Jung and Steiner: The Birth of a New Psychology

By Gerhard Wehr

A series of extraordinary questions begin to hover when we consider C.G. Jung and Rudolf Steiner together.

What is the relationship between their views of psychology?
How can we compare their views on evil, East and West, life after death, technology, clairvoyance, the Christ, alchemy, spiritual practice?
Is Jung's individuation process the same as Steiner's development of individuality?
How does the Jung's Self relate to Steiner's "I"?

To answer these questions, Gerhard Wehr--an anthroposophist and Jung biographer, as well as author of books on the Western spiritual tradition--visualizes Jung and Steiner and the essential elements of their thinking together. This opens us to new insights and forms a basis for a spiritual psychology that integrates both approaches.

Wehr's skilled and articulate understanding of Jung and Steiner takes us into many themes. He clarifies the difference between soul consciousness and spiritual consciousness. He shows how meditation relates to the image work of the soul; and he compares the soul and spiritual views of sexuality.

The author also considers the Grail stream as a way of uniting Jung and Steiner. He discusses the significance of a therapeutic perspective large enough to address the cultural problems of our time. By approaching two such important worldviews with depth, they are enlarged, strengthened, and revitalized. If taken to heart, this work can free both spiritual science of Steiner and the analytic psychology of Jung from the dangers of dogmatism.

This work marks a significant step toward genuine spiritual psychology.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0880104961
• ISBN13: 9780880104968
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Steiner Books
• Length: 340 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Sound explorations

This is an intelligent, comparative exploration of the work of Rudolf Steiner and Carl Jung, written by a follower of the first and a biographer of the second. Both were explorers of 'consciousness' and though they both had scientific trainings, they yielded towards the revelatory and the religious in their ultimate views about what it means to be a human being. The territory they traversed in doing so had many parallels, assessed and compared by Wehr, in ways that are mostly helpful, and sometimes illuminating.