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The Shadow of Organized Religions
January 21, 1989 @ 9:30 am - 4:30 pm PST
Throughout the centuries what Jung has called “the religious function” in humankind has been either nurtured or warped by religious institutions. We can see two extremes of this nurturing-or-warping effect in our own time by a comparison of the work and words of, for example, a Mother Theresa versus an Ayatollah Khomeini.
Centering his lecture on the experience rendered in the film, “The Hmong Shaman in America”, Dr. Lavin will discuss the warping effect-those neurotic attitudes and behaviors which can result from a maladaptive and collective approach to the religious function in all of us. Particular attention will be given to Jung’s theory of typology in understanding how the institutionalization of the religious function can lead a person to behave in an unbalanced way.
For many, religions can be a path to health and wholeness; but for some persons religion can become an internalized living hell.
Related Lecture: Artemis and Aphrodite Need Not Apply: Christianity’s Repression of The Archetypal Feminine Geniuses
THOMAS PATRICK LAVIN, PH.D., holds three awards from the United States Army for his work in drug and rehabilitation in Germany and in this country. In addition to his Ph.D. degrees in both Clinical Psychology and in Moral Theology from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, he is a diplomate of the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich. A Senior Analyst and Faculty member of the C.G. Jung Institute, Chicago, Dr. Lavin is in private practice in Wilmette, Illinois.