Transforming Our Images of God: C.G. Jung on the Self with Lionel Corbett

C.G. Jung believed that the Self is an expression of the divine within the personality. He refers to it as the “God within,” or imago dei. In this series of lectures, Dr. Corbett will describe some of the ways in which the Self manifests itself symbolically, comparing the idea of the Self with a number of classical theistic images of God in Western religious traditions. In particular, Dr. Corbett will show how Jung’s idea of the “dark side of the Self” contrasts with traditional Christian attempts to maintain an image of God that is entirely loving and benevolent. He will show how the idea of the Self may be projected onto external savior figures, and how the idea of the Self avoids some of the philosophical problems associated with traditional images of God, such as anthropomorphic descriptions of God. Dr. Corbett will unpack Jung’s arguments with theologians such as Martin Buber and Victor White, as well as discuss overlapping themes between the notion of the Self and the work of the quantum physicist David Bohm. Using clinical examples, Dr. Corbett will describe what Jung meant by the transformation of our God-images that may occur as we explore the unconscious. Finally, he will explore the possible relationships between the Ātman of the Upanishads and Jung’s notion of the Self.