Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung hunting in Africa 1909.

                                         Freud and Jung playing billiards, 1908


Carl Gustav Jung worked closely with Sigmund Freud between 1907 and 1912. The careers of both Jung and Freud produced many of the paramount theories and analysis techniques still used in the field of psychology today. While many of the two men’s theories coincided very well, the few they actually disagreed upon had poignancy greater than the consistencies combined. Jung agreed with Freud's model of the unconscious, as Jung called the personal unconscious, but he also proposed the existence of a second, far deeper form of the unconscious, which underlies the personal one. This was the collective unconscious, where the archetypes themselves resided: archetypes which house our connectedness with God. Freud, on the other hand, dismissed Jung’s interest in religion and myths as being ‘unscientific.’

Yet, as Jung began to break through the shadow cast by Freud after they parted ways, he shows the motivation behind his research is coming from a very different place than Freud’s. Here are some quotes I believe illustrate these deviations well:


“Were it not a fact of experience that supreme values reside in the soul, psychology would not interest me in the least, for the soul would then be nothing but a miserable vapor.”
- Carl Jung


“Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.”
- Sigmund Freud


So Jung is interested in answering the mysteries of the “supreme value” of the soul, which he later goes on to describe as God’s spirit within us. In many articles Jung defends this as his motivation behind all his research and discovery and why he is interested in the subconscious in the first place. Jung says there is no Psychology without God.

Still, Freud stands contrary, slating God as a happy accident. He says that, in our minds we have constructed God out of an innate need to have a strong father figure guide us. Freud defends this view as evolutionarily driven and sexually maintained. Freud says there is no God without Psychology.

Shifting gears a bit, I want to use what we just learned about Jung and Freud’s motivations to formulate their arguments on a specific and unique neurobiological phenomenon: Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. But first: a little background.

There are no good statistics on the amount of people with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE) or who can have it. Temporal lobe seizures usually begin in the deeper portions of the brain's temporal lobe. This area is part of the limbic system, which controls emotions and memory. During a seizure, some individuals with TLE experience some pretty wild things. Sometimes the seizures are so mild that the person barely notices. In other cases, the person may be consumed with fright, intellectual fascination, or even pleasure.

While the features of seizures beginning in the temporal lobe can be extremely varied, certain patterns are common. There may be a mixture of different feelings, emotions, thoughts, and experiences, which may be familiar or completely foreign. In some cases, a series of old memories resurfaces. In others, the person may feel as if everything—including home and family—appears strange. Hallucinations of voices, music, people, smells, or tastes may occur. These features are called “auras” or “warnings.” They may last for just a few seconds, or may continue as long as a minute or two. But in extreme cases, patients claim to experience deep and fulfilling religious feelings. The weirdest part, some of these people who experience this aren’t even religious themselves. Various spiritually related phenomena triggered by the seizures originating in the temporal lobe are actually common, within the relatively small group of people who have TLE.

If you wish to delve further into TLE or verify the mystery for yourself, check out these relevant scholarly articles:

RELIGIOUS AND MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES AS ARTIFACTS OF TEMPORAL LOBE FUNCTION: A GENERAL HYPOTHESIS


Sudden Religious Conversions in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

The Neural Substrates of Religious Experience

So, how does Freud explain this phenomenon? And Jung? Well sadly, TLE hadn’t been recognized as a distinct condition until the 1940’s, so there is little if anything to connect the two men to TLE directly. But if we take the motivations we already talked about along with other liberties of well known biographies of the men, we may be able to speak for Freud and Jung on the mysteries of TLE.

Let us begin with Freud. Sigmund Freud’s theories were steeped heavily in recessed sexual motivations. He thought that any behavior, subconscious or conscious, could be traced back to some sort of erotic desire. Freud believed religion to be a neurosis; something to be cured. But he also said religious feelings can be connected to our innate need to be connected with a father figure. In Freud’s time, TLE would have been classified as “Hysteria”, which is a classification once given to schizophrenia, dementia, and the effects of LSD. Needless to say, neurology at Freud’s time was blossoming at best. There was little actually known about the subconscious, and even less about its many manifestations. Yet that didn’t stop Freud from formulating grand theories of the inner workings of the brain, and developing many theories that are fundamental to modern psychology.

Freud’s Moses and Monotheism has him writing:

"Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. [...] If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man's evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity." 

It becomes pretty clear that Freud believes mentally healthy individuals, simply by definition, cannot be religious. That we as “civilized individuals” must get past the illness of religious desire to fully mature. So how then, would Freud view the religious experience of TLE seizures? My guess is he would argue that any manifestations related to the stimulation of the brain’s temporal lobes are to be seen as delusions of a hysterical condition. Freud would say that a religious manifestation of this kind would be related to a guilt complex; the patient looking to a father for forgiveness in their subconscious.

Jung was a bit younger than Freud, but let us assume they are working within the same professional atmosphere, as far as what is known about neurology. Jung says:

“Since the stars have fallen from heaven and our highest symbols have paled, a secret life holds sway in the unconscious. That is why we have a psychology today, and why we speak of the unconscious. All this would be quite superfluous in an age or culture that possessed symbols."


So Jung is saying that spiritual connectedness, at one point in history, could be gained easily from an external source, like the stars. But now that we know what stars actually are, we are no longer able to receive external connectedness and must look inward; to the subconscious. He equates the modern psychologist with the priests and shamans of old, considering all three to be students of the mysteries of existence.

Then, how about Jung and TLE? First of all, I would doubt Jung would have the arrogance to dismiss TLE as anything less than an affliction. So, in this, I imagine he and Freud agree. But, I would venture to say that Jung would consider a seizure that provided a religious experience to be a rare glimpse into a lost connectedness with God. Since Jung considered the collective unconscious to literally contain knowledge known by our ancestors, he would see this manifestation as wildly relevant to not only psychology but the collective search for truth. In other words, Jung would not be as concerned with the affliction as he is with the manifestation.

Many patients with TLE consider their visions during seizures to be gifts from God. Reading their testimonies, I tend to agree. When an event causes someone to look deeper into himself to find meaning outside himself, that is maturation. By that logic, Freud viewing these events as immature delusions seems infantile.

Jung is often critiqued by religious thinkers for his poor theology and perennial philosophy. They are often correct, but they can also miss the main point. Jung was clear that his analytical psychology was not a new religion, neither was he a guru. "Psychology is concerned with the act of seeing and not with the construction of new religious truths," he wrote. Make no mistake however; Jung was deeply invested in THE search for truth.

What can we learn from this debate? Well first, that interpretation is the great intellectual scale. Without it, we couldn’t challenge each other to discover as much as we have about the world around us. Second, the feeling of spiritual connectedness can be interpreted as delusion or reality. Nevertheless, what I gather most from this discussion; is that God is reaching out. God is calling out to his people, maybe in ways that seem foreign or unnecessary to us, but where we look- He can be found, and who are we to tell Him how.