Quadrant: The Journal of the C.G. Jung Foundation

From the Editor — Kathryn Madden

We live in challenging times. Challenging for all persons. Every day the news media serve up more and more atrocities, inhumanities committed in the name of God. During another time of collective trouble, Carl Jung observed that all psychological problems are basically religious problems, or problems of meaning. Religion can unite and religion can divide. We in this country — especially in New York City — but equally in other countries and continents — are all too aware of what can come from religion that divides. But how are we to respond?
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Terrorism and the Dark Side of Religion — William J. Ventimiglia

Keywords: fundamentalism, dark side, terrorism, psyche, ego, consciousness, doubt

The author examines the rise of Middle Eastern religious fundamentalism favoring a theocratic social order and its inevitable clash with secular, post-modern and materially-oriented western civilization. Jung's view that the psyche is a “self-regulating system” that unconsciously compensates for “any one-sidedness” is presented as an aid to understanding the contemporary phenomenon of religious terrorism. The terrorist's sacred rage dissolves his conscious individuality in a “negative alchemical solutio” and transforms him into a “new collective being.”

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Jung and the Neo-Pagan Movement — David Waldron and Sharn Waldron

Keywords: neo-Pagan, witchcraft, New Age, ritual, Goddess, Jung, mythology

Neo-Paganism, one of the fastest-growing religious movements in the world today, has undergone a series of profound transformations in structure, belief, and symbolism over the past 50 years. One of the most significant is the appropriation of Jungian analytical psychology by broad sectors of the neo-Pagan movement and by some of its most eloquent proponents, such as Margot Adler, Miriam Simos, and Vivianne Crowley. However, the application of Jungian methodology as a means of legitimating religious belief is not as simple or unambiguous as neo-Pagan writers and conversely, critics of Jung such as Richard Noll, would attest. This paper explores the appropriation of Jungian theory by sectors of the neo-Pagan movement. It also examines the neo-Pagan movement's rather ambivalent relationship with Jung's interpretation of the human psyche within the broader context of western modernity.

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Wa'ce waki'ya! Consciousness and the Spirit-Relational Self in Lakota Sioux Philosophy: Interconnections with Analytic Thought — Richard W. Voss, Albert White Hat, Sr., and Margaret Lunderman

This article examines key concepts of Jungian analytic thought from a distinctive traditional Lakota (Sioux) perspective. The authors discuss precautions in attempting to relate traditional indigenous thought to a non-Indian context, the systematic suppression of Indian cultural practices in America, and explore an indigenous (Lakota Sioux) understanding of the person that is ontologically relational, not only to other human beings, but to the natural world as well. Traditional Lakota terms are examined in relation to aspects of C. G. Jung's topology of the psyche. The authors conclude that the traditional Lakota understanding of the spirit-relational self has much to contribute to analytic thought from a distinctively indigenous American (Lakota) perspective.

Earth and Reveries of Will — Dennis Patrick Slattery, reviewer

Book by Gaston Bachelard. Translated by Kenneth Haltman. Foreword by Joanne H. Stroud. Part of a Series, The Bachelard Translations, published by The Dallas Institute Publications, 2002. 399 pages. $30.00 paper.

Book Reviews — Matthew J. Greco, Book Review Editor

Jung a Biography — Deirdre Bair. Little, Brown & Co. Reviewed by Matthew Greco.
Jung and the Making of Modern Psychology: The Dream of a Science — Sonu Shamdasani. Cambridge University Press. Reviewed by Morgan Stebbins.
Jung & Steiner: The Birth of a New Psychology — Gerhard Wehr. Reviewed by Judith Miller, Ph.D.

Building the House of Consciousness — Robin van Löben Sels

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