Jung and Assagioli in Religious Perspective

As representatives respectively of humanistic and transpersonal psychologies, Jung and Assagioli reflect orientations that are concerned with self-transcendence. This article examines whether they do justice to the kind of self-transcendence to which religion points. Each of their psychological positions on the structure of the psyche and the internal dynamism to become liberated from narrow and inhibiting standpoints is examined and related to certain aspects of a Christian perspective. Their analyses are found to be helpful in expanding conceptions of the self, but they tend to absorb religious values into their perspectives in such a way that they fail to give an adequate account of the full dimensions of the quest for self-transcendence.