The Christian Archetype: A Jungian Commentary on the Life of Christ

Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts #28

by Edward F. Edinger

This book presents a much-need psychological interpretation of images and events central to the Christian myth, which may be understood symbolically in terms of the individuation of modern men and women.

The process of individuation, when it befalls a person, may lead to salvation or calamity. The reader will find here an ordered and graphic amplification of this archetypal process.

In prose and in pictures carefully selected from traditional Christian art, the author illustrates some essential stages-from Annunciation through Crucifixion to Resurrection-both in the life of Christ and in those who by choice or fate become immersed in their own psychological destiny.

Annunciation * Nativity * Flight into Egypt * Baptism * Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem * Last Supper * Gethsemane * Arrest and Trial * Flagellation and Mocking * Crucifixion * Lamentation and Entombment * Resurrection and Ascension * Pentecost * Assumption and Coronation of Mary

Genres: Psychology, Religion, Philosophy, Spirituality

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Edward F. Edinger was a medical psychiatrist, Jungian analyst and American writer.
Edward F. Edinger Jr. was born on December 13, 1922, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, earning his Bachelor of Arts in chemistry at Indiana University Bloomington and his Doctor of Medicine at Yale School of Medicine in 1946. In November 1947, as a first lieutenant, he started a four-week Medical Field Service School at the Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, Texas. He became a military doctor in the United States Army Medical Corps and was in Panama. In New York in 1951, he began his analysis with Mary Esther Harding, who had been associated with C.G. Jung.
Edinger was a psychiatrist supervisor at Rockland State Hospital in Orangeburg, New York, and later founder member of the C.G. Jung Foundation in Manhattan and the CG Jung Institute in New York. He was president of the institute from 1968 until 1979, when he moved to Los Angeles. There he continued his practice for 19 years, becoming senior analyst at the CG Jung Institute of Los Angeles.
He died on July 17, 1998, at his home in Los Angeles at age 75, according to family members due to bladder cancer.

Reviews

[Y · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edinger goes through the major stages of the gospels and relates them to psychological processes. He views the gospels as a cycle of descending of the Holy Spirit, starting with the annunciation and starting again with Pentecost. Jesus represents the development of the ego and confrontation and integration of the unconscious.

Not only the events but the symbology around the events (such as the two thieves killed with Jesus and the sponge bearer and spear bearer) are representative of unconscious contents. Edinger goes fairly quickly through each stage and he does not dwell on his explanations. Pentecost and the birth of Christianity restarts the cycle, this time instead of one man with a relationship with the Holy Spirit now each individual has his own relationship. Edinger describes this as a withdrawal of projection to obtain a truer relationship to the Self. The view of this as a cycle implies that a new cycle is underway, which will end at Jesus’s second coming and the church will then be obsolete.

He ends with the assumption of Mary, although not in the gospels, since Jung had emphasized the importance of it as it symbolizes the divine coniunctio and a complete divine quaternity, with Mary symbolizing the material and earthly counterpart to the divine. The coniunctio is shown as the ultimate goal of individuation, a reconciliation of opposites.

[Carlosantos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excelente livro. A obra faz uma analogia entre drama da vida arquetípica de Cristo e o processo de individuação.

The book makes an analogy between the drama of the archetypal life of Christ and the process of individuation.