God and the Unconscious

By Victor White, O.P. | Foreword by C. G. Jung

One may easily say of C. G. Jung, Victor White, O.P., once commented, “that he is on the side of God even when he seems to mock at him.” Indeed, this remark underscores the very raison d’être of God and the Unconscious. Jung speaks, however unintentionally at times, a word that can rouse modern man, challenging his default, unconscious mode of immanent self-sufficiency. This challenge is necessary, and urgently so, for “man fools himself when he thinks he has outgrown religion and has no need of God.”

White addresses such topics—among others—as “The Twilight of the Gods” and “The Dying God”; the complex triads of “Freud, Jung, and God” and “Aristotle, Aquinas, and Man”; and the common mythic grounds of religion, especially in “Revelation and the Unconscious.” With its twelve essays, as well as the intriguing Foreword by Jung and the informative Appendix by Gebhard Frei, God and the Unconscious is a fascinating chronicle of the tumultuous relationship between theology and psychology at the midpoint of the twentieth century.

Victor White, O.P., (1902–1960) was an English Dominican friar, Reader in Theology at Blackfriars, Oxford, foundation member and lecturer at the Jung Institute of Analytical Psychology, and editor of the journal Dominican Studies. His writings, in addition to God and the Unconscious, include God and the Unknown and Soul and Psyche as well as many articles on matters both theological and psychological.

Paperback: 342pp.

ISBN: 978-1952826702