: I would like us to spend some time today talking about a very important exchange between theology and psychology. That’s the correspondence between Jung and Adolf Keller—Adolf Keller, the Protestant theologian and pastoral psychologist. I know that you have spent time with this correspondence, and I know that you have been to the archives in Zürich. I was wondering if you could start by introducing us to Adolf Keller, and what you found yourself illuminating about the relationship between him and C. G. Jung.

(12:32) Kenneth Kovacs: I was very excited about the arrival of the Jung–Keller correspondence. To me, Adolf Keller was a fascinating human being and I have to say—maybe I’m projecting a lot onto him—but I really stand in awe of him as a person, as a pastor, as a theologian, as a human being. He was a remarkable soul with an indomitable spirit and drive. A little bit of a historical background: He was born in 1872, and he studied theology at the University of Basel, and his interest in the human psyche in particular developed while he was a theology student during the two semesters that he spent in Berlin in 1894 and ‘95. And there he discovered that personal piety needs to be brought into conversation with social engagement, and that religion should be a practical concern—an individual concern, but it needs to be a practical concern to the human spirit—such that greater value is placed on human experience, the value of human experience, of being attentive to human experience.

When he finishes his theological studies, he focused on pastoral work. He was a pastor of the German Protestant church in Cairo. And while he was serving in Cairo, he spent the night alone on Mount Sinai. And there he had a profound religious experience that shaped the rest of his life. He was a leader in the Swiss Reform church and in German Reform circles. He was, we might say, an interstitial person. He was a person who was always making connections and building bridges. He’d socialize regularly with psychiatrists. He was very good friends with Robert Binswanger at the Bellevue Sanatorium, one of the finest private psychiatric clinics in Germany. There’s this circle of psychologists with religious sensibilities, religious people with psychological sensibilities, who were all engaged in conversations and sharing of ideas. In 1904 Keller became minister of the German Reform church in Geneva. Now for a time, Keller’s pastoral assistant was the young pastor Karl Barth, who then went on to become one of the great theologians of the twentieth century, probably one of the great theologians of the church, who later was known for his dialectical theology. He was a Protestant. [Name of theologian] and others saw the value of psychology for pastoral care, for pastoral psychology. They thought very early on that psychology has something to offer the work of parish ministry. And then from there, from Geneva, Keller went on to Saint Peter’s Church in Zürich, at the time the largest Reform church in Switzerland. And then it was within that context that Jung and Keller—their friendship—really started to solidify.

After the First World War, Keller was instrumental in organizing relief work for suffering congregations. He worked for suffering congregations throughout Europe. So he put an enormous amount of energy into that work. So, he’s caring for his congregation and he’s also caring for countless other congregations throughout Europe devastated by the war. He saw the value of ecumenical work, of denominations, Protestant denominations in particular, working together for a common end, for the welfare of humankind. So, the ecumenical movement emerges in the early part of the twentieth century, after the First World War. And he was directly involved in that work, and what would later become the World Council of Churches.

So he saw the value of ecumenical work in church unity. And even here you can see Keller as a bridge-builder. He’s making those connections. He is trying to maintain—he’s trying to build bridges, maintain bridges, but he himself within his own being, he is a bridge. And then when he found himself within Zürich, within those circles, it was quite natural for Keller to start making bridges with the psychoanalytic community in Zürich at the time. Keller was directly involved in the psychoanalytic community—working with psychoanalysts, working with psychologists—and he was not alone. In this growing field of psychology, you see pastors and psychologists working together, crossing boundaries, trying to find places where there’s mutuality. And Keller became a very good friend of Jung. Keller baptized several of Jung’s children. Keller’s wife Tina was in analysis with Jung and then later became the first woman analyst to in Geneva. And Keller was often at Jung’s home in Küsnacht. So you can just imagine the conversations that took place around the dinner table there. And then when Jung split with Freud, Keller supported Jung and was there by his side. He was a member of the Psychoanalytic Society, which was a forerunner of the Psychology Club. So he’s a very important person historically, not only for theological developments but also the history of pastoral theology, of practical theology—which is also a new field that emerges in the 1930s and 1940s—but also a very important person for the history of analytical psychology, because he had a huge impact upon Jung and Jung’s own ideas.

(19:12) (Narrator reading from Jung) Bollingen, 12 February 1951. Dear friend, Many thanks for your kind letter! It does me good to hear that you accept my humanity. I only hope that this is not too difficult for you. I do not wish to reproach you, but I don’t like standing there as the only sinner, conscious of having to accept the indulgent gift of having my sins forgiven. I would be happy to converse with you on any subject close to your heart. I have little opportunity to talk with other men. I have had some friends but they have died. To speak with others, that is, to speak in such a way that one gets something from it, is therefore very difficult, because they have no inclination towards my spiritual world and thus feel over-extended. In contrast, an inconsequential conversation seems to me too wearisome and makes me as tired as if I had undertaken the most laborious work. People make it too difficult for me, for I cannot and will not torture myself with futility. I’m always available for something substantial. I hope we will soon have opportunity for conversation. With best wishes, yours, Carl.

(20:58) Jakob Lusensky: When you look at that exchange and what’s been conserved in those letters, what are the key questions that this correspondence circulates around? And are there questions there that you explore that you feel are highly relevant also for our time? Can you share something of what touches you?

(21:16) Kenneth Kovacs: What touches me is the way, in these letters, that Keller remains consistent. He’s always the bridge. He’s looking for connections. He’s trying to find correlation. He’s trying to find relationship between developments within theology and also developments within psychology as psychology develops in the early part of the twentieth century. I’m struck by the fact that analytical psychology develops late nineteen-teens into 1920, around the same time that dialectical theology is emerging. And dialectical theology is the theology that’s associated with Karl Barth, Bultmann, Breuer, and others. But Karl Barth is the one who, at this time, is advocating for a dialectical kind of theology. So dialectical theology is emerging—particularly after Barth’s commentary on Romans in 1919, all of this theological fervor is happening—at the same time analytical psychology is emerging in Zürich. And Keller sees in some aspects of the dialectical theology opportunities here for some kind of connection with analytical psychology. And Keller struggles with this. He sees opportunities for conversation and for dialogue, and yet he also has some reservations. He sees the tension. He’s not trying to blend them together. He’s trying to hold them together, maybe in a kind of creative tension, to hopefully wait for something new to emerge as a result of that. You can see Keller’s projections onto Jung. In some ways they are—this is not a relationship among equals. At the same time, Keller holds his own. He doesn’t yield easily to Jung. He takes Jung to task where he is theologically going off—detours—a little bit.

(23:57) He raises important questions to Jung. I think it’s striking that there are tensions in the relationship. They had a strong relationship early on. There was a time when there was a gap in their relationship, and then later in their lives they come back together. And the correspondence focuses more on that time when they’re coming back together. As the letters show, Jung trusts Keller. Jung gives Keller early version of Answer to Job. He’s carrying around these documents in his person, you know, Keller—he confides in Keller, and Keller then also pushes back and raises critical questions about what Jung is trying to do, respecting and understanding what’s happening or what Jung’s trying to say in Answer to Job, but also responding with a kind of theological response, a theological critique. So kind of, you know, helping it—maybe this is too strong, but—kind of helping guide Jung a little bit—as he himself digests and processes what he’s trying to say and do in Answer to Job. They are sort of embodying that relationship of psychology and theology, as it were, in the relationship itself, in the flow, in the dialogue, in the dialectic, one to the other. One being open to the other, allowing oneself to be informed by the other, maintaining one’s own individuality, particularity in each, but then connecting and relating one to the other and being touched by the other. So that it’s almost like a dance you can see in the correspondence, which is what I find fascinating.

(26:04) (Narrator reading from Jung ) Küsnacht, 4th of March, 1951. Dear friend, please forgive me if I trouble you with another unbidden letter. Although I constantly have a little time for personal activities, I have taken or stolen the necessary time to face my friends. I must inform you that I am not able to see any connection between your remark about my arbitrary method in puncto theory on the one hand and “the degree of redemption” or lack of redemption of the Club members and your worldview on the other: I have no experience of redemption as I have never yet encountered and “redeemed.” I must almost conclude from your remark that you consider redemption the goal of my psychotherapy. But that would be a not insignificant error. The truth would be rather the opposite. It would be hard to be more convinced of the significance of Christianity than I am. Only, one can be convinced of it in a different way. With best wishes, Your C. G. Jung.

(27:37) (Narrator reading from Keller) Zürich, 14th March, 1951. Dear friend, it moves me deeply that you took the trouble to write me such a long, detailed, and most profoundly incisive letter. You experience a growing distance in our correspondence. I experience it as a paradoxical expression of an intimacy. This is possible only when we are able not only to “agree to disagree” about particulars, but we together, each from his own location, try to discover the other’s position within the greater whole, for example, in the current of contemporary cultural awareness. This is my constant position in relation to you. We are both approaching the end of our lives, and the last two months, I have lost eight friends and would be loathe to lose another one, not through the final unavoidable loss, but principally due to misunderstandings and misinterpretation. Incidentally, I have never confused psychotherapy with redemption, and in using the word I was alluding more to Nietzsche’s comment, thus rather to an impression than a theory. It would never occur to me to trivialize your immense knowledge in your experience. You seem to want to renounce my friendship. That is quite unilateral and I am unwilling to take part in it. I am distressed that you think I am capable of arrogance in a thoroughly constructively critical debate in which I show no condescension but am exercising my freedom and clearly showing you the honor and esteem that I offer to an initiator and psycho-pioneer who initiated me into mysteries such that I will remain bound to him my whole life, whatever befalls. Even when his human willingness in intimacy do not come my way. Yet I must retract this word right away, since your long letter proves quite the opposite. You are hurt and therefore bitter. I had no intention of hurting you or even of lecturing you. We don’t have enough time left for that now. And even if you were right, I would assume that your greatness and your knowledge of the inner dialectic of the opposites would enable you to meet even an errant or inadequate adept with understanding and insight in such a quaternity-full humanity. Much remains unsaid. I cannot ask such an extensive correspondence from you. Whether my reply will make possible a desired meeting, I must leave to you. I am now, as always, in undiminished respect and friendship, Your Adolf Keller.

(30:31) Jakob Lusensky: Is there, in your mind, change that one can see, then, in either of the two, either in Jung or his psychology that he developed? Was he open to change and changed out of a correspondence like this, and vice versa? You see there were results of this fascinating and I find very often moving exchage between these two remarkable people?

(31:02) Kenneth Kovacs: Yeah, I think there was maybe a change. Maybe a different way of saying it is Keller was receptive to what Jung only had to give him. And he took it in and metabolized it, digested it. Keller was not trying to be Jung, but he was—he was taking in what Jung could offer and receive. He wasn’t open to everything that Jung tried to offer. Right? But he took in something, he allowed himself to be touched. And in that movement, Keller was changed. In that movement it allowed him to, it kind of freed him to—in the letters, what I’m really stuck by, and I was surprised and shocked by, to learn here that Keller gave lectures on dialectical theology at the Psychology Club. That’s just extraordinary, I think. And Jung was in attendance at these lectures. Jung wanted to know more about dialectical theology. And in the end I don’t think he fully fathomed what dialectical theology was about and is about, in the issues with Barth. And he was not afraid to criticize Barth. But you see there’s this questioning, there’s this openness, there’s a kind of curiosity on Jung’s part that he could take that in. I don’t think Jung was a great theologian. He was interested in theology. I think Keller helped him maybe be a better theological thinker, and perhaps he was open to that. It’s very, very touching toward the end of the correspondence—where you see this sensitivity—that he really valued and appreciated his friendship with Keller. You know, he signed the last letter, he signs it, “your old, loyal friend.” And there’s something very tender and beautiful, I think, about that. So Jung allowed himself to be touched by that relationship.

(33:20) Jakob Lusensky: He allowed himself to be touched on a personal level, but if I hear you right, but it didn’t make him change his theory or his theorizing much. And when you say that there’s like, maybe in regards to Jung as a theologian, what is it that makes Jung maybe the greatest theologian?

(33:42) Kenneth Kovacs: Formally, he doesn’t have theological training, but he read theologians. He had access to theology. But sometimes I think Jung would pull from a theological idea here, and then another theological idea from there, and he kind of pulled them together without maybe spending enough time understanding, or maybe dwelling with the theological integrity of the particularity of a theological idea over here, as it were, and then seeing how it connects with another theological idea. And Ulanov often says that Jung pulls theological ideas from here and here and here for what serves his project, serves his purpose. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But then don’t equate what he is then producing as theology. So he can pull theological ideas, he can quote scripture, he can quote a theologian, but these things are often done in service —to have their kind of metabolized or digested integration within him, that then yields some kind of theological or psychological statement on Jung’s part. But is there a correlation to what was the intent of that original theological point or writer or text?

(35:06) Jakob Lusensky: That makes me also wonder about, what is it, then, that Jung was serving? What is his project he was pulling things to? I mean, there’s many speculations and interpretations and different understandings of what analytical psychology is. I don’t know if there’s any thoughts you have on that. What was he pulling these things for—developing a psychological theory, or more building a new temple?

(35:36) Kenneth Kovacs: Yeah, that’s a great question, too. Ultimately one would say—based upon the Collected Works and other texts—in service to individuation, like the process of individuation, what’s involved in individuation, how one helps another to go in and through that process of individuation. Keller says in his lecture at the Psychology Club that individuation needs to be in service of something larger than itself, and that other is fellowship or connection to a kind of a higher connection, as it were. I think personally, when I read Jung as a pastor, as a theologian, someone who’s trying to try to hold all this stuff within me personally, what I sense in Jung—and maybe it’s my own projections or the things I hunger for—but what I sense in Jung, and I see it in the letters, is he wants or he hopes for individuals to have their own life-giving religious experiences that connect them with something larger than the ego or larger than oneself.

Living experience—call it religious if one wants to—but an experience that allows, that connects one to the transcendent, to the divine, to the holy. Something other—holy other, as Barth might say. And to allow the livingness of a living experience with God to touch and enable and enliven the living psyche—to tap into what the New Testament calls zoe life—full life, abundant life—and allow that life to take on life within the individual. Perhaps that’s projecting too much onto Jung, but I think there’s a case to be said that that’s in some ways what he’s trying to do. And I often wonder how that connects to his own experience growing up as the son of a Reform pastor and within Reform theology in general. Even to this day, within Reform Calvinist circles, there is considerable suspicion around religious experience, paying attention to religious experience, trusting religious experience, trusting one’s own interior, inner experience, trusting one’s feelings, listening to one’s gut, all of those things.

(39:00) In some religious circles, there’s the emphasis upon the ideas of Christianity, the beliefs of Christianity, just kind of accepting the beliefs of the tradition, and kind of living out the morals of the church, as it were, or the morals of the teachings of the church, imitating Christ. There’s a place for all of that, but I think Jung saw, perhaps in his own father, and perhaps maybe the weakness within the Reform tradition, that these ideas are not necessarily bringing one to life, not allowing something new to be released within one. Some of the numinous experiences that Jung had, the religious experiences that he had, maybe gave greater authority to one’s own personal experience, and trusting that experience even if it might be irrational and bizarre, and going against the grain, or going against the collective, or going against what the church might say. But he’s trusting that, and I think that too is a place where Keller and Jung connect because, again, Keller had his own religious experience on Mount Sinai.

There are loads of people in churches and outside of churches that have had religious experiences, have been truly touched, and you don’t have to be, you know, Paul Damascus road experiences of a blinding light. They can be very subtle moving experiences that change your life forever. But what do you do with those experiences? How do you then process them, integrate them, talk with someone about them, kind of dwell within those experiences, allow those experiences to touch you? What might be trying to come to life through you? All of those dimensions. That is often missing within, you know, religious circles. They’re there. Those opportunities are there, but you have to go looking for them. Jung made space for those kinds of experiences. And for me, that’s a very, very valuable model, or that’s a very, very important—just knowing that that’s possible—you don’t have to agree with everything that Jung says—but to allow that. He creates that container, or analytical experience can create that container.

(41:45) Jakob Lusensky: As you’re talking, I’m thinking, you know, about the numinosity and these valuable religious experiences that you share these people have had and how analytical psychology can offer language and a vessel for that. I absolutely agree. I think that’s the beauty of this work—the beauty of analysis, the beauty of this tradition.

But you must also as a pastor in come in contact with people who experience the numinous in the most tragic of ways: in losing a family member, in sickness; when life in all its power overwhelms us and throws our life around, there is that side of the numinous, of the life experience, that is also terrible. And we also have saints and others who have had their conversation experiences by facing, for example, suffering of the world, or facing horrible catastrophes in their life. I’m trying to portray this other side of the numinous that we all have to meet. We don’t have to be mystics. We all have to meet to the end of things, the tragedy, also that’s a part of this life. I’m wondering, you know, because this also ties in a little bit to Giegerich’s critique of Jung as maybe someone who was, as you would say, a psychology of glory—versus as a psychology of the cross.

Kenneth Kovacs: Yeah.

Jakob Lusensky: I’m taking that from Luther, yeah?

Kenneth Kovacs: Right, right.

Jakob Lusensky: There is something about—the God in Jung often has to be this, often it’s the glorious.

(43:22) Kenneth Kovacs: I think that sometimes we overuse the word numinous. And we are—I mean, the numinous can be, another word there, sort of a synonym for a spiritual experience. But I think contained in the numinous is an experience—to cite Rudolf Otto, it’s the mysterium tremendum et fascinans. It’s this mystery that both fascinates and overwhelms. You can see why Barth was attracted to Otto: this kind of sense of Other. The numinous: somewhere along the line I read that numen has a Sanskrit root which means “to bow,” “to kneel, to bow.” Something that is Other that destabilizes me, that disorients me. It might even scare and terrorize me. It is something that cannot easily be processed or integrated into one’s own experience.

(44:59) It’s truly something uncanny and other. There’s a place for the numinous that is truly an experience of glory, right? But there’s also the experience of the numinous where one is brought to that place of suffering, where, in the face of suffering, my world, my reality, my understanding of myself and other and God, etc., are all disoriented, are decentred—we’re knocked off center. And in the presence of those types of experiences, there’s a sense of silence and awe and maybe humility before that mystery. So I think there’s a place for both. I guess I see what Giegerich is saying. But I don’t necessarily see Jung as focusing primarily on a psychology of glory. There’s too much suffering within Jung’s life, and what he sees within human suffering, to make such a strong claim.

(46:11) Jakob Lusensky: Again, you know, him relating to the dream with the one millimeter and Jung not being able to touch the forehead towards the ground, Jung imitating his father, and then being taken to the highest presence, which is not this beautiful palace, but it’s another space where he sees this betrayed, dying god-man Uriah. As I understand Giegerich’s critique, there is something in Jung’s interpretation of that dream: there’s a critique of that. And I’ve also heard others delivering a sort of similar critique that there’s something maybe Jung has difficulty facing there: a god that is a dying human—or human, a dying man. And of course it’s hard not to associate to Jesus on the cross, and you know, on facing the cross.

(47:01) Kenneth Kovacs: I think it’s one thing to intellectually say that one can’t face the dying god-man. One can approach that theologically as a theological idea. Participating in that is something very different. Sure, it’s difficult. And maybe it should be difficult, or maybe we should not be too eager to identify too closely with that dying-god image. So that maybe, yes, it’s it’s yes; and maybe no, it’s to be drawn toward that image, but maybe not overidentify too much with that image. Maybe this connects to the imitation Christi theme. There’s a place for imitation, I guess. I don’t know, I see and have experienced a lot of people over the years who were trying to imitate Christ and become martyrs when that’s a decision more of their ego than what they’re really being called to do. Where imitation (pauses)—there’s a lot of overidentification with that image. I hear in certain circles that I just need to die, die, die to myself all the time, so that I can be nothing and Christ can be everything in me. I hear that language in many churches. And I understand that and there are good theological reasons for a statement like that. I’m also kind of cautious and concerned, because what does that say psychologically for the individual, where one is completely losing a sense of self, or one’s own identity and individuality. To live to the identify too much in that of Christ, identify too much into that pattern and really lose oneself into that image—and not in a good way. It becomes an escape. Life becomes a refusal to enter one’s own life.

(50:00) So you—I’m not sure if that resonates or if that makes sense here.

(50:07) Jakob Lusensky: Well, I think it’s a very interesting perspective and it sounds also like the Jungian analyst in you talking. It makes sense to me on many levels, but, I guess I wonder also, did you feel that it would have been a risk for Jung to identify too much with Christ? Because I feel like he’s very far from identification. There’s a lot in Jung about individual suffering. And there’s a lot of suffering in his life. But there’s not so much around the suffering of the world, of the poverty in the world. It’s not so much about the poor, let’s say. There’s not very often that’s raised and that’s, you know, that can be fine. But I do think it’s important. At least for me in my own wrestle with Christianity, it’s been very important to see how far can I go with Jung. And where do we need to depart?

(51:03) Kenneth Kovacs: Long before I knew that Jung wrote on the imitatio Christi, I had problems with the imitation of Christ. Just that concept of being like Christ. Okay, following Christ, and as a Christian, my own journey, that’s not an image that I gravitate toward. And I, and this might sound heretical—the church police might come after me—but I don’t think we’re called to imitate Christ, but to follow. And there’s a world of difference between the two. Like, there’s—they connect, but they’re not exactly the same. And I think what kind of pushed me in this way—personally, in my own analysis, in my own journey—but in my experience as a pastor, I have seen—countless people have told me—I have seen that this prospect or ideal of imitating Christ, of being like him in every way, of denying myself and kind of taking up my cross: I have—there are countless people that I know which I’ve seen—that has become a recipe for spiritual and psychological disaster. Years ago, I read that Kierkegaard says comparison kills. And I think that’s worth, kind of (pauses)—there’s a place for comparison, right? A comparison can also kill: to compare oneself with Christ can set one up for failure.

(52:58) Right? It sets one up for enormous disappointment. For how could one ever fully realize that goal of that projection, that perfection? And then people said, Well, I can’t live up to that. I can’t be like him. I can’t be a Christian if it means of all these things. Then that leads to enormous amounts of self-recrimination, self-loathing, judgment, internal punishment, never ever measuring up, and failing. And I just—this is my experience as a pastor—I just feel that that’s the terrible burden to bear and then I have to say, “Well, where then is the joy? Where is the good news in all of this? Where is the gospel in all of this?

(54:00) And, you know, I know countless people who have left the church or Christianity altogether because they were taught that following Christ was about perfectly living up to this particular ethical-moral standard, and because they could not reach it, because they could not do it, they left the church. They left faith. They left it because they felt it was destroying one’s soul to stay in that environment, where there’s an enormous amount of judgement for living up, failing to live up to a particular ideal. So, I think, you know, a turning point for me was years ago. Reading, you know, there’s a verse in Matthew’s gospel, where Jesus says, “Be perfect, therefore, even as your heavenly father is perfect.”

(54:56) And that verse never really quite sat well with me, and that comes out of my own perfectionism, kind of complexes that I personally deal with. But: “Be perfect, even as your heavenly father is perfect.” That word perfect and perfection is such a loaded word for us today. And that is not the best translation of the text. It’s not incorrect. But it carries a completely different valence in Matthew’s gospel. And it really has to do more with wholeness, completeness, and integrity. Or another way of putting it: of living out one’s end or purpose, one’s telos the same way God lives out, is faithful to, God’s own end or purpose or telos. So, live out your own—live out your telos appropriately.

(55:58) That’s a very, very different understanding, and is far more freeing and liberating, I think. And I wanted to say that this is, you know, I think really this is a really a important bridge in theology and psychology here, because if one is a disciple or a student of Jesus, then that means following after. And when learn—in other words, in learning the way, or the style, of the teacher, following the teacher. This is particularly important for—in John’s gospel, for example, it’s about relationship. It’s relational and that relationship is ongoing. It’s about a living relationship with Christ in the spirit, in the life of community, that a Christian, then, is called to.
So that what I, what I found myself moving toward is that instead of imitation Christi, that the Christian life is about participatio Christi. Participation. Participating now within the life of Christ, increasingly conscious, then, of what God in Christ is bringing to life in us as we discover what is trying to come alive or what is trying to be born within the individuality of the person and of the Soul. This is directly related to developments and Pauline scholarship over the last ten years, where this notion of participation is incredibly important within Paul’s theology, where, and when Paul himself says, “It’s I, yet not I, but Christ.” That formula. “I, yet, not I, but Christ.” Holding that tension always, and not losing the I in Christ. “But I, yet not I, but Christ.” And there are a couple of places where Jung himself makes that point. He pulls from that, from that understanding of Paul. And, you know, so that’s how I, you know, respond to the—there’s a place for the imitatio, but it’s—where is the participatio? Oh, where is that place for living experience coming alive within us ?

(58:55) Jakob Lusensky: I very much agree with you. I’m certain there are people who use a Christ as a sort of ambitious spiritual ideal, and that can be very destructive if we haven’t also learned to differentiate them from our parents and our childhoods, and what we carry around from our personal backgrounds. But there is also something, you know—take someone like Etty Hillesum, you know, I mean, life is often interrupted.

(59:23) Kenneth Kovacs: Right.

(59:25) Jacob Lusensky: But I mean there’s also the other side of it. Also, wholeness can be a very dangerous idea, I believe, if you start to look for wholeness, because as I see the image of Christ, it’s very much speaks to me, participation, but we are already participating in that life. And seeing him on the cross is seeing him on the cross. This is the highest presence. And I think this connects to the Keller and that lecture that you were referring to that he delivered at the Psychological Club back in nineteen eighteen—was it eighteen or sixteen.

Kenneth Kovacs: Eighteen.

Jakob Lusensky: Nineteen eighteen (1918), exactly. “The Gospel and Christianity.” And you quoted a part of that earlier when you said that the ultimate goal is higher fellowship and I just want to read that passage. “The natural man is in bondage. When we speak in analytical psychology of complexes, these are the same bondages expressed by the gospel. The dominion of the flesh of the law of sin.”

(60:28) Kenneth Kovacs: Mmmm hmmm.

(60:30) Jakob Lusensky: “Liberation from this is accomplished for the Christian, as it were, in an analogy of the life of Jesus. Through repentance, through sacrifice, through taking up the cross, and in the resurrection, to a new life. The same dying and becoming is achieved that made the life impetus of Jesus into the illuminating pattern it is. Every outworking of this life emanating from Jesus urges man to save his soul. For, what has a man profited if he should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? But the discovery of the infinite value of the soul is not the end. The value of the completely liberated individual is complemented by the value of highest fellowship, finding its universal expression in the idea of the kingdom of God. Jesus leads man to both: to individuation, and at the same time, to the highest fellowship.”

(61:38) Kenneth Kovacs: I find that absolutely, you know, beautiful and I resonate very, very deeply with that. And I think of the liberation from those things that bind us, that hold
us, that weigh us down, that hinders the new life, you know, to emerge—or in new life, for new beginnings to emerge within us. I think that is in many ways the Christian life, and I think, you know, when I think of wholeness, I think of wholeness as including all of that, taking in all this. It also includes the suffering, taking in all of that, in integrating, not rejecting, the dominion of the flesh, which doesn’t mean sexuality, it means that within us which is against life or against God.

(62:58) And it’s the liberation of those things that—so that a greater integration or connection can take place, transformation can take place, or maybe a better—transformation is a pretty good theological, religious word, but maybe a better theological word is reconciliation. And when I read Etty Hillesum, that’s what I hear, is that she’s not afraid to see all the reality and all of its horror and all of its brutality. But there’s something about the way in which she then holds all that within herself because she trusts in something underneath it all. She trusts that something is there underneath it all that kind of holds it. That holds us. And so there’s a, you know, that last line there: Jesus leads humanity to both individuation and at the same time to the highest fellowship. I think that individuation should be in service to community. It should lead to one’s living within the larger. From a theological perspective, it is about koino̱nía, right? It’s about community. It’s about me bringing my individuality—not my individualism, but the uniqueness of myself—into the community. And in some ways, the community helps me to individuate. And, you know, the image of the kingdom of God that Keller’s talking about here: countless times, Jesus talks about the kingdom of God as a feast. We are gathered around a table. We are living in community. Like there’s a kind of a dance of that community. There’s a kind of the power of the relationship within the community, where individuals are bringing their individuality into the community, but you’re not losing your individuality in the community. And that’s a risk sometimes. Religious communities do not foster one’s own development. They will hinder one’s own individuation, one’s own personal growth. Sometimes religious communities say you need to deny your personal experience. You need to deny what you’re feeling right now. You need to set those feelings, those experiences, aside.

Jakob Lusensky: Hmm.

Kenneth Kovacs: But what Keller’s talking about here is, in individuation, a person who is aware of how those complexes, as it were, are at work within oneself, having a new relationship vis-à-vis those complexes, and then bringing one’s fuller humanity into relationship and into the community.

(66:00) (Narrator reading from Jung): (Küsnacht, a few days before 21st) of March 1951. I’m sincerely grateful to you for your comprehensive reply. You really must not assume that I do not value your friendship. It’s precisely because I do value it that I tried to explain to you in broad detail what was irking me. Your letter helps me to understand where the difficulties in transmission lay. I oppose the backwardness of Protestantism. I don’t want it give up its leading position. I don’t want to go back to the unconscious fog of Catholic concretism, therefore I also battle against Protestant concretism in history and the abstractness of the Protestant message, which today can only be understood as an historical remnant. If Christ means anything to me, it is only as a symbol. The historical figure might just as well be called Pythagoras, Lao-tse, Zarathustra, and so on. I find the historical Jesus completely unedifying, simply interesting because controversial. I say this so that you’ll know where I stand. I’d be happy if despite this you want to talk with me. If you can spare the time for it, I’m willing. Once again, many thanks for your considered letter full of goodwill, Your Carl.