Vicarius Animae: Speculative I-statement in Jungian Psychotherapy

Within the vast corpus of the works of C.G. Jung is a paper titled, "Psychotherapists or the Clergy." Apropos of the case Jung makes in that text with respect to what therapists to their betterment have learnt from their colleagues in the clergy, the term that provides the title for this essay-Vicarius Animae-is a designation intended to highlight the soul-mediating, truth-discerning function of the psychotherapist by means of an allusion to the vicarius role that priests have traditionally had within the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches as pastoral facilitators of the cure of souls, and Popes as the representatives of Christ on this earth. Whereas, formerly, throughout the aeons in which these religions held sway, soul (in the sense of the logic of human being-in-the world) had had the form of God, its mediator the form of priest, in our day, post mortem dei, soul has come to have the form of psychological phenomena, its mediator the form of analyst and psychotherapist. In keeping with this, the meaning of the term "Speculative" in the subtitle of this volume is roughly analogous to the meaning that "speculation" and "speculative" had formerly had within the tradition of the Speculative Philosophy to which Hegel belonged. Though Jung, as is well-known, had repeatedly expressed antipathy toward Hegel, even dubbing him on one occasion a "psychologist manqu?" subsequent Jungian scholarship has clearly shown that the contributions Hegel made to the speculative philosophy of his day fit hand-in-glove with Jung's great insight into psychology's lack of a vantage point outside the psyche to view in from objectively. In this essay, implications for Jungian psychotherapy of this complementarity are explored by means of a focus upon occasions in which, interpreting boldly, the analytic psychotherapist is inspired to give interpretive utterance to the soul situation of the patient by saying "I ..." on his or her behalf. Such "vicarius I-statements," as these may also be called, are not concocted by the therapist. Neither are they given out by him or her as a matter of technique. When authentic, they rather have phenomenon character and are the spontaneous expression in "the form of subject" of what Jung variously referred to as "the coming to consciousness of the psychic process," "the soul's speaking about itself," and "interpretation from above ..."