Jung's Ethics: Moral Psychology and his Cure of Souls

Dan Merkur

May 2017 · Routledge

About this ebook

This volume presents the first organized study of Jung's ethics. Drawing on direct quotes from all of his collected works, interviews, and seminars, psychoanalyst and religious scholar Dan Merkur provides a compendium of Jung’s thoughts on various topics and themes that comprise his theoretical corpus—from the personal unconscious, repression, dreams, good and evil, and the shadow, to collective phenomena such as the archetypes, synchronicity, the psychoid, the paranormal, God, and the Self, as well as his contributions to clinical method and technique including active imagination, inner dialogue, and the process of individuation and consciousness expansion. The interconnecting thread in Merkur's approach to the subject matter is to read Jung’s work through an ethical lens.

What comes to light is how Merkur systematically portrays Jung as a moralist, but also as a complex thinker who situates the human being as an instinctual animal struggling with internal conflict and naturalized sin. Merkur exposes the tension and development in Jung’s thinking by exploring his innovative clinical-technical methods and experimentation, such as through active imagination, inner dialogue, and expressive therapies, hence underscoring unconscious creativity in dreaming, symbol formation, engaging the paranormal, and artistic productions leading to expansions of consciousness, which becomes a necessary part of individuation or the working through process in pursuit of self-actualization and wholeness. In the end, we are offered a unique presentation of Jung’s core theoretical and clinical ideas centering on an ethical fulcrum, whereby his moral psychology leads to a cure of souls.

Jung’s Ethics

will be of interest to academics, scholars, researchers, and practitioners in the fields of Jungian studies and analytical psychology, ethics, moral psychology, philosophy, religious studies, and mental health professionals focusing on the integration of humanities and psychoanalysis.

About the author

Dan Merkur, PhD was a psychoanalyst and religious studies scholar in private practice and a faculty member at the Toronto Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Living Institute. He was also a visiting scholar in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto and had taught religious studies at five universities in the United States and Canada prior to his clinical training. His principle publications are in various areas of psychoanalysis, the psychology of religion, and the history of religion. This is his fifteenth and final book.

Jon Mills, PsyD, PhD, ABPP

is a philosopher, psychoanalyst, and clinical psychologist. He is Professor of Psychology & Psychoanalysis at the Adler Graduate Professional School in Toronto and is the author of many works in philosophy, psychoanalysis, psychology, and religion including seventeen books. He runs a mental health corporation in Ontario, Canada.