The Religious Function of the Psyche

by Lionel Corbett

Book Overview

Traditional concepts of God are no longer tenable for many people who nevertheless experience a strong sense of the sacred in their lives. The Religious Function of the Psyche offers a psychological model for the understanding of such experience, using the language and interpretive methods of depth psychology, particularly those of C.G. Jung and psychoanalytic self psychology. The problems of evil and suffering, and the notion of human development...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0415144019
• ISBN13: 9780415144018
• Release Date: October 1996
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A book of hope for those

who feel a deeply religious sense, yet don't respond to, or find meaning in institutional religion as it's presented. I've given up on collective religion and have turned to Jung/depth psychology as a means of relating to the most important area of life: inner meaning and value. This book reflected what I've long thought: all of us are potentially capable of incarnating the archetypes presented by the organized religions. This book helps to free the images and symbols from their "religious" matrix. Just as the medieval alchemists pried out symbols and images from the matrix of religion and mythology, this book shows that the "religious" themes do not have to be related to within the confines of the formal religious structures. Through many ways, the individual can relate to the autonomous psyche and need not be bound by tradition. The book is vast in scope. The first time I read it, I underlined in red, went back later and read what I'd underlined. Later, I'll read it again...and again. I can't begin to review this whole book! The author draws from many sources and his perspective is extemely broad. He's obviously studied many religions and thought deeply and profoundly on the the relationship between the collective relgions and depth psychology. But for me, at the level of a "seeker" without a formal container such as one of the formal religions, this book serves as a bridge, giving my "search" validity outside the accepted traditions. I'm a layman and the book is geared, I think, toward the professional, to some extent. Still, if one has read Jung, Edinger and has deep interest in these matters the book is worth every effort necessary to understand and assimilate it. Really, I think there are many of us travelling in the same boat. The old institutions don't apply any more for us. But the feeling of the sacred, the numinous, the transpersonal, something more than ego is riding along with us. If it seems that way to you, read this book!

A Great book by a Respected Analyst on the Numinous

Fascinating and thorough and utterly compelling, Dr. Corbett's book is an amazing look at the relationship between psyche and spirit. Recommended!

Very Rich and Filling

This book is packed with Jungian concepts. It is not at all a book for casual reading, something one just breezes through then shelves. It a text that one reads and then meditates upon and then reads again later on. Very difficult to milk it dry. One comes back and must come back to every page again and again if one is to relish all that Corbett has locked in his book. Don't be misled by its length. Although just over 250 pages, every chapter is brimming with insights. Compared to the publications by the Jungian publisher Inner City Books whose titles are usually just over 100 pages long, I would say _Religious Function of the Psyche_ is equivalent to 10 of them. The adjective that comes to mind is rich, extremely rich. Feast upon such insights as the following:"Our emotional suffering always contains an element of the divine. The archetype at the center of the complex, no matter how painful, is this element, so there is no escape from the numinosum at the core of our difficulty. This is why the Self images which appear to us always contain elements of our deepest needs and fears. If the divine is never further away than our suffering, then our suffering becomes the beginning of our spirituality. Any attempt to develop spiritual techniques that do not penetrate and understand suffering, run the risk of avoiding the sacred itself."I dare say it is one of the best Jungian books I have come across. The style of writing and the depth to which it dives bears the distinctive mark of introverted intuitive thinking--the very same typology that characterizes Carl Jung. It is technical in this sense--that it is deep and adroit--but Corbett is not muddled in his writing. On the contrary he is able to bring his audience to a very high level without the reader experiencing vertigo (and should you notice that I have contradictory metaphors here, please note that it is a fact that the highest is also the deepest and vice versa). Hats off to Mr. Corbett for achieving this rare feat. Even Jung's abstruse writings cannot compare with the Corbett's lucidity.

Recommended; good depth-psychological resource.

This useful exposition on the transpersonal dynamics of the psyche belongs on every depth-psych reader's bookshelf. It also provides some corrective insights into the limitations of classical Jungian thought and archetypal psychology. Not for beginners. Definitely recommended. -- Craig Chalquist, creator of the To Thine Own Self site on the Web.