The religious attitude occupies a distinctive and contested position within the depth-psychological corpus. Jung furnishes the foundational formulation: religion designates ‘the attitude peculiar to a consciousness which has been changed by experience of the numinosum,’ sharply distinguishing lived psychic openness from institutionalized creed. This definition reverberates across the literature in varied registers. Von Franz extends the concept anthropologically, contrasting the ‘religious and primitive attitude’ — one of perpetual attentiveness to invisible powers governing life — with the rationalized dismissiveness of modern Western consciousness. Moore, reading Ficino through Jung’s Terry Lectures, treats the religious attitude as an inner psychic posture, personified by the figure of the priest, through which the soul establishes genuine connection with its own images. Beebe places the religious attitude in typological relationship to introverted sensation, suggesting it constitutes one of several culturally determinative stances the psyche can adopt. Hoeller, surveying the Gnostic resonances in Jung, insists the religious attitude is not one of belief but of experience — a turn toward the integrating realities that consciousness habitually overlooks. Pargament, approaching from empirical psychology of religion, translates the concept into measurable orientations (intrinsic, extrinsic, quest), mapping its consequences for coping, health, and meaning-making. The central tension throughout is between the attitude as spontaneous psychic opening versus as socially conditioned orientation — and whether its transformative power inheres in experience itself or in the frameworks through which experience is appropriated.
the term ‘religion’ designates the attitude peculiar to a consciousness which has been changed by experience of the numinosum.
Jung furnishes the canonical depth-psychological definition of the religious attitude as a transformed consciousness shaped by numinous experience, explicitly distinguishing it from creedal adherence.
, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958thesis
The religious and primitive attitude involves constant consideration of these powers.
Von Franz identifies the religious attitude with an ongoing, practical attentiveness to invisible forces governing life, illustrated through the dream-consultation practices Jung witnessed in Africa.
, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology, 1980thesis
Since neurosis is a problem of attitude, and the attitude is dependent on or grounded in certain ‘dominants,’ that is, the ultimate and highest ideas and principles, the problem of attitude can be called a religious one.
Von Franz argues that neurosis is fundamentally a religious problem because the attitude underlying psychological disturbance is always anchored in ultimate principles, which are the proper domain of religion.
, Psychotherapy, 1993thesis
the priest is also a personification of an inner attitude. Through this inner image of the priest we are prepared imaginatively to grasp the sacredness and mystery of ordinary life.
Moore, drawing on Ficino and Jung’s Terry Lectures, defines the religious attitude as an inner imaginal posture — personified by the priest archetype — that enables the soul to register the sacred dimension of lived experience.
, The Planets Within: The Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino, 1990thesis
the priest is also a personification of an inner attitude. Through this inner image of the priest we are prepared imaginatively to grasp the sacredness and mystery of ordinary life.
An earlier edition of Moore’s argument, identical in substance, locating the religious attitude in the interior figure of the priest as mediator between soul and the sacred.
, The Planets Within: The Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino, 1982thesis
Jung said in essence that human beings have a religious need, but that this need is not for religious belief but rather for religious experience. Religious experience is a psychic event which tends toward the integration of the soul.
Hoeller distills Jung’s Gnostic orientation: the religious attitude is defined by experiential openness to integrating psychic realities, not by adherence to doctrinal content.
, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982supporting
the first to investigate how the unconscious of Protestants behaves when it has to compensate an intensely religious attitude.
Jung notes the compensatory relationship between a consciously held religious attitude and the counter-movements of the unconscious, suggesting that intensity of religious attitude provokes psychic counterbalancing.
, Collected Works Volume 18: The Symbolic Life, 1976supporting
sensation, introverted … and religious attitude 102–3
Beebe’s index entry establishes a typological linkage between introverted sensation and the religious attitude, situating it within a broader map of culturally determinative psychological stances.
, Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type: The Reservoir of Consciousness, 2017supporting
the human way of overcoming affect by wit and intelligence is here combined with the Christian religious attitude, the Christian Weltanschauung.
Von Franz reads the fairy-tale tailor as an embodiment of the Christian religious attitude — one in which pious trust in divine assistance is combined with practical intelligence.
, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales, 1974supporting
Religious orientation has been viewed variously as a personality variable, a motivational construct, an attitudinal dimension, or a cognitive style.
Pargament surveys empirical psychology’s contested constructions of religious orientation, noting that its multidimensional character resists reduction to any single conceptual category.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
The intrinsically oriented individual seeks God, faith, a better world, and unification in living. ‘Self-serving’ needs are transcended.
Pargament, following Allport, contrasts intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientations as distinct motivational stances, the former oriented toward transcendence, the latter toward self-serving ends.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
ethical and religious principles are not considered to be absolutes … moral decisions are not independent of their context, the situation at the moment.
Von Franz argues for a contextually responsive religious attitude modeled on Zen functioning, in which the living moment supersedes fixed doctrinal absolutes.
, Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales, 1997supporting
the basic attitude Jung found in William James and that so appealed to him … is a similar one he’d discovered first in adolescence when he studied Eckhart.
Peterson traces the genealogy of Jung’s own religious attitude through Meister Eckhart and William James, locating its roots in a shared disposition of radical openness to inner religious experience.
, The Shadow of a Figure of Light, 2024supporting
when one looks beyond the outwardly projected God-image, the ‘shape’ slinks back into the unconscious, and ‘[it] becomes an autonomous psychic complex.’
Peterson illustrates how the withdrawal of projected God-imagery transforms the religious attitude from an external orientation into an engagement with autonomous inner energies.
, The Shadow of a Figure of Light, 2024aside
an undifferentiated religion leaves the individual vulnerable to challenges … The undifferentiated religious system proves to be a burden in coping because it is incapable of generating an adequate repertoire of responses.
Pargament identifies undifferentiated religious orientation as a pathological variant of the religious attitude, one that fails coping demands by foreclosing psychological flexibility.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001aside
the Christian Church ritual had become a spiritless affair, a kind of mechanical magic … they become lifeless and repetitive affairs to which one attributes a magical effect.
Von Franz warns that institutional religious attitudes risk becoming defensive automatisms that protect against the unconscious rather than opening the psyche to genuine encounter.
, Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales, 1997aside