Comparing James and Jung's Perspectives on Religious Experience

What religion is. William James explains that religion is a person’s feelings, acts, and experiences that is in relation and stands with whatever they consider to be the higher power. However, Viktor Frankl explains his position on what religion is in that it is a function of a person’s religious unconscious in their pursuit to meaning. Religion, therefore, is the source of ultimate meaning and is the expression of unconscious religiousness. In comparison, James’ stance is a simple statement of how a believer is controlled by, or in apprehension to, a higher power. Frankl’s position states that one becomes a believer simple to find the ultimate meaning their lives, which leads to a transcendent connection with a higher power. What they both have in common however, it that a religious person ultimately has to have a relationship or connection with a higher power.

Carl Jung (1875 – 1961) was a one time friend and colleague of Sigmund Freud, who initially held similar views to Freud. He started to feel dissatisfied with Freud’s ideas though and broke away from that school of thought in 1913. Jung also had a great interest in mystical and magical subjects, Buddhism and Hinduism, which influenced Jung’s own ideas on a theory of personality. He too, suggested there were 3 parts; the conscious mind (or ego), the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious. ‘The main point of difference between the two men (Jung and Freud) was Freud’s definition of sexuality and libido. Although Jung conceded the importance of the

William James was able to distinguish between the tough- minded and in the same time the tender- minded personalities and the worldviews. According to James, tough- minded is empiricists and the positivists and are majorly the opponent of religion and in most of the times what they perceive is a force promises to the world. On the other hand, the tender- minded are the religious protagonists.

In William James’ 1902 book “The Varieties of Religious Experience” he opens with depicting the approach of his review. He clarifies that it would be of little advantage to construct the examination with respect to regular people who have bound religious encounters and emulate customs which have been passed on to them. Rather, he centers the review around 'religious virtuosos '. In addition, as he clarifies in his second address, the attention must be on individual religious experience instead of corporate, in light of the fact that it is more central. Actually, it is out of the extreme encounters of a little few that most religious developments (or "factions" as he terms them) have created. Part 3 builds up that individuals appear to have the ability to encounter the concealed furthermore an inclination to see it as being more genuine than things seen, listened, touched or tasted.

Carl Jung was a mental genius when it came to archetypes I can’t see in any light another type of story being told without using at least one of his archetypes. It is, always has a mixture of one to tell a story. The hero can be seen in many of the world's greatest pieces of literature “The Odyssey”, Hamlet, as well as Troy all works that transcend through time. The wise old man an elderly person who shows great wisdom and judgement. Such as Uncle Ben in Spiderman, Mr.Miyagi, and Alfred in Batman. My personal favorite the trickster seen in Huckleberry Finn, The Joker, and as well as The Riddler which I think all these people are covered up by the bad things they to do instead of what genius it takes to think of the things they did. Archetypes

Concepts will be defined to make explicit the working terms in use. In this essay, James defines religion as "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men.., so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine" . This definition is rather broad and vague, so I seek to narrow it down to “the existence of a higher power, moral order or god.” His thesis can be paraphrased as the following: When we have a genuine option that cannot be conclusively decided based on intellectual grounds,

Prior to understanding and describing religious experiences, it’s important to define the terms and typology of religious experiences. A point of contention for theologians is whether or not mystical or out-of-body experiences are religious in nature. To understand what the role religion plays in these experiences, for this context, you must define and understand what religion is and the major components that make it up. James states that religion “cannot stand for any single principle or essence, but is rather a collective name” (35). If you were to ask someone about the essence of an object or a concept, different people would provide various components or parts of it. You would end up of with a list ranging from objective and subjective responses, but it would provide a better understanding of it because, like religion, no one thing or person can be summed up in a sentence or a word.

According to Carl Jung an archetype is a model of peoples behaviors or personalities that function to organize how we experience certain things. Jung’s archetypes fall into many categories and are classified by different personality attributes. For example, one who is stern, powerful, and controlling would be an archetype for a father or person in command. An epic hero is a brave and noble character in an epic poem, admired for great achievements or affected by great events.

William James was an American psychiatrist and philosopher, born in 1842 and touted as the leader of the philosophical movement of Pragmatism and of the psychological movement of functionalism (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2014). James’ rebuttal to the Clifford’s Ethics of Believe, was the famed Will to Believe. James’ and Clifford’s differing opinions in the belief debate has created the foundation for current theological arguments, always being considered the reference for religious philosophy.

Carl Gustav Jung is a Swiss psychiatrist and the successor of psychoanalysis with important intellectual movements of the twentieth century. In his early career, Jung was influenced by the theory of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis (Breger 2000, p. 217). However, they came into disagreement in notions which then broke their relationship. It was because Freud’s view of myth was based on reality, which there was no religion involved, whereas Jung though that myth was based on both reality and religion. Consequently, Jung’s notions were commonly accepted by society because of the wider context. Then, through his research and clinical findings, he developed some concepts like archetypes, collective unconscious, shadow, extrovert and introvert and persona (Carter 2011 p. 442). These concepts help Jung to deepen the explanation about myth. For Jung, myth is a projection of archetypes and collective unconscious. Their form are universal and identical with every society back into history. Myth can be identical because the original form, the archetypes, is configured to be the same among human's unconscious globally where people's psychic realm encounters certain motifs and typical figures that built into the structure of man’s unconsciousness (Jung Myth Ex. 3-4). According to Edward Tylor and James Frazer, myth and science were contradict where science was factual and myth was not (Segal 2003, p. 48). Therefore, myth has an important role in human nature and modern

Finally, we can see how William James takes an objective point of view from a few quotes in his book “The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy”. One of these quotes was, “ That is why I call pessimism an essentially religious disease.”Now although this may seem to go against his view of allowing people to believe their own thoughts, it is actually the contrary. This is because pessimism is essentially the belief of seeing things negatively or viewing things in a negative light. But, I thin this leads to the point in which William James says that religion is personal. Along with this, he stated, “Be not afraid of life. Believe

Jame’s perspective on religious experience was skeptical. His view of religion was divided between institutional religion and personal religion. Institutional religion refers to the ever socio-culturally influential religious groups and organizations. Personal religion is defined as a form religious purity, suggesting that religious experiences can range from experiences that have little religious significance to those that are completely life changing. He reasoned that most religious experiences happen when a person is in a conscious state rather than in a dream state. By concentrating on "personal religion" (3), James is able to validate a definition of religion that consists of , “the feelings, acts,

Ellyn Joy V. Pasaporte Carl Jung Until the 1910s, Carl Jung was a follower and close friend of Freud’s. Like Freud, Jung believed that unconscious conflicts are important in shaping personality. However, he believed the unconscious has two layers: the personal unconscious, which resembled Freud’s idea, and the collective unconscious, which contains universal memories of the common human past. Jung called these common memories archetypes. Archetypes are images or thoughts that have the same meaning for all human beings. Jung said that archetypes exist in dreams as well as in art, literature, and religion across cultures. According to Jung, the ego represents the conscious mind while the personal unconscious contains memories, including

The major psychological interpreters of religion are Sigmund Freud and Carl G. Jung. If we take a look of what Freud sad about the psychological interpreters of religion, we can see that he though religion was a sign of an imperfect or compulsive progress with a character. Sigmund Freud argues that these impulses have their origin in childhood helplessness and survive into adulthood through the image of the god-father. He thought that religion is a collective psychosis, a mass anxiety and ultimately an illusion. However Carl G. Jung believed that religion is a search of individuation. That is, for uniting the several elements of one’s mind into a melodious

William James the writer of “Varieties of Religious Experience” popularised the use of the term ‘Religious Experience’ observed that Mysticism requires knowledge of the Transcendental and personal religion is more fundamental than any kind of theology. The writer defines religion as feelings, acts or experienced had by the individual men when they are in solitude. James denies the very fact religion should be practiced in groups and in public he keeps feeling as the central idea to be aware of any kind of religion. The divine feeling should come from the inside in the