From: The Berean Call
Sent: Friday, June 02, 2006 10:07 AM
Subject: TBC Today : Shrink This!
 

The overwhelming majority of Christians have probably never heard of C. G.
Jung, but his influence in the church is vast and affects sermons, books,
and activities, such as the prolific use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
(MBTI) by seminaries and missionary organizations. A current, popular
example of Jung's legacy can be seen in Robert Hicks's book The Masculine
Journey, which was given to each of the 50,000 men who attended the 1993
Promise Keepers conference. Christians need to learn enough about Jung and
his teachings to be warned and wary.

Jung's legacy to "Christian psychology" is both direct and indirect. Some
professing Christians, who have been influenced by Jung's teachings,
integrate aspects of Jungian theory into their own practice of
psychotherapy. They may incorporate his notions regarding personality types,
the personal unconscious, dream analysis, and various archetypes in their
own attempt to understand and counsel their clients. Other Christians have
been influenced more indirectly as they have engaged in inner healing,
followed 12-step programs, or taken the MBTI, which is based on Jung's
personality types and incorporates his theories of introversion and
extroversion.

Because Jung turned psychoanalysis into a type of religion, he is also
considered to be a transpersonal psychologist as well as a psychoanalytical
theorist. He delved deeply into the occult, practiced necromancy, and had
daily contact with disembodied spirits, which he called archetypes. Much of
what he wrote was inspired by such entities. Jung had his own familiar
spirit whom he called Philemon. At first he thought Philemon was part of his
own psyche, but later on he found that Philemon was more than an expression
of his own inner self. Jung says:

"Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial
insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but
which produce themselves and have their own life. Philemon represented a
force which was not myself. In my fantasies I held conversations with him,
and he said things which I had not consciously thought. For I observed
clearly that it was he who spoke, not I. . . . Psychologically, Philemon
represented superior insight. He was a mysterious figure to me. At times he
seemed to me quite real, as if he were a living personality. I went walking
up and down the garden with him, and to me he was what the Indians call a
guru."