The figure of Jesus or rather his interpretation is one of the Christian dogmas which, instead of developing its promising psychological potential, has become an obstacle in the authentic relationship to the unconscious: Jesus, the alleged savior, conceals before his believers that his inner conflicts (“sins”) have psychological origin and thus oversimplifying the significance of the unconscious. GodFather as presented in Christianity does not fulfil his symbolic potential either, because his function is only to ensure that man did not need to sacrifice the security of a child dependence. While Jung understands the term God psychologically as a part of the mind unknown to us, the Western theology objectified God to such an extent that he became Totally Other and hence he cannot by any means, descend to our soul. Moreover, the result is that an imitation of Jesus also loses its power and claim for a following of ideal of man’s life (CW 12 1944). As “for it is not a question of an imitation that leaves a man unchanged and makes him into a mere artifact, but of realizing the ideal on one’s own account – Deo concedente – in one’s own individual life” (CW 12 1944, 7). Psychological science must, according to Jung, battle the infantilization of believers. Only a barbarian man needs God who assigns tasks and is an external judge of good and evil. Jung asserts that God must be withdrawn from objects and brought to the Soul [12]. Unless the Church [13] accommodates to this need arriving with the development of modern consciousness, they will no longer be able to grant refuge to a thinking man. Psychology picks up the baton where the Church after two millennia run out of steam. It helps man to cope with unconscious and its “spiritual” archetypal images. By doing so it does not accomplish destruction of religion, quite the opposite. It unties the hands of religion: “It opens people’s eyes to the real meaning of dogmas, and far from destroying, it throws open an empty house to new inhabitants.“ (CW 12 1944, 12). Apparently, Jung deems psychology an essential complement to religion for every believer. The role of psychology is to shed light on a psychological origin of dogmas that claim absoluteness and by doing so to instigate a thinking man: “[T]he archetypes of the unconscious can be shown empirically to be the equivalents of religious dogmas“ (CW 12 1944, 17). In spite of that psychology cannot fully substitute for religion, as well as functions of reason cannot fully psychologically suppress the function of religion: “Every extension and intensification of rational consciousness, however, leads us further away from the sources of symbols and, by its ascendency, prevents us from understanding them. (...) But if we understand these things for what they are, as symbols, then we can only marvel at the unfathomable wisdom that is in them and be grateful to the institutions which has not only conserved them but developed them dogmatically.“ (CW 11 1948, 199). Jung relatively specifically diagnoses two fundamental hazards of faith: the first, mentioned above, is a projection of the God-archetype fully on external object, the second one, on the other hand, is a projection of the God-archetype on himself. Both of these extremes have concrete consequences: in the first case, the God-archetype does not have consciousness within his reach and remains in his primitive, unconscious state. In the se58 Ivana Ryška Vajdová
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