Contemporary Jungian approaches to spiritually oriented psychotherapy.

Abstract

In antiquity, these powers and principles of the transpersonal levels of the psyche were personified and given the names of gods and goddesses. Today they are thought of as a priori fields or patterns of information that are not dependent on any learned or environmental factors. These organizing principles correspond to the traditional notion of spirit, an unseen world that radically affects human life. To the extent that we take into account the psyche's spiritual potentials, depth psychology and spirituality are two approaches to the same phenomena.

Spiritual transformation after near-death experiences.

“…In recent years, spiritually sensitive techniques have been incorporated into a variety of therapeutic systems, including psychoanalysis (Rizzuto, 2005), Jungian psychotherapy (Corbett & Stein, 2005), cognitive–behavioral therapy (Tan & Johnson, 2005), interpersonal psychotherapy (Miller, 2005), and humanistic psychotherapy (Elkins, 2005). Specific spiritual interventions and techniques have been elaborated that can be incorporated into a variety of systems (Aten & Leach, 2009; Cashwell & Young, 2011; Richards & Bergin, 2005; Sperry & Shafranske, 2005).…”

Jung's approach to spirituality and religion.

“…Both of these participate in the structures of the personality, including its psychopathology. These levels of the psyche are inextricably interwoven, and because they always work in tandem, the practice of Jungian psychotherapy is an intrinsically spiritual pursuit (Corbett, 2011b;Corbett & Stein, 2005). Because Jung did not categorically separate psyche and spirit, one cannot definitively state either that Jungian psychotherapy is a spiritual approach with psychological aspects or a psychological approach with a spiritual coloring; his psychology and his spirituality were synonymous.…”

Psychotherapy as Search and Care for the Soul / Psychotherapie als Suche nach der Seele und Fürsorge für die Seele / Psicoterapia como búsqueda y cuidado para el alma / La psychothérapie comme recherche et soin de l'âme / A psicoterapia como procura e cuidado pela alma /

“…(Schillings, 2008) In the language of the Jungians, this is about an archetype. The archetype is the capacity to form an image, not the image itself; it is a potential with contents that are not given until they are filled in with lived experience (Corbett & Stein, 2005). For example, the Great Mother archetype, or the feminine aspect of the divine, is a transpersonal principle found in all mythologies and religious traditions.…”

“…Through the centuries, people have named the subtle experience of self-transcendence with such diverse terms as the true self, source of life, higher consciousness, consciousness of unity, non-local consciousness, selfless self, Buddha, Tao, and so on. Sometimes people use a capital letter "S" to distinguish the experience of the Self from the everyday sense of the self as a person (Corbett & Stein, 2005).…”