THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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CHAPTER ELEVEN
e.G. JUNG AND THE CONTRIBUTION OF ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY
TO A THEORY OF DEMONIC PHENOMENA
Introduction
C. G. Jung has arguably influenced contemporary psychological understanding of
comparative religion more than any other author (Wulff, 1991). This may be ascribed
to his conviction that religion is "incontestably one of the earliest and most universal
expressions of the human mind" (1940a, p. 5), and hence cannot be disregarded in the
pursuit of psychological understanding. If Freud was the self-professed "Godless
Jew", intent on debunking religious superstition, Jung was the spiritual gentile who
granted religious experience a privileged status in his psychology. Jung's interest in
religion extended to include occult phenomena, and his medical school thesis was
devoted to a case study of apparent spirit possession (1902). It is Jung's thoughts on
possession that establishes his importance for this dissertation, and which justifies a
separate chapter devoted to analytical psychology. As was the case with all the
psychoanalytic theorists discussed in the previous four chapters, Jung did not write
about demonic possession in any detail. A Jungian theory ofvoluntary and involuntary
possession must therefore be constructed from the largely metaphorical use to which
he puts the concept in his theory of psychopathology. Jung's extensive writing on
general religious experience requires some discussion before his theory is applied to
demonic phenomena. This chapter therefore begins by examining Jung's definition of
religious experience, and then proceeds to chart the evolution of his psychology of
religion, from the early period where there is little to distinguish it from Freud's
formulations, to the later stages where individuation is inextricably linked to
spirituality. The third section considers Jung's perception of the spiritual
transformations that have occurred in Western history, and the psychological
significance of these changes. Section four is devoted to a brief discussion of two
central concepts in analytical psychology, archetypes and complexes, and the role that
these play in both religious awareness and psychopathology. Section five will employ
the Jungian theory of autonomous complexes to formulate an analytical theory of
demonic possession states and satanic involvement. The last section will focus on