Avens1977-ImageDevil CGJungs Psychology

Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 16, No.
3, 1977
The Image of the Devil in

C. G. Jung's Psychology
ROBERTS AVENS
Since the Renaissance, Western civilization has pursued the cult of a rational
and conscious ego t h a t believes t h a t it can do, know, and organize everything.
Never mind that, for example, a Bismarck, the great German chancellor who
tried to follow the slogan ~'Where there is a will, there is a way" was constantly
overcome by fits of crying. Once man, the splendid biped, was placed squarely on
the center stage, he could conceive of no other function in this world beyond
what his ego defined for him. As a consequence, the larger macrocosmic setting
t h a t was always vital for the Greeks receded to the periphery and concurrently
all nonrational values, including religion, lost their numinous character. The
case of religion is rather instructive: its demotion to a system of collective ethical
behavior, interspersed with warm inner feelings, perhaps for the first time
made us suspicious t h a t it is possible to become ill from too much morality.
This process of narrowing now seems to have run its course. For one thing,
gods and demons t h a t modern science had expelled from nature have found a
new, though less spacious, abode in the h u m a n psyche. Above all it is the reality
of evil that has become the source of deep and uncanny fascination for modern
man. "That," according to Jung, ~is the psychological situation in the world
today. Some call themselves Christian and imagine that they can trample so-
called evil underfoot by merely willing to; others have succumbed to it and no
longer see the good. Evil today has become the visible Great Power."' We must
add, however, that fascination with evil and the satanic in general is not
necessarily an aberration of a sick mind. It may be the obverse (and neglected)
side of the ~thing" called religion, trying to attract our attention.
J u n g suggests t h a t in order to find a way out of this quagmire, we learn not to
succumb to anything at all. In particular, we must relinquish the illusion of
absolute certainty as to the nature of good and evil.
Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine, or
idealism. We must beware of thinking of good and evil as absolute opposites. The
criterion of ethical action can no longer consist in the simple view that good has the force
of a categorical imperative, while so-called evil can resolutely be shunned. Recognition of
Roberts Avens, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Iona College, New
Rochelle, New York. He has publishedarticles in Catholic World, Cross Currents, and the Journal
of Dharma, and is the author of a book of poetry in Latvian.
196
The Image of the Devil in C. G. Jung' s Psychology 197
the reality of evil necessarily relativizes the good, and the evil likewise, converting both
into halves of a paradoxical whole. 2
With this in mind, I intend to explore-phenomenologically if p o s s i b l e -
Jung's ideas on evil or "shadow" in its twofold manifestation: in the life of an
individual and in collectivity, i.e., the personal and collective or archetypal
shadow. These two images correspond more or less to the representations of the
devil in mythology, folklore, and religion. I shall dwell more particularly on 1)
the images of Yahweh and Satan in the Book of Job, since it is here that Jung
seems to have found one of the most significant illustrations for his view of the
dialectical relationship between consciousness and the unconscious; 2) the femi-
nine and the material (and the bewildering) element in God symbolized mainly
by the biblical figures of Sophia, "the sun woman," and Virgin Mary. At the
center of this discussion is Jung's concept of a double incarnation, the light side
of God embodied in the Christ, the dark side in Satan, who is to become the
Antichrist. Both of these events, according to Jung, are destined to culminate in
the collective indwelling of the Holy G h o s t - a process whose psychological
equivalent is the individuation of mankind.
I shall begin by briefly defining Jung's concepts of psyche, the unconscious,
and individuation. His approach to these phenomena is avowedly psychological,
relying on empirical observation, analysis, and description. But he also admits
that because of the peculiar nature of the subject matter, occasionally he
had to involve himself in a net of reflections that ramify into the fields of
philosophy, theology, comparative religion, and the human sciences in general.
Quite clearly, J u n g does not pursue psychology in the sense of a laboratory
science attempting to formulate general laws of behavior expressed in mathe-
matical terms. 3 Although his theory of the psyche's structure is based on
experiences gained in the course of his professional work, he also sought to
corroborate it through research in history of religion, mythology, alchemy, etc.
Jung did not feel that he should be bound by any one method or theory.
Theories in psychology, according to him, have only a heuristic (guiding) value.
He therefore used whatever method seemed appropriate (sometimes Freudian,
sometimes Adlerian, sometimes his own) for the particular patient. J u n g main-
tained that man is determined not only by his individual or racial history
(principle of causality), but also by his future goals and aspirations (teleology).
In contrast to the Freudian exclusive dependence on causality, where a cure
consists in "the absence of illness," J u n g is principally concerned with "the
presence of well being." In fact, most of Jung's patients were not ill in the
conventional sense. They represented what Erich Fromm calls "the new pa-
tient," i.e., people who function socially, but who suffer from the "malaise du
si~cle," a dis-ease, an inner deadness. They could not see that their various
complaints (depression, insomnia, marriages, jobs) are only "the conscious form
in which our culture permits them to express something which lies much
deeper . . . . The common suffering is the alienation from oneself, from one's
fellow man, and from nature; the awareness that life runs out of one's hand like
sand, and that one will die without having lived; that one lives in the midst of
plenty and yet is joyless. ,,4
198 Journal of Religion and Health
In Freud's system the "well being" is defined chiefly in terms of the libido
theory as "the capacity for full genital functioning, or from a different angle, as
the awareness of the hidden Oedipal situation."5 To Jung, these definitions are
only tangential to the real problem of h u m a n existence, which consists in the
awakening of the deepest sources of wisdom that lie in the unconscious.
Jung uses the word "psyche" (or ~'the total psyche") to denote the totality of all
psychic processes, conscious as well as unconscious. It involves three levels:
consciousness, the personal unconscious, the collective unconscious. Conscious-
ness, which Jung defines as the function or activity that maintains the relation
of psychic contents with the ego, 6 is only a very small part of the total psyche: "it
floats like a little island on the vast, boundless ocean of the unconscious which in
fact embraces the whole world. ,,7 Consciousness represents the side of the psyche
that is primarily concerned with adaptation to external reality.
The unconscious is composed of two parts: one contains forgotten, repressed
material and subliminal impressions and perceptions; Jung calls this sphere the
personal unconscious; it closely corresponds to the Freudian conception of it. The
collective part of the unconscious does not include personal acquisitions but only
contents that are more or less common to all human beings, perhaps even to all
animals. It is a sort of common psyche of a suprapersonal kind that is the
foundation of every individual psyche. The collective unconscious is the product
of generations past, the deposit of the experiences to which our ancestors have
been exposed: it contains the wisdom of ages, our innate potential, which
emerges from time to time in the form of "new" ideas and various creative
expressions, s
The primitive or the collective unconscious consists of the sum of instincts and
their spiritual correlates, the archetypes. These are archaic vestiges or primi-
tive modes of functioning that may be manifested as conscious images, symbols,
ideas. Jung was of the opinion that archetypes are inherited with the structure
of the brain and that they constitute the deposit of mankind's typical reactions
from primordial times to universal h u m a n situations, such as fear, the struggle
against superior power, relations between sexes, the power of the bright and the
dark principles, etc.
Archetypes tend to emerge in dreams, in adult fantasies, in children, and in
myths and fairy tales found throughout the world: they are also produced by
patients who had no conscious knowledge of their existence or significance.
These explicitly reported events and images are the only empirical evidence for
the reality of the collective unconscious and its contents; this is to say that the
collective unconscious in itself is not an observed reality, but a construct that is
inferred to have produced certain similarities in these various empirical evi-
dences. "Coming to know an unconscious is to make it conscious, but then one
only knows what has become conscious.'9 Archetypes appear in many f o r m s - as
persons, as supernatural figures, etc. For example, all pre-existing mothers,
with their protective, nourishing influences (yin) combine to form a mother
archetype, while the father archetype signifies strength and authority (yang).
One of the essential properties of the Jungian unconscious is the power of
compensation. Psyche is a self-regulating system in which a compensatory
mechanism operates between the conscious and the unconscious parts. Jung
thinks that it was Heraclitus who discovered the most far-reaching of all
psychological laws, viz., the regulative function of opposites. He called it the
rule of enantiodromia (enantos, opposite, and dromos, a quick movement). It
means that every one-sided attitude inevitably produces its opposite in an
autonomous attempt to restore a balanced attitude. Life is a contest of opposites:
birth and death, health and sickness, love and hate, giving and taking, systole
and diastole, summer and winter, day and night. We find the same law in the
ancient Nemesis, the personification of divine justice that could not permit any
wrong to go unpunished.
In Jungian psychology, one opposite compensates the deficiencies of the other
opposite; for example, the extroversion compensates introversion, the uncon-
scious compensates the conscious mind, evil compensates the good and vice
versa. Polarity and opposition are universal laws, and no growth and develop-
ment of human personality is possible without consideration of them. This, in
turn, implies that all development is accompanied by differentiation- a process
in which both parts of the total psyche, consciousness and the unconscious, are
linked together in a living relation. We begin life in a state of undifferentiated
wholeness and nondistinction. Then, just as a seed grows into a plant, the
individual develops into a fully differentiated and unified personality. However,
the goal of complete differentiation and balance (individuation) is rarely if ever
reached, except, as J u n g observes, by a Jesus or a Buddha. Wholeness is always
relative; personality as the complete realization of our potential is an unattaina-
ble ideal. But then, says Jung, ideals are only signposts, never the goal.l~
This striving for self-fulfillment (or '~consummate selfhood," according to C.
H. Hall and V. J. Nordby) is called by J u n g "individuation." It is an archetypal,
viz., an inborn, process requiring no external stimulation. We are destined to
individuate just as surely as the body is destined to grow. But as the body can
become deformed and sickly because of inadequate diet or lack of exercise, so the
personality can be deformed as a result of deficiencies in its experiences and
education. For example, modern civilization provides inadequate opportunities
for the shadow archetype to become individuated because in childhood our
animal instincts are usually punished by parents. This leads to repression: the
shadow returns to the unconscious layer of personality, where it remains in a
primitive, undifferentiated state. When it occasionally breaks through the
barrier of repression, the shadow manifests itself in pathological ways, for
example, in the sadism of modern warfare and the crude obscenities of pornogra-
phy.
Psychotherapy for J u n g is primarily an individuation process that is sponta-
neous, natural, and potentially present in every man, although most men are
unaware of it. In certain circumstances, however, it can be stimulated, made
conscious, and consciously experienced. This would require an intensive analyti-
cal effort, or what J u n g calls activating the contents of the unconscious; " . . .
such an effort eases the tension between the pairs of opposites and makes
possible a living knowledge of their structure. Leading through all the hazards
of a psyche thrown off balance, cutting through layer after layer, it finally
penetrates to the centre that is the source and ultimate foundation of our psychic
being, to the Self. T M The self embraces the conscious as well as the unconscious
psyche; it is the archetype of order and of the totality of the personality.
Broadly speaking, the individuation process consists of two stages correspond-
ing to the first and the second halves of life. In the first half we are initiated into
outward reality; the predominant aim here is consolidation of the ego and
adaptation of the individual to the demands of his environment. The second
stage is controlled by what Jung calls ~'the transcendent function"; it consists in
gaining a deeper knowledge of our inner reality, uniting all of the opposing
trends in personality and working toward the goal of wholeness. The transcen-
dent function is the means by which we realize all aspects of the personality
originally hidden away in the embryonic germ plasm; it is the attainment
(relatively speaking) of the unity or self archetype. Jung has devoted the larger
part of his work to the second part of the process, thus offering persons in their
middle years the possibility of a fully meaningful l i f e - a life that may be
regarded as preparation for death.
J u n g has explored and described a number of archetypes and symbolic figures
(symbols are outward manifestations of archetypes) that are characteristic of
the principal stages of the individuation process. The first s t a g e - w h i c h is the
primary concern of this p a p e r - l e a d s to the experience and integration of the
shadow. The other stages are 1) encounter with the soul-image, which in man
Jung calls anima and in the woman, animus; 2) the appearance of the archetype
of the Wise Old Man, the personification of the spiritual principle and its
counterpart in the woman's individuation process, the magna mater, the great
earth mother, representing the impersonal truth of nature. The last 3) station
on the path of individuation is characterized by union of the two psychic
systems-consciousness and the unconscious-through a midpoint common to
both, the central archetype of the self. 12
The personal shadow. The shadow symbolizes our "other side," the unrecog-
nized and disowned, animal-like personality rejected by the ego. Most h u m a n
beings are far more greedy, licentious, envious, etc., than they like to appear
either to themselves or to others. The shadow is the sum of these unpleasant
qualities together with insufficiently developed functions; it represents, though
not exclusively, the contents of the personal unconscious, viz., things we want
most to deny, things that have been excluded, rejected, or repressed during our
life. 13
In mythology the shadow appears personified in a figure of the same sex, as
our ~dark brother" who accompanies and clings to his '~light" counterpart: Cain-
Abel, Set-Osiris, Mephisto-Faust, Mr. Hyde-Dr. Jekyll. It is that hidden,
inferior, and guilt-laden part of personality whose ultimate ramifications reach
back into the realm of our animal ancestors.14 It is not an easy task for us to
establish a right relationship to our shadow, to acknowledge and accept it
realistically without becoming identified with it and eventually falling under its
spell. 15 To recognize the shadow as the dark aspect of the personality is the
essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
The Image of the Devil in C. G. Jung's Psychology 201
It is important to realize that the shadow is not necessarily nefarious or

wholly bad. It also displays good q u a l i t i e s - n o r m a l instincts, creative impulses,
and realistic insights. The shadow is "negative" only when seen from the
viewpoint of consciousness. Insofar as it retains contact with the lost depths of
the soul, with life and vitality, the shadow may provide hints for self-actualiza-
tion. Without shadow we are flaccid, a two-dimensional phantom, a more or less
well brought up child. The man without awareness of his shadow-statistically
a very common occurrence- is the man who believes he is actually only what he
knows about himself. He is in fact the mass man who acts as if mistakes are
committed by "state" or '~society." ~'He regards himself as harmless, and so adds
stupidity to iniquity. He does not deny that terrible things have happened and
still go on happening, but it is always 'the others' who do them. And when such
deeds belong to the recent or remote past, they quickly and conveniently sink
into the sea of forgetfulness, and that state of chronic woolly-mindedness
returns which we describe as 'normality.' ,,16
To lose one's shadow, as, for example, Chamisso's novel Peter Schlemiel
shows, is extremely dangerous: somebody else or the devil himself gains control
of it. The intimate relationship between a man and his shadow in primitive
cultures is expressed in many ways. Whoever steps over the shadow of another
person conquers him; if one's shadow is pierced, it means that one's actual life is
injured. The shadow is not only unavoidable, but, as superstition holds, a man
without shadow is the devil himself. As if we instinctively knew that human
nature needs a little wickedness, we are cautious with someone who seems "too
good to be true."
Man cannot be whole without his negative side, through which he remains in
touch with his primitive nature and with his body. But, says Jung, this body is
also a "beast with a beast's soul, an organism that gives unquestioning obedi-
ence to instinct." So there is always the danger of being overwhelmed by "that
fundamental dynamism lurking in the background." For example, Nietzsche,
who undoubtedly felt the Christian denial of animal nature very deeply and
"sought a higher h u m a n wholeness beyond good and evil," ended his life in the
Dionysian frenzy of the "blond beast." It was a pathological case of "identifica-
tion with the shadow," a phenomenon that often occurs at moments of collision
with the unconscious. '7
Psychological evidence shows that shadow has a tremendous staying power. A
person who suppresses it may become civilized, but only at the expense of his
own creativity, spontaneity, and deep insight. By cutting himself off from the
profound wisdom of his instinctual nature, he tends to become shallow and
spiritless.18 On the other hand, when society refuses to provide adequate outlets
for the animal side of man's nature, disaster often follows. Writing in 1918, at
the end of World War I, Jung observed that the "animal in us only becomes more
beastlike" when it is repressed. The Christian teachings were also very repres-
sive of the shadow and "that is no doubt the reason why no religian is so defiled
with the spilling of innocent blood as Christianity, and why the world has never
seen a bloodier war than the war of the Christian nations. ''19
The main difficulty in recognizing the shadow is that it is bound up with

projections and personifications t h a t are not recognized as such. The shadow
that cannot be accepted as a negative part of one's system is projected, viz., it is
transferred to the outside world and experienced as an outside object, as "the
alien out there."
The phenomenon of projection is one of the fundamental psychic mechanisms.
It is very common in the psychology of the primitive (and children), where it is
the basis of the beliefs in spirits. For example, the primitive is unable to
experience fear as part of his own psyche, but projects it onto his surroundings
and objectifies it as demon or evil spirit. Projections appear on persons in the
immediate environment, mostly in the form of abnormal over- or undervalua-
tions, creating misunderstandings, quarrels, and fanaticism of every description
They usually attach themselves where there is a suitable hook; for example,
when somebody projects a devil upon his neighbor, he does so because this
person has something about him that makes the attachment of such an image
possible. The devil in such a case is simply a variant of the shadow archetype.
Thus unreasonable predilections against certain types of persons-xenophobia,
racial p r e j u d i c e - m a y be partially understood as evidence of the projected
shadow. Only by recognizing t h a t not all evil is outside the individual himself
can a person withdraw the projections and attend to the aspect of the problem
t h a t is part of his shadow personality. 2~
Perhaps the gravest effect of projections is to isolate the subject from his
environment, to envelop him as in a cocoon. As J u n g puts it, "projections change
the world into a replica of one's own unknown face" leading to "an autoerotic or
autistic condition in which one dreams a world whose reality remains forever
unattainable. ,,21
Projections, according to Jung, must be regarded as an inevitable step toward
fuller consciousness enabling us 1) to confront our bifurcated inner condition and
2) to withdraw the projection from the object into the subject. As long as we are
unconscious of our own shadow, we live in a state of "participation mystique"
with somebody or something else.
In every case of projection a kind of fascination results, since I am tied to the parts of my
own psychology which I have projected; in the case of shadow projection I am tied to the
other person in hatred, in the case of the "savior" projection I am tied to the other person
in blind and uncritical adoration. For the first case the obsession of the Nazis with the
Jews presents a tragic example, for the second the almost divine power with which they
invested the Ffihrer. 22
Individuation of the shadow. As long as a man projects his shadow onto a

person or a group of persons or circumstances, he remains unaware of his own
shadow figure. Only by withdrawing his shadow projection can he face his inner
problem, which essentially is t h a t of becoming conscious and de-identified. To
become fully conscious, however, is not primarily an intellectual endeavor; it
implies an emotional realization involving the whole of personality. Genuine or
illumined consciousness is characterized by a profound sense of relatedness and
responsibility toward a center that has been realized and accepted as "true"; to
be "unconscious" means to be caught in the trap of identifications and ulterior
motives. 2~
Jung, in contrast to the reductive Freudian view t h a t sought only to '~subli-
mate" the dark side of the unconscious, holds t h a t it is precisely the dark and
ambiguous figure of the shadow t h a t holds the key to a development of new
wholeness in modern man. Becoming conscious of the shadow, however, is a
psychological problem of first moral magnitude. It demands that we hold our-
selves accountable not only for what happens to us, but also for what we
project. ''~4 Self-awareness, therefore, must be regarded as an ethical value. Or,
as E. Neumann puts it, "the acknowledgment of one's evil is ~good.' To be g o o d -
that is, to want to transcend the limits of the good which is actually available
and possible-is evil. ''2~
In Jung's opinion, the traditional ethical position with its slogan O m n e
b o n u m a deo, o m n e m a l u m ab h o m i n e (all good comes from God, all evil from
man) has made excessive demands on h u m a n nature. ~6 In the canons of collec-
tive morality (outlined in the Mosaic Law and the Christian commandments)
the terms "good" and "evil" are used as opposites: a person is enjoined to practice
brotherly love, to strive for perfection and to avoid hate, intolerance, and egoism
of all sorts. These exhortations have produced a split between light and dark-
ness in the psyche, leaving Western m a n with only two alternatives: either to
surrender to his shadow, viz., to acknowledge himself to be a sinner who needs
to be saved by the divine agency, or to make the impossible attempt to rid
himself of the dark side altogether. It is here that J u n g appears as "the healer of
modern man" in t h a t he "places himself on the side of humanity, on the side of
the c r e a t u r e - a n d on the side of the shadow. ''27 What Neumann calls the ~'new
ethic" represents the self-affirmation of modern m a n and his acceptance of the
earth and of life in this world.
By accepting evil, modern man accepts the world and himself in the dangerous double
nature which belongs to them both. This self-affirmation is to be understood in the
deepest sense as an affirmation of our human totality, which embraces the unconscious as
well as the conscious mind and whose centre is not the ego (which is only the centre of
consciousness), nor yet the so-called super-ego, but the Self.2s
In the J u n g i a n framework to accept evil is to allow the tendencies bound up

with the shadow a measure of realization. This may lead to disobedience and
self-disgust, but also to self-reliance (a sense of centeredness) without which
individuation is unthinkable. If ethics are to be meaningful, the ability to '~will
otherwise" must be real. Switching, as he often does, to theological language,
J u n g says that man participates in the divine process (viz., individuation) and
this means that
the principle of separateness and autonomy over against God-which is personified in

Lucifer as the God-opposing will- is included in it too. But for this will there would have
been no creation and no work of salvation either. The shadow and the opposing will are
the necessary conditions for all actualization. An object that has no will of its own,
capable, if need be, of opposing its c r e a t o r . . , has no independent existence and is
incapable of ethical decision . . . . Therefore Lucifer was perhaps the one who best under-
stood the divine will struggling to create a world and who carried out that will most
faithfully. For, by rebelling against God, he became the active principle of a creation
which opposes to God a counter-will of its own. 2a
According to J u n g , we m u s t l e a r n to live w i t h our sin (not in sin), viz., to

respect a n d to t r e a t kindly t h e rejected, n e g a t i v e side of o u r p e r s o n a l i t y - ~ ' t h e
l e a s t of the b r e t h r e n . " Acceptance of t h e shadow involves suffering a n d passion
of the whole m a n l e a d i n g to the r e a l i z a t i o n t h a t
in this very power of evil God might have placed some special purpose which is most
important for us to know. One often feels driven to such view when, like the psychothera-
pist, one has to deal with people who are confronted with their blackest shadow. At any
rate, the doctor cannot afford to point, with a gesture of facile moral superiority, to the
tablets of the law and say, ~Thou shalt not." He has to examine things objectively and
weigh up possibilities, for he knows, less from religious training and education than from
instinct and experience, that there is something like a felix culpa. 3~ He knows that one
can miss not only one's happiness, but also one's final guilt, without which a man will
never reach his wholeness2 ~
As I noted earlier, t h e J u n g i a n i n d i v i d u a t i o n process h a s two s e p a r a t e phases.

W h e r e a s the first (corresponding to the first h a l f of life) is devoted m a i n l y to
stabilization of ego p e r s o n a l i t y , in the second h a l f a p e r s o n is confronted w i t h a n
i n n e r d e m a n d t h a t the p e r s o n a l i t y be m a d e complete t h r o u g h recognition of t h e
shadow. This m a y a p p e a r a s t o u n d i n g f r o m the s t a n d p o i n t of t r a d i t i o n a l m o r a l -
ity. Yet "evil," insofar as it is rooted in m a n ' s i n s t i n c t u a l n a t u r e w h e r e all
s p o n t a n e i t y , creativity, a n d strong e m o t i o n s lie, a p p e a r s to be the only bridge
t h a t r e u n i t e s us w i t h the source a n d t h e center of life, the self.
Reconciliation w i t h the shadow is a l w a y s followed b y a n expansion, a n
e n l a r g e m e n t of consciousness. I t m u s t be e m p h a s i z e d again, h o w e v e r , t h a t this
does not i m p l y a n irresponsible s u r r e n d e r to t h e s h a d o w or a m e g a l o m a n i c
condition of b e i n g "beyond good a n d evil." R a t h e r the old d i l e m m a - e i t h e r to be
o v e r w h e l m e d b y the s h a d o w or to project i t - i s transcended. I n o t h e r words: the
p r o b l e m is raised to a h i g h e r level w h e r e contradictions a r e resolved. W h a t
J u n g , therefore, m e a n s b y acceptance of t h e shadow (or i n t e g r a t i o n of evil) is not
a n approval of ~'sin" or c o m p r o m i s e w i t h wickedness, b u t a n e w freedom to act
out of one's inborn wholeness. In this s t a t e we are no longer spellbound b y evil
(our egocentric urges); we h a v e come to u n d e r s t a n d it a n d so a r e free to use it as
a s t e p p i n g stone in t h e process of individuation.
If a person is successful in detaching himself from identification with specific opposites,

he can often see, to his own astonishment, how nature intervenes to help him . . . . He
will then experience an inner liberation . . . . In psychological terms, the sacrifice of the
ego-will adds energy to the unconscious, and leads to an activation of its symbols. This
corresponds to the religious experience in which the resurrection follows the crucifixion
and the ego-will becomes one with the will of God . . . . The acceptance of sacrifice is the
sine qua non of salvation. A transformation takes place in the symbols of both good and
evil. Good loses some of its goodness, and evil some of its e v i l . . , evil can finally prove to
be a means of healing, which reconciles the individual with the central core of his being,
with the self, the image of the Godhead. 32
The new level of awareness from which one confronts the opposites is also
called '~the s e l f ' - a n ideal center, equidistant between the ego and the uncon-
scious. It is the "maximum natural expression of individuality, in a state of
fulfilment or totality. As nature aspires to express itself, so does man, and the
self is t h a t dream of totality. ,,33 It is the mid-point between consciousness (the
absolute demands of traditional ethics) and the unconscious (the s h a d o w ) - a
state of equipoise and one-pointedness in the midst of the forces of chaos and
light. '~Anyone who perceives his shadow and his light simultaneously sees
himself from two sides and thus gets in the middle" where alone (i.e., behind the
opposites and in the opposites) is true reality, which sees and comprehends the
whole. 34
In Indian philosophy this is called A t m a n - that which, figuratively speaking,
breathes not only through me but through all. The self or Atman is not just a
rather more conscious or intensified ego; like the Chinese Tao, it is in all beings.
"As an empiricist," says Jung, "I can at least establish that the Easterner like
the Westerner is lifted out of the play of Maya, or the play of opposites, through
the experience of the Atman, the ~self,' the highest totality. He knows t h a t the
world consists of darkness and light. I can master their polarity only by freeing
myself from them by contemplating both, and so reaching a middle position.
Only there am I no longer at the mercy of the opposites."35
Neumann has tried to sum up the J u n g i a n approach as follows. '~Whatever
leads to wholeness is 'good'; whatever leads to splitting is 'evil.' Integration is
good, disintegration is evil. Life, constructive tendencies and integration are on
the side of good; death, splitting and disintegration are on the side of evil." This
is to say t h a t our moral values and actions are no longer considered as entities
t h a t are judged good or bad in themselves, but only in relation to the whole.
Whatever helps to promote wholeness is ~'good"; and vice versa, ~whatever leads
to disintegration is 'evil,' even if it is ~good will,' 'collectively sanctioned values'
or anything else ~intrinsically good.'-36
In the J u n g i a n "Weltanschauung" the polarity of good and evil belongs tc
h u m a n life. Progress toward goodness is meaningless without the presence of
evil and he who tries to lead a better and nobler life than is possible involves
himself in an endless hypocrisy and deceit. On the other hand, giving free rein
to evil is to become the plaything of the forces of the unconscious. Individuation
of the shadow is not just a mental cure limited to man's personal experience, but
a much more comprehensive way to self-knowledge. Jung teaches the principle
of growth toward wholeness (spiritual and biological) - a growth that necessar-
ily involves a creative relationship between the dark instinctive side of man's
nature and the light of consciousness. In Neumann's words,
A new form of humanism is needed in which man will learn to make friends with himself
and to experience his own shadow side as an essential component of his creative vitality.
The shadow is not a transitional stage or '~nothing but" the instinctual side considered
simply as the soil in which the roots of life are bedded. It is the paradoxical secret of
transformation itself, since it is in fact in and through the shadow that the lead is
transformed into gold. 37
The archetypal shadow and the devil. The shadow in its individual aspect
stands for personal darkness complementing the light of the conscious personal-
ity. But, as I said earlier, it also branches out into the realm of our animal
ancestors and comprises the whole historical aspect of the unconscious. The
shadow is something larger and denser than the personal unconscious; insofar
as it merges with the contents of the collective unconscious, it represents the
unrecognized and inferior side of a race, group, or nation.
The common h u m a n shadow belongs together with the other figures (arche-
types) of the collective unconscious and corresponds to the dark aspect of the self
(or to the negative expression of the Wise Old Man). It contains evil of gigantic
proportions: "to talk of original sin and to trace it back to Adam's relatively
innocent slip-up with Eve is almost an euphemism. ''~s
Usually the archetypal shadow manifests itself in two ways: it is personified
in a leader (a Cesare Borgia, a Hitler) who shows all the qualities that have
been rejected and repressed by the contemporary cultural canon, or it can be
projected onto groups of people; the lower classes, racial and national minorities,
and other faiths are likely to become targets of suppressed psychic contents. In
this w a y - b y looking for everything dark, inferior, and culpable in o t h e r s - w e
jump over our own shadow; we discharge the negative forces of the psyche and
the guilt2 9
At this juncture the moral problem of the individual merges into the wider
problem of evil in the h u m a n race or evil in itself. Jung found one of the clearest
manifestations of the archetypal shadow in the figure of Mephistopheles in
Goethe's Faust. Mephisto is not simply a ~devil," but a ~'godlike companion" who
initiates the weary scholar Faust into the world of Eros and leads him into the
depths and down to the Mothers and the mysteries of the "god in nature". 4~As
the strange "son of chaos" (the unconscious), he symbolizes the portion of the
psyche that has preserved a living relationship with nature and with the whole
historical past. Mephisto is the devilish counterpart of the light that illuminates
Faust's spirit and, as the prologue in heaven shows, he is the adversary of God
himself. With the famous words: '~I am part of that power which always wants to
do evil, and yet always creates good," Goethe suggests that good may be found
not only in the personal shadow, but also in the archetypal shadow. 41
The spiritual peregrinations of Goethe's Faust show that the experience of evil
can be a means for transcending the one-sidedness of our conscious life. Indeed,
the very fascination of evil is often due to the fact that it offers the only possible
access to the lost levels of the soul whose ramifications extend into the age-old
paths of nature. For example, Lilian Frey-Rohn, a Jungian psychotherapist, has
observed that the appearance in dreams of dangerous a n i m a l s - t h e bear, the
snake, the rat, or the w e s e l - i s related to the transformation of darkness and
evil. ~'Such dream phenomena, which are not at all unique, show that man's
reconciliation with the chthonic aspect of his soul is today a collective problem.
It is as if the animal soul wanted to complement the 'all-too-airy' intellectual
aspect of ego-consciousness in order to form a totality. ''42
The ambivalent deity. The role that the shadow (or evil) plays in Jungian
psychology clearly points to the inadequacy and one-sidedness of the traditional
Western image of God. In the West, the paradoxical behavior and moral ambiv-
alence of the gods of classical antiquity were not tolerated. The Olympians were
devaluated and given a philosophical interpretation. Christianity even reformed
the Jewish concept of God: the morally ambiguous Yahweh became a wholly and
stainlessly good God, with no particle of evil in its nature. The Satan who had
earlier been a valuable and influential servant of God became God's enemy, the
prince of darkness and the heart and center of evil. In the East, gods retained
their original paradoxical character. For example, Kali, the representative of
the East, is still the bloodthirsty and at the same time gracious goddess while
"the Madonna of the West has entirely lost the shadow that distantly followed
her in the allegories of the Middle Ages. It was relegated to the hell of popular
imagination, where it now leads an insignificant existence as the devil's grand-
mother. ''43
In classical Judaism, deity is represented in accordance with the natural
archetypal symbolism: in Yahweh light and darkness, good and evil are not
separated from one another but are interrelated aspects of his numinosity (e.g.,
Isaiah 45:7). In fact, his unpredictable behavior, his senseless orgies of destruc-
tion, and his self-imposed sufferings almost duplicate the behavior of the trick-
ster. For the trickster, in Jung's psychology, is the collective shadow figure par
excellence. He is both subhuman and superhuman, a bestial and divine being
whose chief characteristic is his unconsciousness. He is so unconscious of himself
that his body is not a unity, and his hands fight each other. Even his sex is
optional despite its phallic qualities: he can turn himself into a woman and bear
children. 44
R. S. Kluger has shown that biblical texts depict a definite development in the
two primary images of the h u m a n psyche - God and the devil. From a
psychological point of view, one m a y speak also of "God's fate in the h u m a n
soul." The word "soul," however, as used by J u n g is of such a "limitless range
and unfathomable depth ''4~ that, in Kluger's words, "the ancient problem of
transcendence and immanence has lost acuteness, since immanence, so under-
stood, includes the effects, the imprint, or whatever we want to call it, of that
which extends beyond the human; that is, of the transcendent. The transcendent
is met from the background of man's own psyche. ''46
The word "satan" (from the Hebrew ~ t ~ n ) primarily means "adversary." In
Numbers 22:27 we encounter this figure in the form of Mal'(tk Yahweh, the
emissary of God (one of the sons of God) who blocks Balaam's (a h u m a n being)
way. The "resistance" here comes ultimately from God, i.e., he is Yahweh in a
special function, the side of Yahweh turned toward man. In this and other
passages satan has no individuality of his own, but exists only inasmuch as he is
Yahweh's self-expression; he brings revelation, protection, threat, etc. But then
in Micaiah's vision (I Kings 22:19 ff) a "spirit" appears before Yahweh like a
personification of an evil thought of God. The dark demonic side of God begins to
emerge from the ambivalent mixture with his light side and to show itself as a
distinctly dark ~'spirit." In another account (Genesis 6:1-4), the sons of God (ben~
hd-eldhim) perform on their own an act that is contrary to God's will. They saw
"the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which
they chose." These beings express, from the psychological point of view, a still
unconscious urge in God toward men. But precisely because iti~ an unconscious
urge, the union with human beings does not result in a God-man, but in
monsters. God, however, did not punish the angels, but instead punished
mankind by shortening its span of life. This would indicate conflict within God
himself: one side of him wants to unite with man, the other opposes the union
since it would make man equal to God. We find a similar situation in Genesis
3:1, where one side of G o d - t h e s e r p e n t - w a n t s to seduce man so that he will
become like God and know good and evil while the other side, for that very
reason, expels man from Paradise. And so it is throughout the Old Testament:
~'God himself, through his dark side, works on man as 'the power that always
wills the bad, and always creates the good.' For although the sin of Adam and
Eve is the sin par excellence in the Paradise story, God depends on this very sin
of man, of knowing good and evil, to carry out his plan of salvation. ''47
The concept of'~son of God" undergoes a further differentiation in the Book of
Job (c. 600-300 B.C.). Here the function of Satan is already defined by his name:
unlike the vision of Micaiah, where the "spirit" merely carries out a plan of God,
in Job Satan is almost an independent agent in conflict with God's total
personality, He argues with God and his arguments affect God. Yahweh seems
to believe in Job's piety, but then he does not believe, for he needs to have it
confirmed. Satan, by devaluating Job's piety and by causing God to deliver Job
up to him, appears here as the manifest doubt of God. The driving force behind
the doubt is the change effected in God himself. Yahweh must submit to the
doubt within himself more for his own sake, as a matter of fate, so to speak, in
order to experience himself. "Statan is the destructive doubt within God's person-
ality; yet it has a mysterious existential necessity for God and man and their
relation to each other."4s
Job's rebellion effects a falling apart of the two sides of God. Although the
whole affair takes place in heaven, between God and Satan, it reverberates in
the human realm as a split of the divine image in Job. Job becomes conscious of
God's ambivalence just as God consciously experiences his own unpredictability.
As a result, he manifests himself to Job in his terrible aspect of the power of
nature. He is aware of his own cruelty (41:3, 4), he mocks the covenant made
with man, because he is also the dark-nature God who can destroy what he has
created.
Job accepts the irrational God and is thereby redeemed. By sacrificing himself
to a God who represents not only goodness and light, but also cruelty and
injustice, he becomes the carrier of the divine fate. The experience of God as the
coincidentia oppositorum, occurring as it does on the plane of Job's conscious-
ness, gives meaning to his suffering and liberation to his soul: "I know that my
redeemer liveth." Satan had driven the simple, unproblematic, pious Job to
come to terms with the deus absconditus. "One must therefore assume that it
was this being comprehended, this having room in man which was important for
God. He obviously wants man to be the carrier of his (divine) self-knowl-
edge . . . . Man is nothing against the tremendous divine force, yet God needs
him in order to know his power. God needs man for the sake of insight. ''49
The Book of Job, in comparison with the story of Paradise, represents a
significant advance in God's self-consciousness. Adam and Eve are expelled
from God's presence as if their knowledge of good and evil were an offense
against the creator. In Job one begins to realize that this knowledge is fruitful
when combined with submission to God. What we are witnessing here is the
possibility of a union of man and God on a new and higher plane: the lost
Paradise can be regained without abdicating man's discriminative faculty. It is
also highly suggestive t h a t in Job Satan acts in agreement with God, not behind
his back like the serpent in Paradise.
In sum, Satan, far from being the irreconcilable antagonist of God, is truly
Lucifer, the light-bearer, because it is he who forces man to transcend his mere
animal nature (his unconsciousness and immersion in nature) and makes him
'~capable of enduring God in his light-dark aspect and of surrendering himself to
him.'S~ Or, as Alan Watts has observed, the fact that the name of the angel of
evil is Lucifer, the light-bearer, '~suggests that there might be something
formative and creative in becoming conscious of one's own evil principle, or dark
side, or innate rascality. ''51
Before we follow Jung's own interpretation of the psychological event that is
the story of Job in the Old Testament, it is necessary to d w e l l - f r o m Jung's
v i e w p o i n t - on the Incarnation of Christ as the penultimate stage in the indivi-
duation process.
Incarnation and individuation. From the discussion of the figure of Satan in
the Old Testament we saw that m a n - through the realization of the divine dark
s i d e - h a s initiated a change in God himself. According to Jung, this was
necessary because without such a spotlighting of Lucifer as the God-opposing
will, there would have been no creation and no work of salvation. To keep the
line of argument clean, we must let J u n g speak for himself. As he stipulated
earlier:
The shadow and the opposing will are the necessary conditions for all actualization. An
object that has no will of its own, capable, if need be, of opposing its creator.., has no
independent existence and is incapable of ethical decision . . . . Therefore Lucifer was
perhaps the one who best understood the divine will struggling to create a world and who
carried out that will most faithfully. For, by rebelling against God, he became the active
principle of a creation which opposed to God a counterwill of its own.52
Yahweh of the Old Testament is a creator G o d - a n overpowering, numinous

mystery, essentially unconscious and unreflected in his whole nature. With the
incarnation, however, the picture changes completely. God now becomes mani-
fest in the form of man who is conscious and therefore has to discriminate
between good and evil. God, by becoming man, becomes at the same time a
definite being, he is this and not that. Thus the first thing Christ did was to
sever himself from his shadow and call it "devil." (In therapy, when a patient
emerges from an unconscious condition, he must confront his shadow and make
a decision for the good.) In Jung's scheme of things, the devil became psychologi-
cally inevitable in that he is the personification of Christ's split-off dark side. ~3
"Christ wanted to change Yahweh into a moral God of goodness, but in so doing
he tore apart the opposites (Satan falling from heaven, Luke 10:18) that were
united in him . . . . The purpose of the Christian reformation through Jesus was
to eliminate the evil moral consequences that were caused by the amoral divine
prototype . . . . ,,54Psychologically speaking, this was the first step on the way of
individuation, which consists, as I noted earlier, in discrimination between good
and evil and cessation of identification with the shadow.
Jung admits that the original Christian conception of the imago Dei embodied
in Christ is one of an all-embracing totality: Christ is the pattern of perfect
divine-humanity, the prototype of the integrated man, the archetype of the self.
However, in the modern psychological sense the Christ symbol (or should we
rather say: Christ of popular piety) lacks the wholeness, because it does not
include the s h a d o w - t h e dark side of things, which is a necessary ingredient of
our own personalities. The reason for the absence of the shadow is, in Jung's
opinion, the doctrine of the s u m m u m bonum: for the Christian, neither God nor
Christ could be a paradox; both had to have a single meaning. Unlike the
empirical self, which is a paradoxical unity of light and shadow, the Christian
archetype (Christ) is hopelessly split into two irreconcilable halves leading
ultimately to metaphysical d u a l i s m - t h e final separation of the kingdom of
heaven from the fiery world of the damned. Indeed, the devil seems to have
attained his true stature as the adversary of Christ (and hence of God) only after
the rise of Christianity.
Psychologically, this is understandable: since the figure of Christ is so spot-
less, so one-sidedly perfect, it demands a psychic complement to restore the
balance. True to his view of the psyche as a self-regulatory system, Jung,
therefore, assumes that "the coming of the Antichrist is not just a prophetic
p r e d i c t i o n - i t is an inexorable psychological law whose existence, though un-
known to the author of the Johannine Epistles, brought him a sure knowledge of
the impending enantiodromia. ''55 Similarly, it was the need to account for the
missing shadow that led in early Christianity to the belief in two sons of God,
Christ and S a t a n a ~ l - t h e elder son.
In a word, Christ as the embodiment of the self corresponds only to one-half of
the archetype; the other half appears as the Antichrist who is equally a manifes-
tation of the self in its dark aspect. ~'Both are Christian symbols and they have
the same meaning as the image of the savior crucified between two thieves. This
great symbol tells us that the progressive development and differentiation of
consciousness leads to an ever more menacing awareness of the conflict and
involves nothing less than a crucifixion of the ego, its agonizing suspension
between irreconcilable opposites. "56
The exclusion of the dark side of God from what J u n g calls "the interim
Gospel" of the all-good Jesus Christ has a parallel in Western man's insistence
on the supposed omnipotence and goodness of his conscious ego. The white m a n ,
h a v i n g failed to recognize and i n t e g r a t e his shadow, has been deluded into
believing t h a t his religion, his morals, his social and economic institutions are
superior to a n y t h i n g the world has ever seen. Blissfully u n a w a r e of the evil
w i t h i n himself, he has "infected the world with his greed, his acquisitiveness
and restlessness, has uprooted whole cultures, proletarized t h e i r peoples, spread
physical and psychological disease and the evils of his own egotism, arrogance,
nationalism, class-war, and materialism. H e has t h e r e b y ensured the lasting
h a t r e d of those w h o m h e has exploited and ~civilized' and whose gods and v a l u e s
he has destroyed; and t h e r e b y added i m m e a s u r a b l y to his own b u r d e n of guilt."~7
The psychological law of e n a n t i o d r o m i a ensures, however, t h a t glorification
of the inflated ego will produce the e m e r g e n c e of its o p p o s i t e - t h e evil and the
shadow. T h e New T e s t a m e n t writers seem to h a v e foreseen it all. The coming of
Christ prepares the w a y for the coming and the t e m p o r a r y t r i u m p h of S a t a n (I
J o h n 2:18; Apoc. 20:7), for the apotheosis of the shadow, "the m a n of sin, the son
of perdition who opposeth and is lifted up above all t h a t is called God . . . .
showing h i m s e l f as if h e were God" (2 Thess. 2:3). Christ h i m s e l f saw S a t a n fall
like lightning from h e a v e n (Luke 10:18) t h u s coming t h a t m u c h closer to our
h u m a n world. 58 A s s u m i n g t h a t the a u t h o r of the Apocalypse is the Beloved
Disciple of the F o u r t h Gospel and the J o h a n n i n e Epistles, J u n g writes:
The "revelation" was experienced by an early Christian who, as a leading light of the
community, presumably had to live an exemplary life and demonstrate to his flock the
Christian virtues of true faith, humility, patience, devotion, selfless love, and denial of
all worldly desires. In the long run this can become too much, even for the most religious.
Irritability, bad moods, and outbursts of affect are the classic symptoms of chronic
virtuousness . . . . I have seen many compensating dreams of believing Christians . . .
but I have seen nothing that remotely resembles the brutal impact with which the
opposites collide in John's visions, except in the case of severe psychosis. However, John
gives us no grounds for such a diagnosis . . . . It is sufficient that he is a passionately
religious person with an otherwise well-ordered psyche. But he must have an intensive
relationship to God which lays him open to an invasion far transcending anything
personal . . . . The purpose of the apocalyptic visions is not to tell John, as an ordinary
human being, how much shadow he hides beneath his luminous nature, but to open the
seer's eyes to the immensity of God, for he who loves God will know God . . . . Like Job, he
saw the fierce and terrible side of Yahweh. For this reason he felt his gospel of love to be
one-sided, and he supplemented it with hi~ gospel of fear . . . . God has a terrible double
aspect: a sea of grace is met by a seething lake of fire . . . . That is the "eternal," as
distinct from the temporal, gospel: one can love God, but one m u s t fear him. s9
A n s w e r to J o b . J u n g ' s ~'Answer to Job" is his personal a n d religious testa-

ment, w r i t t e n in a language charged with emotion and a t times sarcastic in
tone. It is a ~'purely subjective reaction" to the '~shattering emotion which the
u n v a r n i s h e d spectacle of divine s a v a g e r y and ruthlessness produces in us.'6~ In
other words, it is a n a t t e m p t to come to t e r m s with the n u m i n o u s image of the
self as it is expressed in the J u d a e o - C h r i s t i a n image of God. The "Answer to
Job" is not a theological statement. "I do not write," says J u n g , ~'as a biblical
scholar (which I am not), but as a layman and physician who has been privileged
to see deeply into the psychic life of many people. ''~1
The God of the Book of Job tests the loyalty of his pious servant Job by
inflicting upon him all kinds of suffering and tribulation. The greatness of Job
lies in the fact that he never doubts the existence, or rather the unity, of God. He
clearly sees that God is so totally at odds with himself that he, Job, is quite
certain of finding in God an "advocate" against God. Yahweh in his aspects of
persecutor and helper "is not split but is an a n t i n o m y - a totality of inner
o p p o s i t e s - a n d this is the indispensable condition for his tremendous dyna-
mism, his omniscience and omnipotence. ''62 Because Job knows it, he stands by
the dictates of his conscience and is ready to defend his point of view. He sees
that Yahweh's fulminations against him betray "an inward process of dialectic
in God," which "only becomes intelligible when aimed at a listener who doubts
it. This "doubting thought is Satan."63 "Yahweh projects on to Job a sceptic's face
which is hateful to him because it is his own...,,64 The miserable servant Job is
challenged as though he himself were a god, but of course there is no other God
except S a t a n - the only one who can "pull the wool over his eyes" and induce him
to violate his own commandments. It is as if by fighting Job, Yahweh wanted to
maintain himself in a state of unconsciousness.
The new factor that radically changes the encounter between Yahweh and Job
is that "a mortal man [Job] is raised by his moral behavior above the stars in
heaven, from which position of advantage he can behold the back of Yahweh,
the abysmal world of 'shards.' ,,6~ At this point Yahweh's dual nature has been
revealed and somebody has seen and registered the fact. But "whoever knows
God has an effect on him. The failure of the attempt to corrupt Job has changed
Yahweh's nature. ''6~
The entire drama, according to Jung, reveals a curious lack of rapport
between God and his creatures, for it is inconceivable that an all-knowing, good,
and all-powerful God could get as worked up about his helpless creation as he
does in the Scripture. Yahweh's behavior, which from the h u m a n point of view
is so intolerable, can be explained only by the fact that he is unconscious2 7 By
this Jung means that God is a coincidentia oppositorum, at the same time the
highest love and the greatest good, and dark inhuman cruelty. ~'If Y a h w e h . . .
were really conscious of himself, he would, in view of the true facts of the case,
at least have put an end to the panegyrics of his justice. But he is too uncon-
scious to be moral. Morality presupposes consciousness. By this I do not mean to
say that Yahweh is imperfect or evil, like a gnostic demiurge. He is everything
in his totality, therefore, among other things, he is total justice, and also its
total opposite. ''Gs
The inner instability of Yahweh is the prime cause not only of the creation of
the world but also of the subsequent pleromatic drama of mankind's evolution or
individuation. For the fact that Job possesses something that Yahweh lacks,
namely, consciousness based on self-reflection, changes the creator. Man "has
seen God's face and the unconscious split in his nature. God was now known,
and this knowledge went on working not only in Yahweh but in man too. ,,69 We
can correlate here the religious relationship between man and God to the
psychological interaction of the ego and the self (their freedom and a u t o n o m y on
the one h a n d and t h e i r m u t u a l dependence on the other). J u s t as the self is
actualized with the aid of consciousness, in religious l a n g u a g e we can say t h a t
"God seeks m a n and actualizes h i m s e l f in e n c o u n t e r i n g his creature" or '~man's
consciousness is deepened by its e n c o u n t e r with God. ''7~ It is a basic t e n e t of
J u n g ' s psychology t h a t the unconscious by its v e r y n a t u r e is a n unreflected,
instinctual entity. It "wants to flow into consciousness in order to r e a c h the
light, b u t a t the same time it continually t h w a r t s itself, because it would r a t h e r
r e m a i n unconscious. T h a t is to say, God wants to become m a n , b u t not quite. ''71
Job's insight into the dual n a t u r e of God, his consciousness of the a n t i n o m y of
the God-image (the ~'oppositeness" in God) was followed by t r a n s f o r m a t i o n of the
image u n d e r which the mysterium tremendum had appeared: God became man.
Psychologically "incarnation" is a symbol of becoming conscious. ~'Yahweh's
decision to become m a n is a symbol of the development t h a t had to s u p e r v e n e
w h e n m a n becomes conscious of the sort of God-image he is confronted with. ,,72
The a n s w e r to Job is given in the s u p r e m e m o m e n t of the despairing cry from
the Cross "~My God, m y God, w h y h a s t thou forsaken me?' h e r e . . . God
experiences w h a t it m e a n s to be a m o r t a l m a n and drinks to the dregs w h a t he
m a d e his faithful s e r v a n t Job suffer. ''73 Thus Yahweh's i n t e n t i o n to become
man, which resulted from his e n c o u n t e r with Job, is fulfilled in Christ's life and
suffering. Or one could say with J u n g t h a t Christ's "sacrificial d e a t h was a fate
chosen b y Y a h w e h as a r e p a r a t i o n for the w r o n g done to Job on the one h a n d and
on the other as a fillip to the spiritual and moral development of man. T h e r e can
be no doubt t h a t man's importance is e n o r m o u s l y e n h a n c e d if God h i m s e l f
deigns to become one. ''74
Aniela Jaffa, following J u n g ' s t r a i n of thought, has expressed the dialectical
relationship between God and man, viz., b e t w e e n the self and the ego as follows:
The transformation of the relation of man to God, or ego-consciousness to self, is

psychologically based on the equilibrium of a continually changing potential between
these two interacting entities. At one moment the self overpowers ego-consciousness and
forcibly brings about its transformation and expansion; at another, ego-consciousness
undergoes a mutation and penetrates deeper into the unconscious thanks to its powers of
cognition. In both cases man is transformed and so is the God-image. Yet it can never be
established with certainty which came first and what was the result. In Job's case the
possibility cannot be excluded that the process was initiated in the unconscious by the
self, and that God, driven as it were by, a secret longing for more consciousness, sought
that encounter with the mortal man. 7~
The role of the Holy Spirit. The i n c a r n a t i o n of God in J e s u s Christ, being one-
sided, is not final. Christ, born of a m o t h e r i m m a c u l a t e l y conceived, w i t h o u t
a n y sin himself, has little in common with the rest of m a n k i n d . Christ and M a r y
"are not real h u m a n beings at all, b u t gods. ,,76 T h e y still symbolize the predomi-
nance of the masculine ideal of perfection in contrast to the feminine ideal of
wholeness. 77 This, from the standpoint of man's psychological development, was
a necessary step. For, as t h e r a p e u t i c experience shows, the a d v a n c e m e n t of
h u m a n consciousness requires complete s e p a r a t i o n of the ego from the shadow.
The opposition of good and evil must be fully experienced before they can be
integrated. 78
A new era begins with the sending of'%he Spirit of truth" whose task is to help
men to discover ~'what happens when God incarnates only his light aspect and
believes he is goodness itself, or at least wants to be regarded as such. ''79 J u n g
attached special importance to the symbolism of the Holy Ghost. He spoke, like
Joachim of Flora (1135-1202), of an age of the Holy Spirit t h a t would succeed the
stage of the Father in Judaism and of the Son in Christianity. However, J u n g
regarded the Holy Spirit not as a metaphysical entity but as a symbol (verbal
image) pointing to a further development of man. From the religious point of
view, the Paraclete represents the continuation of God's incarnation in man and
the transformation of all men into '~fellow heirs with Christ," viz., into god-men.
~God wanted to become man and still wants to. ''8~
Accordingly the process of incarnation takes place now in the ordinary man
creating a new and closer relationship between God and his creature. At this
stage the symbolism of the Holy Ghost and the symbolisms of the self coincide in
the archetypal image of ~'God in man." Psychologically, the continuing incarna-
tion of God and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit are the same process: the
dawning and expansion of man's consciousness or the actualization of the self in
man.
To repeat, Christ, being sinless, was not wholly a h u m a n being. ~'Job, on the
other hand, was an ordinary h u m a n being, and therefore the wrong done to him,
and through him to mankind, can, according to divine justice, only be repaired
by an incarnation of God in an empirical h u m a n being. This act of expiation is
performed by the Paraclete; for just as man must suffer from God, so God must
suffer from man. Otherwise there can be no reconciliation between the two. ,,8,
As J u n g so often insists, individuation presupposes t h a t good and evil, light
and shadow are fully recognized. To live an integrated life, man must become
conscious of his guilt and his shadow. Thus ~the guilty man is eminently suited
and is therefore chosen to become the vessel for the continuing incarnation, not
the guiltless one who holds aloof from the world and refuses to pay his tribute to
life, for in him the dark God would find no room. ''82
But here too the law of enantiodromia must be observed, for the shadow can
be endured and integrated only if we are sufficiently conscious of the light. ~We
therefore need more light, more goodness and moral strength, and must wash off
as much of the obnoxious blackness as possible, otherwise we shall not be able to
assimilate the dark God who also wants to become man . . . . For this all the
Christian virtues are needed and something else besides, for the problem is not
only moral: we also need the Wisdom that Job was seeking. ''83
The feminine in God. The awakening of consciousness in mankind, the drama
of what Jung likes to call aurora consurgens or mysterium conjunctionis
reaches its climax with the appearance in heaven of the sun-woman, "with the
moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars" (Apoc. 12:1). She
is the equivalent of Sophia (Sapientia Dei) who is a coeternal and more or less
hypostatizedpneuma of the feminine nature that existed before the creation. 84
This is clearly an original image. The sun-woman is not a goddess or an
eternal virgin immaculately conceived. In Jung's view, the cosmic and natural-
The Image of the Devil in C. G. Jung~s Psychology 215
istic attributes mark her as the primordial feminine Anthropos who completes
the patriarchal, exclusively masculine image of God. Her symbolism reveals the
whole mystery of the woman: "she contains in her darkness the sun of 'mascu-
line' consciousness . . . . She adds the dark to the light, symbolizes the hi-
erogamy of opposites, and reconciles nature with spirit. ''85
This woman gives birth to a man-child who "rises out of the nocturnal sea of
the unconscious" and is at once taken back to it (or to God). According to Jung,
we are dealing here with an image that is to remain latent for an indefinite time
and that will be activated in the future. Furthermore, the birth of the child must
not be confused with the birth of the Christ-child that had occurred under quite
different circumstances. This man-child embodies the mythologem of the "divine
child" that is a symbol of the coming into consciousness of the total self as a
complexio oppositorum. 86
The figure of the sun-woman points to man's ability to endure the conflict
between good and evil that otherwise would tear him asunder. Speaking as a
therapist, J u n g comments that there are conflicts of duty that cannot be
logically solved. The patient is therefore advised to wait and see whether the
unconscious will not produce a solution of its own. Experience shows that
symbols of a reconciling and unitive nature do in fact show up in dreams, the
most frequent being the motif of the child-hero and the squaring of the circle,
signifying the union of opposites. 87 In this context, the birth of the child that we
meet in the Apocalypse symbolizes the essence of the individuation process or
the continuing desire of God to take abode in creaturely man.
The vision of the sun-woman will be fulfilled only in the ~last days." As a
pointer to this we witness at the end of the Apocalypse a hieros gamos, the
marriage of the son with the mother-bride symbolizing the apotheosis of the
individuation process in man. In Jung's opinion, the Catholic church has recog-
nized this truth by announcing the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed
Virgin: ~'Mary as the bride is united with the Son in the heavenly bridal-
chamber, and as Sophia, with the Godhead. ''s8 Jung considers the declaration of
the Assumption as the most important symbological event since the Reforma-
tion, 89 chiefly because it exalted the feminine and bodily principles that were
both excluded from the masculine and spiritual God-image of the Trinity. The
dogma is psychologically meaningful 1) as a symbolic approximation of oppo-
sites, the masculine and the feminine, body and spirit; 2) because it is based on a
tradition of religious beliefs reaching back for more than a thousand years. It is
prefigured in the Old Testament, in the ancient Egyptian theology of the divine
Pharaohs (where God wants to become man by means of a human mother) and
in the prehistoric religions where the theme of the primordial divine being as
both male and female is quite frequent.
It doesn't matter at all, says Jung, that the dogma asserts a physically
impossible fact, because all religious assertions are physical impossibilities.
"Religious statements without exception have to do with the reality of the
psyche and not with the reality ofphysis. "9~
The papal declaration of the Assumptio Mariae "leaves Protestantism with
the odium of being nothing but a man's religion which allows no metaphysical
representation of woman . . . . Protestantism has obviously not given sufficient
attention to the signs of times which point to the equality of women. But this
equality requires to be metaphysically anchored in the figure of a 'divine
woman,' the bride of Christ. T M
Although the dogma of the Assumption does not state that Mary has attained
a divine status, Jung thinks that, as mistress of heaven and mediatrix, she is
functionally equal to Christ, the king and mediator. Most importantly, how-
ever, it ~'expresses a renewed hope for the fulfillment of the yearning for peace
which stirs deep down in the soul, and for a resolution of the threatening tension
b e t w e e n the opposites. ''92
Understood symbolically (not concretely) the Assumption of the body is a
recognition and acknowledgment of matter, which in Western philosophy and
religion was often identified with evil or as an illusion. In Jung's view, spirit and
matter are neutral, or rather capable of what man calls good and evil. They
should be seen in a manner similar to yang (the light, warm, dry, masculine
principle) containing within itself the seed o f y i n (the dark, cold, moist, femi-
nine principle), viz., as part of the energetic structure of the physical and the
psychic world without which no existence of any kind is possible2 3
Jung's repudiation of the traditional definition of evil as a '~privation of good"

(privatio boni) (see note 50) has led some of his Catholic critics to believe that he
regards evil as having some positive existence and reality of its own and that
therefore he requires the admission of evil, not only into the archetype of the self
but also into Godhead itself; this in turn has prompted him to promote a Divine
Quaternity, with a fourth and '~evil" hypothesis, in a fashion that orthodox
Christians must find quite inadmissible. 94
It is true that, in Jung's view of the matter, the Trinitarian symbolism lacks
the feminine, the material, and hence the dark substance of the flesh and the
devil. Occasionally he seems to imply that there is a link between the feminine
as flesh, as matter, as the dark and the earthy, and the devil (or Satan); both are
referred to as ~'the missing fourth. ''95 One should readily admit that Jung,
besides being (tantalizingly!) ambiguous on this score, at times manipulates
theologically charged concepts with too much ease. He also makes clear that evil
is '~terribly r e a l " - on the psychological plane, but not as an independent reality.
"Good and evil are psychological relativities and as such quite real, yet one does
not know what they are. For this reason they should not be projected upon a
transcendent being." J u n g is not a psychological neo-Manichean; on the con-
trary, he is deeply convinced of the unity of the self. It is rather the case that
~'dualism is lurking in the shadows of the Christian doctrine: the devil will not
be redeemed, nor shall eternal damnation come to an end. ''96
Jung~s observation that the devil or the Antichrist can no longer be excluded
from the totality of divine nature should not be interpreted as an intrusion into
theological realm. His aim is always to ~'relate so-called metaphysical concepts,
which have lost their root connection with natural experience, to living, univer-
sal psychic processes, so that they can recover their true and original mean-
ing.'97
Jung thinks that there must be a continual misunderstanding between the

theologian and the empirical psychologist over their use of such words as God,
Yahweh, or Satan. Be it as it may, he himself uses these words primarily as
psychic images or outward expressions of archetypes. The fact that he often
personifies a particular archetype is due to its a u t o n o m o u s behavior in the
h u m a n psyche28 When, for example, we say that the God of the Old Testament
is unconscious or t h a t aspects of him become conscious, we should take it to
mean t h a t he is unconscious (or inaccessible) to the h u m a n ego29 In other words,
it all has to do with the interaction between ego-consciousness and the uncon-
scious. J u n g has formulated this process as follows:
The enlargement of the light of consciousness has the necessary consequence that that
part of the psyche which is less light and less capable of consciousness is thrown into
darkness to such an extent that sooner or later a rift occurs in the psychic system. At first,
this is not recognized as such and is therefore projected-i.e., it apprears as a religious
projection, in the form of a split between the powers of Light and Darkness. 1~176
The polarity between the unconscious and consciousness can also be formu-
lated as the problem of why God should have created the world, since he is
perfect in himself and has no need of anything outside himself. Jung's answer is
t h a t God in fact does need man in order to become manifest in the h u m a n act of
reflection. Man is God's necessary partner in c r e a t i o n - h i s alter ego through
which he becomes a realized and conscious fact. G. Adler, one of the foremost
disciples of Jung, interprets original sin as "an admission of God's need for
completion through man's consciousness-the Self needs ego in order to become
manifest. Whereas the relationship between God and m a n was originally meant
to be one of eternal harmony, the first sin revealed an inexplicable flaw in God's
creation, and if we may say so, an inexplicable imperfection in the divine
personality. ''1ol
The imperfection in God, according to Jung, consists in his lack of conscious-
ness. The devil, therefore, can be regarded as God's dissatisfaction with himself,
a projection of his own doubt acting as '~constant remainder of the flaw in
creation, and thus as a constant urge towards conscious realization and thereby
towards greater perfection. ''1~ The devil is here the psychopomp, a guide of the
soul, who leads the way into the underworld of the unconscious. In this he is
similar to the Platonic Eros, who is also the great instigator of unrest, the urge
toward completeness. But just as Eros has its destructive a s p e c t - t h e obsession
with merely sensual l u s t - s o the devil, by cutting himself loose from God, can
become subversive and destructive. '~This is exactly the situation of the con-
scious mind when it has cut its links with the unconscious. Where the conscious
mind becomes hypertrophic, where it tries to assume the sole direction and
responsibility, it is bound in the long r u n to act as 'Satan,' interfering and
preventing instead of urging and stimulating. ''~~
It seems, then, t h a t it is consciousness itself or the tyrannical .mind with its
ruthless and cold efficiency that, under certain circumstances, can be enticed
into playing the role of '~the enemy" by severing the unity of the conscious and
the unconscious systems. The image of the Christian devil as purely malicious
and sinister could be, therefore, "a by-product of the growth of the peculiarly
Western view of personality and its values, that is, of personality as grounded
and centered upon consciousness and will, of man's essence as the individual
and immortal soul ...... It is a unique growth of consciousness in one way and
loss of consciousness in another, and what is lost appears in the image of this
implacable enemy of man and all his values. ''1~
Here, of course, we are witnessing something that has become the central
theme of the most eloquent lamentations in the last decades: man's alienation
from himself. But what is this ~self' that we no longer seem to recognize? Has it
been made, through some satanic machination, to appear exclusively under the
guise of a conquering, megalomanic ego? The Jungian perspective would cer-
tainly allow for such an eclipse of the self. But it must be remembered that one
of the basic symbols for the self (or "God") in all mystical traditions is a circle
(mandala), which would indicate that the god-man of the age of the Spirit is
homo rotundus in whom and through whom the subtly unnatural and alluring
devil of his ego-consciousness is bound to be led back to its own organic roots in
the unconscious. We may then discover that in life's "meta-comedy" (Gerald
Heard) the battle between good and evil is not ultimately serious.
References and notes
Note: The Collected Works ofC. G. Jung, R. R. C. Hull, trans., published in London by Routledge
& Kegan Paul, have been published in the U.S. by the Bollingen Foundation (Bollingen Series
XX). Since 1967, the American publisher has been the Princeton University Press. The volumes
are referred to herein as CW.
1. Jung, C. G., Memories, Dreams, Reflections. A. Jaffa, ed., R. and C. Winston, trans. New
York, Vintage Books, 1961, p. 331.
2. Ibid., p. 329.
3. Cf. Hall, C. C., and Nordby, J., A Primer of Jungian Psychology. New York, New American
Library, 1973, p. 124 ff.
4. Fromm, E. et al., Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis. New York, Harper & Row, 1960, p. 86.
5. Ibid., p. 86
6. Jung, CW, VI, p. 421, par. 700.
7. Jacobi, J., The Psychology ofC. G. Jung. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1962, p. 6.
8. Cf. ibid., p. 10; Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. R. F. C. Hull, trans. Princeton,
Princeton University Press, 1972.
9. Hilgard, E. R., "Levels of Awareness: Second Thoughts on Some of William James Ideas." In
MacLeod, R. B., ed., William James: Unfinished Business. American Psychological Associa-
tion, Inc., 1969, p. 52.
10. Cf. Jacobi, op. cit., p. 105 ff.
11. Ibid., p. 107.
12. Cf. Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology: Man and His Symbols. New York, Dell
Publishing Co., 1964.
13. In F. Nietzsche's "The Wanderer and His Shadow," the shadow is an earthbound figure who
pursues ~'the smallest and most immediate things" of daily life (Human All Too Human,
Works, VII, p. 186). In Thus Spake Zarathustra it appears as "the ugliest man" (Works, XI, p.
320 ft.)
14. Cf. Jung, CW, IX, 2, p. 266, par. 422.
15. J u n g wants us to become disabused of the disastrous idea that the human psyche is born a
tabula rasa and that ~'under normal circumstances" the individual is in perfect order. The so-
called civilized man ~never suspects that his own hidden and apparently harmless shadow
has qualities whose dangerousness exceeds his wildest dreams. As soon as people get
together in masses and submerge the individual, the shadow is mobilized, and as history
The Image of the Devil in C. G. Jung~s Psychology 219
shows, may even be personified and incarnated." Four Archetypes. Princeton, Princeton
University Press, 1973, p. 147, par. 478.
16. J u n g , The Undiscovered Self. R. F. C. Hull, trans. New York, New American Library, 1957,
p. 108.
17. - - , Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, op. cit., p. 35, par. 30, 35.
18. Cf. Hall & Nordby, op. cir., pp. 48-50.
19. J u n g , CW, X, p. 22, par. 32.
20. - - , T w o Essays on Analytical Psychology, op. cit., p. 96, par. 152.
21. de Laszlo, V. S., ed., Psyche and Symbol. A Selection from the Writings of C. G. Jung. Garden
City, New York, Doubleday & Co., 1958. p.8
22. Adler, G., Studies in Analytical Psychology. New York, Capricorn Books, 1969, p. 16.
23. Cf. ibid., p. 17.
24. Frey-Rohn, L., "Evil from the Psychological Point of View." In Evil: Essays by Carl Kerenyi
and others. Evanston, Illinois, Northwestern University Press, 1967, p. 176.
25. N e u m a n n , E., Depth Psychology and a New Ethics. New York, G. P. P u t n a m ' s Sons, 1969, p.
114. The Freudian ~'sublimation" is simply a means to divert evil to a cultural purpose. This
redirection of the shadow, however, t u r n s out to be adaptation to socially accepted situations
and not a conscious direction of libido. "When a ~blood-thirsty' person, whose n a t u r e contains
aggressive instinctive components, becomes a butcher, a soldier or a surgeon, we have a n
example of a type of 'sublimation' in which the primitive urge to shed blood is incorporated
into forms of satisfaction which are more or less conducive to culture and sanctioned by the
community." On the other hand, experience shows t h a t conscious sublimation is possible to
only a limited extent. Where such a possibility exists, we are often caught in a vicious circle.
N e u m a n n comments on this as follows: 'We know those sublimating saints, whose 'unspotted'
l i v e s . . , are free from lived-out sexuality and full of brotherly love - on the conscious level at
any rate. But our sharpened insight cannot fail to notice the hellish aureole which so often
emanates from 'holiness' of this kind. On the periphery of its radiantly pure centre, we detect
its c o u n t e r p a r t - t h e corona of perverse sexual fantasies which 'the Devil' sends as a tempta-
tion, and the ring of blood and fire in which the unbelievers are p e r s e c u t e d - a l l the i n h u m a n
cruelty, in fact, the buruings, tortures, pogroms and crusades which give lie to the brotherly
love and the 'sublimations' of the conscious mind." Ibid., p. 115.
26. Cf. J u n g , CW IX, 2, p. 46 ft., par. 80, 81.
27. N e u m a n n , op. cit., pp. 140-141.
28. Ibid., p. 117.
29. J u n g , CW, XI, p. 196, par. 290.
30. '~Happy fault," said of Adam's sin. From the Roman Missal, Holy Saturday Rite. The full text
runs: O felix culpa, quae talem ac tantum meruit habere redemptorem! 0 happy fault which
merited so great and glorious a redeemer!
31. J u n g , CW, XII, pp. 29-30, par. 36.
32. Frey-Rohn, op. cit., p. 197.
33. Serrano, M., C. G. Jung and Herman Hesse: A Record of Two Friendships. New York,
Schocken Books, 1966, p. 50.
34. J u n g , CW, X, p. 463, par. 872.
35. Ibid., p. 464, par. 875.
36. N e u m a n n , op. cit., pp. 126-127.
37. Ibid., pp. 146-147.
38. J u n g , The Undiscovered Self, op. cit., p. 107. J u n g has not clearly defined w h a t this collective
figure m i g h t be, viz., how far the shadow is really a collective phenomenon and how far
personal. Cf., Storr, A., C. G. Jung. New York, Viking Press, 1973, p. 52 ft. He writes: "We
are no longer aware t h a t in carnival customs and the like there are r e m n a n t s of a collective
shadow figure which prove t h a t a personal shadow is in part descended from a n u m i n o u s
collective figure. This collective figure gradually breaks up under the impact of civilization,
leaving traces in folklore which are difficult to recognize." Four Archetypes, op. cit., p. 136,
par. 457.
39. - - , CW, X, p. 216, par. 442.
40. - - , Memories, Dreams, Reflections, op. cit., pp. 60, 68.
41. Cf. Frey-Rohn, op. cit., pp. 180, 181.
42. Ibid., p. 191.
43. Jung, Four Archetypes, op. cit., p. 37, par. 189.
44. Cf. ibid., p. 143, par. 472.
45. , CW, XII, p. 13, par. 14.
46. Kluger, R. S., Satan in the Old Testament. Evanston, Illinois, Northwestern University
Press, 1967, p. 5.
47. Ibid., p. 113.
48. Ibid., p. 123.
49. Ibid., pp. 130-131.
50. Ibid., p. 132. J u n g repudiates the traditional definition of evil as privatio boni (cf. Summa
Theologica, I, 49.1) and m a i n t a i n s t h a t this conception of evil as ~privation" is false to the
empirical facts and psychologically harmful. It produces Luciferian v a n i t y in man, who
cannot help imagining himself as a great destroyer capable of devastating God's creation.
"Evil is-psychologically s p e a k i n g - t e r r i b l y real. It is a fatal mistake to diminish its power
and reality even merely metaphysically . . . . Evil verily does not decrease by being hushed
up as a non-reality or a mere negligence of man. It was there before him, when he could not
possibly have a h a n d in it . . . . Good and evil are psychological relatives and as such quite
real, yet one does not know w h a t they are." C. G. Jung Letters, G. Adler, ed., in collaboration
with A. Jaffa, R. F. C. Hull, trans. Two vols. Bollingen Series XCV, vol. 2. Princeton,
Princeton University Press, 1975, p. 541. Victor White, who has criticized J u n g for leaving us
in the dark as to w h a t h e u n d e r s t a n d s by evil and how, intellectually, he would h a v e us
differentiate it from good, admits, on J u n g ' s behalf, t h a t the view of evil asprivatio boni is ~a
product of conscious reflection, of intellectual analysis, and not of immediate sense-experi-
ence." Soul and Psyche: An Enquiry into the Relationship of Psychotherapy and Religion.
New York, Harper, 1960, pp. 155-156. Even Aquinas recognizes t h a t to the unreflecting
consciousness, evil in the sense of privation is a certain kind of entity (Summa Theologica, I-
II, 36.1). But then, of course, J u n g means nothing more when he insists t h a t psychologically
we perceive and experience evil as a very positive reality. The problem of a metaphysical
dualism (which the early Christian theologians wanted to avoid at all costs) arises~nly when
good and evil, which are abstract categories, are confused with the concrete, or when it is
thought t h a t t h e r e are as clearly distinguishable entities in the n a t u r a l universe. According
to Jung, good and evil are principles of our e t h i c a l judgment. Like all opposites, they are
contained in the archetype of the self and thus are psychologically inseparable. For J u n g ' s
views, cf. de Laszlo, op. cit., pp. 39-60.
51. Watts, A. W., The TwoHands of God: The Myths of Polarity. New York, Collier Books, 1963,
pp. 17-18.
52. Jung, CW, XI, p. 196, par. 290.
53. Cf. , CW, IX, 2, p. 61, par. 113.
54. C. G. Jung Letters, op. cit., p. 154.
55. de Laszlo, op. cit., p. 40.
56. Ibid., p. 42. Cf. Origen, Contra Celsum, VI, 45 (P. G. Minge, vol. 11, col. 1367).
57. White, Soul and Psyche, op. cit., p. 148.
58. A medieval legend h a s it t h a t S a t a n (the dark god), filled with envy, wanted also to be
incarnated as a h u m a n being. As a n incubus, he impregnated a pious virgin without h e r
knowledge. This was the begetting of Merlin. However, since the mother was a pious woman,
Merlin did not become a n embodiment of evil. Later though, at the end of the millenium
allotted to the reign of Christ, S a t a n will succeed in being incarnated in the image of the
Antichrist and t h u s bring about the final catastrophe. Cf. von Franz, Marie-Louise, C. G.
Jung: His Myth in Our Time. New York, G. P. P u t n a m ' s Sons, 1975, pp. 162-163.
59. Jung, CW, XI, pp. 449-450, par. 729, 730, 731.
60. Ibid., p. 366, par. 561.
61. Ibid., p. 363, par. 559.
62. Ibid., p. 369 par. 567.
63. Ibid., p. 378, par. 587.
64. Ibid., p. 380, par. 591.
65. Ibid., p. 381, par. 595.
66. Ibid., p. 391, par. 617.
67. "The naive assumption t h a t the creator of the world is a conscious being m u s t be regarded as
a disastrous prejudice which later gave rise to the most incredible dislocations of logic. For
example, the nonsensical doctrine of t h e privatio boni would never have been necessary h a d
one not had to assume in advance t h a t it is impossible for the consciousness of a good God to
produce evil deeds. Divine unconsciousness and lack of reflection, on the other hand, enable
us to form a conception of God which puts his actions beyond moral j u d g m e n t and allows no
conflict to arise between goodness and beastliness." J u n g , CW, XI, p. 383, note.
68. ,CW, p. 372, par. 574.
The Image of the Devil in C. G. Jung~ s Psychology 221
69. Ibid., p. 396, par. 623.

70. Cf. Jaff4, A., The Myth of Meaning. New York, Penguin Books, 1975, p. 113.
71. Jung, CW, XI, p. 456, par. 740.
72. Ibid., p. 456, par. 740.
73. Ibid., p. 408, par. 647.
74. Ibid., p. 410, par. 650.
75. Jaff4, op. cit., pp. 114-115.
76. Jung, CW, XI, p. 399, par. 626.
77. Ibid., p. 399, par. 627.
78. Cf. White, op. cit., p. 149; Jaffd op. cit., p. 124.
79. Jung, CW, p. 433, par. 694.
80. Ibid., p. 455, par. 739.
81. Ibid:, p. 414, par. 657.
82. Ibid., p. 460, par. 746.
83. Ibid., p. 457, par. 742.
84. Sophia represents the principle of divine Eros, which had disappeared into unconsciousness,
and was replaced by the ideal of perfection. (Jung likes the term "God" in the phrase "the will
of God" to be understood in the sense intended by Diotima when she said, "Eros, dear
Socrates, is a mighty daemon.") She is closely associated with the Indian Shakti, the creative
energy of Brahman and the world-building Maya.
85. Jung, CW, pp. 438-439, par. 711.
86. Cf. ibid., p. 443, par. 716.
87. Cf. ibid., p. 454, par. 738.
88. Ibid., p. 458, par. 743.
89. Cf. ibid., p. 464, par. 752; C. G. Jung Letters, op. cit., p. 8.
90. Jung, CW, p. 464, par. 752.
91. Ibid., p. 465, par. 753; cf. p. 465 ff, par. 754.
92. Ibid., p. 465, par. 754. W. Pauli, a Nobel Prize physicist, has expressed a similar view by
stating that "the goal of overcoming the opposites in a synthesis embracing rational under-
standing as well as mystic experience of oneness is the explicit or tacit myth of our time."
Cited in Heisenberg's "Wolfgang Paulis philosophische Auffassungen." In Zeitschrift fi~r
Parapsychologie und Grenzgebiete der Psychologie, III: 2/3, p. 127. Jung's own research in
mythology and the symbolism of dreams has shown that the most important quality of the
mother archetype is its relation to the earth and to matter. Accordingly, "when a figure that
is conditioned by this archetype is represented as having been taken up into heaven, the
realm of the spirit, this indicates a union of earth and heaven, of the matter and spirit."
Jung, Four Archetypes, op. cit., p. 42, par. 195.
93. Ibid., p. 43, par. 197.
94. Cf. White, God and the Unconscious. London, Harvill Press, 1952, p. 75 ft.
95. Ulanov, A. B., The Feminine in Jungian Psychology and in Christian Theology. Evanston,
Illinois, Northwestern University Press, 1971, pp. 135-136.
96. C. G. Jung Letters, op. cit., vol. 1: 1906-1950, pp. 540-541.
97. Jung, CW, IX, 2, p. 34, par. 65. Theologically speaking, the problem of the "missing fourth" is
related to the question of creation and its fallenness. Jung felt that the traditional Christian
understanding of a male and perfect God is unable to account for any "need in God which
would give worth to creation, is incapable of taking the reality of evil seriously, and is
incapable of validating the feminine whose existence it denies in the deity." Dourley, J.,
"Carl Jung and Contemporary Theology," The Ecumenist, 1974,12 (6), 93. However, J u n g is
far from equating creation, evil, and the feminine. His thought seems to be more affined to an
emanationist (Platonic or neo-Plantonic, Bonaventurian, etc.) model that explains the
dialectic of creation in terms of the divine need for self-expression. Such formulations "offer
the possibility of a noncontradictory affirmation at the same time of the necessity and worth
of creation, of its universal fallenness, and of its ultimate h e a l i n g . . . "Ibid., p. 94.
98. The anthropological images that are used in the religious discourse are based on numinous
archetypes that are autonomous and possess an emotional nature. These archetypes of the
collective unconscious "precipitate complexes of ideas in the form of mythological motifs.
Ideas of this kind are never invented, but enter the field of inner perception as finished
products, for instance in dreams. They are spontaneous phenomena which are not subject to
our will, and we are therefore justified in ascribing to them a certain autonomy." Moreover,
"the tremendous effectiveness (mana) of these images is such that they not only give one the
feeling of pointing to the Ens realissimum, but make one convinced that they actually
express it and establish it as a fact. This makes discussion uncommonly difficult, if not
impossible." Jung, CW, XI, pp. 362-363, par. 557, 558. It should be clear, therefore, that Jung
does not equate God and the unconscious. "We cannot tell whether God and the unconscious
are two different entities. Both are borderline concepts for transcendental contents. But empiri-
cally it can be established, with a sufficient degree of probability, that t~ere is in the
unconscious an archetype of the wholeness which manifests itself spontaneously in dreams,
etc. Consequently, i~ does not seem improbable that the archetype of wholeness occupies such
a central position which approximates it to the God-image . . . . Strictly speaking, the God-
image does not coincide with the unconscious as such, but with a special content of it, namely
the archetype of the self. It is this archetype from which we can no longer distinguish the
God-image empirically." Jung, CW, XI, pp. 468-469, par. 757.
99. Cf. White, Soul and Psyche, op. cit., Appendix V, ~'Jung on Job," p. 237; von Franz, op. cit.,
pp. 168, 171.
100. Jung, The Symbolism of the Spirit: The Spirit Mercurius, CW, XIII, cited by Neumann, op.
cit., p. 138.
101. Adler, op. cit., p. 206.
102. Ibid., p. 206.
103. Watts, op. cit., p. 38.
Correction
A letter from the Rev. Robert J. Carlson, Director of Pastoral Services at Prairie View,
Newton, Kansas, informs us t h a t the s t a t e m e n t made in our obituary note about the Rev.
George Christian Anderson, D.D.,* t h a t Dr. Anderson was the first clergyman to be
awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the A m e r i c a n Psychiatric Association is incorrect.
The late Rev. Ernest E. Bruder, D.D., Director of Protestant Chaplain Activities of St.
Elizabeths Hospital, Washington D.C., received t h a t honor in 1973. We regret the error.
- The E d i t o r
* '~George Christian Anderson: 1907-1976," Journal of Religion and Health, 1977, 16, 75-76.

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Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 16, No.

The Image of the Devil in

It is important to realize that the shadow is not necessarily nefarious or

The main difficulty in recognizing the shadow is that it is bound up with

Individuation of the shadow. As long as a man projects his shadow onto a

In the J u n g i a n framework to accept evil is to allow the tendencies bound up

the principle of separateness and autonomy over against God-which is personified in

According to J u n g , we m u s t l e a r n to live w i t h our sin (not in sin), viz., to

As I noted earlier, t h e J u n g i a n i n d i v i d u a t i o n process h a s two s e p a r a t e phases.

If a person is successful in detaching himself from identification with specific opposites,

Yahweh of the Old Testament is a creator G o d - a n overpowering, numinous

A n s w e r to J o b . J u n g ' s ~'Answer to Job" is his personal a n d religious testa-

The transformation of the relation of man to God, or ego-consciousness to self, is

Jung's repudiation of the traditional definition of evil as a '~privation of good"

Jung thinks that there must be a continual misunderstanding between the

References and notes

69. Ibid., p. 396, par. 623.

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