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Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts #54
Transformation of the God-Image: An Elucidation of Jung's Answer to Job
Book by Edinger, Edward F.
- GenresPsychologyReligion
144 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1992
About the author
Edward F. Edinger
40 books209 followersEdward F. Edinger was a medical psychiatrist, Jungian analyst and American writer.
Edward F. Edinger Jr. was born on December 13, 1922, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, earning his Bachelor of Arts in chemistry at Indiana University Bloomington and his Doctor of Medicine at Yale School of Medicine in 1946. In November 1947, as a first lieutenant, he started a four-week Medical Field Service School at the Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, Texas. He became a military doctor in the United States Army Medical Corps and was in Panama. In New York in 1951, he began his analysis with Mary Esther Harding, who had been associated with C.G. Jung.
Edinger was a psychiatrist supervisor at Rockland State Hospital in Orangeburg, New York, and later founder member of the C.G. Jung Foundation in Manhattan and the CG Jung Institute in New York. He was president of the institute from 1968 until 1979, when he moved to Los Angeles. There he continued his practice for 19 years, becoming senior analyst at the CG Jung Institute of Los Angeles.
He died on July 17, 1998, at his home in Los Angeles at age 75, according to family members due to bladder cancer.
Edward F. Edinger Jr. was born on December 13, 1922, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, earning his Bachelor of Arts in chemistry at Indiana University Bloomington and his Doctor of Medicine at Yale School of Medicine in 1946. In November 1947, as a first lieutenant, he started a four-week Medical Field Service School at the Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, Texas. He became a military doctor in the United States Army Medical Corps and was in Panama. In New York in 1951, he began his analysis with Mary Esther Harding, who had been associated with C.G. Jung.
Edinger was a psychiatrist supervisor at Rockland State Hospital in Orangeburg, New York, and later founder member of the C.G. Jung Foundation in Manhattan and the CG Jung Institute in New York. He was president of the institute from 1968 until 1979, when he moved to Los Angeles. There he continued his practice for 19 years, becoming senior analyst at the CG Jung Institute of Los Angeles.
He died on July 17, 1998, at his home in Los Angeles at age 75, according to family members due to bladder cancer.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 7, 2021
Summary:
Sometimes, an individual is at the back of his own symptom, secretly inventing and supporting it. But such an implication would instantly paralyze his fighting spirit and demoralize him. It would be far better for him to think that his complex is due to an autonomous power directed against his conscious personality. For that collective unconscious, we could use the term “God”.
The unconscious is a part of Nature that our mind cannot comprehend. It can only sketch models. As far as the mind goes, if something does not reach consciousness then it does not exist.
In this book, the author makes the case that the unconscious has a dualistic nature which is consistently at odds with itself and therefore assumes an amoral character. The collective unconscious or God is not a split but an antinomy - a totality of inner opposites. He is everything in its totality - He is total justice and also its total opposite simultaneously. This is how He must be conceived, if one wishes to form a unified picture of His character.
The term “Self” is used by Jung to designate the transpersonal center and the totality of the psyche. It constitutes the greater, objective personality whereas the “Ego” is the lesser, subjective personality. Simply put, the “Ego” represents that which we know and the “Self” represents the greater unknown.
The twofold nature of the archetype has four chief features:
1. There is an encounter between the individual’s consciousness (Ego) and the universal collective unconsciousness (Self).
2. A wound or a suffering of the Ego results from the encounter.
3. The Ego perseveres in insisting upon scrutinizing the experience in search of its meaning. It will not give up in despair or cynicism but perseveres in the assumption that the experience is meaningful.
4. As a result, a divine revelation takes place by which the Ego is rewarded with the insight into the nature of the transpersonal psyche. It answers the Ego’s question in some form or another and brings acceptance.
This is essentially the message that is being conveyed in the Book of Job. Just as there is a tie between the wound and the weapon, so the effect corresponds to the deed that caused it. This means that our effects are the inner manifestations of God. The violence is meant to penetrate into man’s vitals and he has to succumb to its action. He must be affected by it otherwise its full effect will not reach him. But he should know or learn to know what has affected him and in this way he transforms the blindness of his violence.
When an individual has an encounter with the collective unconscious or Self. As hard and as uncomfortable as this new structure may be to assimilate into, that is exactly where he should want to find himself because that is the entrance to the Portal of Truth. Anything lesser will not suffice.
This is perhaps the greatest thing about Job, that when faced with this difficulty (the awareness that God can be unjust), he does not doubt the unity of God but clearly sees that God is at odds with Himself. So totally at odds, that he, Job, is quite certain in finding in God, an “advocate” against God.
The character of God or the collective unconscious thus revealed fits a personality who can only convince Himself that He exists through His relation to an object. Such dependence on the object is absolute when the subject is lacking in self-reflection and therefore has no insight into Himself. Simply put, the phenomenon of God is so complex that even God cannot understand Himself. So the author makes the case that God has a symbiotic relationship with Man. God created Man so that Man may serve the purpose of revealing God to Himself.
Man, because of this littleness, puniness and defenselessness against the Almighty, possesses a somewhat keener consciousness based on self reflection : he must, in order to survive, always be mindful of his impotence. The collective unconscious or God, on the other hand, has no need for circumspection. For nowhere does He come up against an insuperable obstacle that would force Him to hesitate and hence reflect on Himself.
What Jung is telling us is that the experience of weakness or defeat is necessary for consciousness. You cannot be a conscious Being unless you can experience weakness and defeat first hand. So in terms of Job and God it would mean that as Job’s consciousness of God’s nature or the nature of the collective unconscious grows, the latter is transformed.
With each encounter, what you thought you know becomes obsolete and what you know you know gets revised. So from a spiritual context, the concept of the Enlightened One does not exist. There is only the one seeking Enlightenment.
So here’s something to meditate on : your thoughts, your feelings, your passions, your dreams, they are not yours at all. You don't create them. They come from an unknown source and flow through us and as the reality of the psyche begins to dawn then the objective realization also dawns that these constituents of the psyche are not created by the Ego at all. The Ego just notices that they have arrived, so to speak.
Here’s an important idea, that whenever one finds himself in a state of conflict with someone else or with a situation, he should entertain the hypothesis that the psyche has propelled him into that situation in order to generate consciousness. That is an almost infallible law. If you entertain that hypothesis, you will find it confirmed almost every time.
The outer person or event that one is in conflict with is an exteriorization of an inner antagonist, and as one pays attention to that possibility, the outer conflict resolves itself because it has become internalized. Instead of asking the question Why is this happening to me? Ask, What is this situation trying to teach me about me?
In the Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud, we learn that dreams are usually the channel of communication between the psyche and the individual. The psyche is constantly broadcasting information that it deems important for the individual through relatable images or memories from the past that the individual sees in the form of dreams.
The author goes on to list the below five possible beliefs to the question : Why are bad things happening to me?
1. “I am being punished for my Sins”. This is called the Jeremiah Reaction.
2. “I am the victim of Satan, the Evil One, who is responsible”. This is the Dualistic or Manichean reaction. It sees the world as engaged in an endless conflict between Good and Evil and you are just a bystander caught in the cross-fire.
3. “This catastrophe is actually good for me in some higher way that I can't understand”. This is called the Apostle Paul reaction.
4. The fourth possibility is that suffering is caused by chance because there is no transpersonal agency in human affairs. “God does not exist and even if He does exist, he doesn't concern Himself with man”. This is the Secular Reaction. It doesn't offer much comfort but if you believe it, you can harden yourself and adopt a Stoic attitude.
5. The fifth possibility is the one that Jung discovered. Namely, “God is an antinomy who isn't quite conscious of what He is doing because of the sheer magnitude of His own complexity”. This is called the Job Reaction.
So as per the last possibility, the archetypes themselves cannot evolve into full consciousness without being routed through mortal ego to bring that consciousness into realization. This is what Jung is saying in effect, when he says that Job possesses something that even God does not have. If Job’s knowledge, his consciousness, attains a divine numinosity, that means he has become a partner in God's divinity.
Job is no more than the outward occasion for an inward process of dialectic in God. And so, the Ego is an outward occasion for an inward process of dialectic in the Self.
The Ego/Self relationship is very much along the lines of a marital relationship where one of the partners will more or less be contained within the other. The Ego, of course, is the smaller, simpler, contained entity and the Self is the container. As long as this situation prevails, a Job event will never happen because he will listen to his counsellors. The counsellors express the state of containment as they informed Job : “You are smaller than God, so you are the contained one, accept that situation”. It is because Job did not accept it, to some extent, he turned the tables on God and in one respect, for a moment at least, the Ego became the container and the Self the contained.
So in effect, one could make the case that “Whoever knows God, has an effect on Him”.
Another topic that I found particularly interesting is that of pre-existing patterns. The universe or reality itself is governed by strict rules. These rules force everything to fall into the mold of certain patterns. So even though the external manifestations may be different, the underlying substructure on top of which the physical world is built is the same throughout. This sharing of a common pattern is what allows us to use analogies. For example, we can use the analogy of a tree or the sky or the ocean etc. to explain something complex that is happening in life because the pattern on top of which a tree is built is the same as the pattern on top which a human is built as well. Jung emphasizes that even the collective unconscious or God has to have a pre-existing pattern and is Himself dependent on pre-existing patterns whenever he wants to create something.
One such pattern is that of creative forces. Our creative spirits can penetrate the depths and heights of the universe but on the account of that, an equivalent toll has to be paid. So for creation, the price is death. Archetypally, that is what is represented by the dismemberment of the Dionysos or the crucifixion of the Christ. (There is a price for playing God). This is evident even in our own experiences - in order to create something new in our lives we have to sacrifice something which is of equal value. So the question would be “How much of yourself are you willing to kill or burn off or dismember in the pursuit of something meaningful?”
By engendering insoluble conflicts, it brings man nearer to God. All opposites are of God, therefore man must bend to this burden; and in doing so, he finds that God in his “oppositeness” has taken possession of him and incarnated Himself in him. This needless to say, adds a whole level of understanding to the experience of conflict. In other words, the conflict between any two factions is a conflict within the God Image itself.
This is represented by the seal of Solomon or the Star of David ✡️. In alchemy, the downward pointing triangle signifies water and the upward pointing triangle signifies fire; and when you combine the two in the paradoxical union of fire and water, you get the seal of Solomon or the Star of David. That’s what we have here when we combine the sea of grace with the lake of fire. Jung is referring to this as the God Image.
Hence through constant encounters, the significance of man is thus greatly enhanced. The very process of encountering the collective unconscious drags one into it and one becomes a participant in the process. The status of remote observer is not possible in the encounter with the unconscious. You can’t see it as it really is unless you participate, and then by the bare fact of witnessing the nature of the unconscious, you change it and you are drawn into the divine drama that it is an expression of. Man’s relation to God probably has to undergo a certain important change : instead of propitiating praise for an unpredictable king or a child’s prayer to a loving father, the responsible living and the fulfilling of the divine will within us will be our form of worship of and commerce with God (prayer isn’t the words you utter, prayer is how you live your life).
Sometimes, an individual is at the back of his own symptom, secretly inventing and supporting it. But such an implication would instantly paralyze his fighting spirit and demoralize him. It would be far better for him to think that his complex is due to an autonomous power directed against his conscious personality. For that collective unconscious, we could use the term “God”.
The unconscious is a part of Nature that our mind cannot comprehend. It can only sketch models. As far as the mind goes, if something does not reach consciousness then it does not exist.
In this book, the author makes the case that the unconscious has a dualistic nature which is consistently at odds with itself and therefore assumes an amoral character. The collective unconscious or God is not a split but an antinomy - a totality of inner opposites. He is everything in its totality - He is total justice and also its total opposite simultaneously. This is how He must be conceived, if one wishes to form a unified picture of His character.
The term “Self” is used by Jung to designate the transpersonal center and the totality of the psyche. It constitutes the greater, objective personality whereas the “Ego” is the lesser, subjective personality. Simply put, the “Ego” represents that which we know and the “Self” represents the greater unknown.
The twofold nature of the archetype has four chief features:
1. There is an encounter between the individual’s consciousness (Ego) and the universal collective unconsciousness (Self).
2. A wound or a suffering of the Ego results from the encounter.
3. The Ego perseveres in insisting upon scrutinizing the experience in search of its meaning. It will not give up in despair or cynicism but perseveres in the assumption that the experience is meaningful.
4. As a result, a divine revelation takes place by which the Ego is rewarded with the insight into the nature of the transpersonal psyche. It answers the Ego’s question in some form or another and brings acceptance.
This is essentially the message that is being conveyed in the Book of Job. Just as there is a tie between the wound and the weapon, so the effect corresponds to the deed that caused it. This means that our effects are the inner manifestations of God. The violence is meant to penetrate into man’s vitals and he has to succumb to its action. He must be affected by it otherwise its full effect will not reach him. But he should know or learn to know what has affected him and in this way he transforms the blindness of his violence.
When an individual has an encounter with the collective unconscious or Self. As hard and as uncomfortable as this new structure may be to assimilate into, that is exactly where he should want to find himself because that is the entrance to the Portal of Truth. Anything lesser will not suffice.
This is perhaps the greatest thing about Job, that when faced with this difficulty (the awareness that God can be unjust), he does not doubt the unity of God but clearly sees that God is at odds with Himself. So totally at odds, that he, Job, is quite certain in finding in God, an “advocate” against God.
The character of God or the collective unconscious thus revealed fits a personality who can only convince Himself that He exists through His relation to an object. Such dependence on the object is absolute when the subject is lacking in self-reflection and therefore has no insight into Himself. Simply put, the phenomenon of God is so complex that even God cannot understand Himself. So the author makes the case that God has a symbiotic relationship with Man. God created Man so that Man may serve the purpose of revealing God to Himself.
Man, because of this littleness, puniness and defenselessness against the Almighty, possesses a somewhat keener consciousness based on self reflection : he must, in order to survive, always be mindful of his impotence. The collective unconscious or God, on the other hand, has no need for circumspection. For nowhere does He come up against an insuperable obstacle that would force Him to hesitate and hence reflect on Himself.
What Jung is telling us is that the experience of weakness or defeat is necessary for consciousness. You cannot be a conscious Being unless you can experience weakness and defeat first hand. So in terms of Job and God it would mean that as Job’s consciousness of God’s nature or the nature of the collective unconscious grows, the latter is transformed.
With each encounter, what you thought you know becomes obsolete and what you know you know gets revised. So from a spiritual context, the concept of the Enlightened One does not exist. There is only the one seeking Enlightenment.
So here’s something to meditate on : your thoughts, your feelings, your passions, your dreams, they are not yours at all. You don't create them. They come from an unknown source and flow through us and as the reality of the psyche begins to dawn then the objective realization also dawns that these constituents of the psyche are not created by the Ego at all. The Ego just notices that they have arrived, so to speak.
Here’s an important idea, that whenever one finds himself in a state of conflict with someone else or with a situation, he should entertain the hypothesis that the psyche has propelled him into that situation in order to generate consciousness. That is an almost infallible law. If you entertain that hypothesis, you will find it confirmed almost every time.
The outer person or event that one is in conflict with is an exteriorization of an inner antagonist, and as one pays attention to that possibility, the outer conflict resolves itself because it has become internalized. Instead of asking the question Why is this happening to me? Ask, What is this situation trying to teach me about me?
In the Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud, we learn that dreams are usually the channel of communication between the psyche and the individual. The psyche is constantly broadcasting information that it deems important for the individual through relatable images or memories from the past that the individual sees in the form of dreams.
The author goes on to list the below five possible beliefs to the question : Why are bad things happening to me?
1. “I am being punished for my Sins”. This is called the Jeremiah Reaction.
2. “I am the victim of Satan, the Evil One, who is responsible”. This is the Dualistic or Manichean reaction. It sees the world as engaged in an endless conflict between Good and Evil and you are just a bystander caught in the cross-fire.
3. “This catastrophe is actually good for me in some higher way that I can't understand”. This is called the Apostle Paul reaction.
4. The fourth possibility is that suffering is caused by chance because there is no transpersonal agency in human affairs. “God does not exist and even if He does exist, he doesn't concern Himself with man”. This is the Secular Reaction. It doesn't offer much comfort but if you believe it, you can harden yourself and adopt a Stoic attitude.
5. The fifth possibility is the one that Jung discovered. Namely, “God is an antinomy who isn't quite conscious of what He is doing because of the sheer magnitude of His own complexity”. This is called the Job Reaction.
So as per the last possibility, the archetypes themselves cannot evolve into full consciousness without being routed through mortal ego to bring that consciousness into realization. This is what Jung is saying in effect, when he says that Job possesses something that even God does not have. If Job’s knowledge, his consciousness, attains a divine numinosity, that means he has become a partner in God's divinity.
Job is no more than the outward occasion for an inward process of dialectic in God. And so, the Ego is an outward occasion for an inward process of dialectic in the Self.
The Ego/Self relationship is very much along the lines of a marital relationship where one of the partners will more or less be contained within the other. The Ego, of course, is the smaller, simpler, contained entity and the Self is the container. As long as this situation prevails, a Job event will never happen because he will listen to his counsellors. The counsellors express the state of containment as they informed Job : “You are smaller than God, so you are the contained one, accept that situation”. It is because Job did not accept it, to some extent, he turned the tables on God and in one respect, for a moment at least, the Ego became the container and the Self the contained.
So in effect, one could make the case that “Whoever knows God, has an effect on Him”.
Another topic that I found particularly interesting is that of pre-existing patterns. The universe or reality itself is governed by strict rules. These rules force everything to fall into the mold of certain patterns. So even though the external manifestations may be different, the underlying substructure on top of which the physical world is built is the same throughout. This sharing of a common pattern is what allows us to use analogies. For example, we can use the analogy of a tree or the sky or the ocean etc. to explain something complex that is happening in life because the pattern on top of which a tree is built is the same as the pattern on top which a human is built as well. Jung emphasizes that even the collective unconscious or God has to have a pre-existing pattern and is Himself dependent on pre-existing patterns whenever he wants to create something.
One such pattern is that of creative forces. Our creative spirits can penetrate the depths and heights of the universe but on the account of that, an equivalent toll has to be paid. So for creation, the price is death. Archetypally, that is what is represented by the dismemberment of the Dionysos or the crucifixion of the Christ. (There is a price for playing God). This is evident even in our own experiences - in order to create something new in our lives we have to sacrifice something which is of equal value. So the question would be “How much of yourself are you willing to kill or burn off or dismember in the pursuit of something meaningful?”
By engendering insoluble conflicts, it brings man nearer to God. All opposites are of God, therefore man must bend to this burden; and in doing so, he finds that God in his “oppositeness” has taken possession of him and incarnated Himself in him. This needless to say, adds a whole level of understanding to the experience of conflict. In other words, the conflict between any two factions is a conflict within the God Image itself.
This is represented by the seal of Solomon or the Star of David ✡️. In alchemy, the downward pointing triangle signifies water and the upward pointing triangle signifies fire; and when you combine the two in the paradoxical union of fire and water, you get the seal of Solomon or the Star of David. That’s what we have here when we combine the sea of grace with the lake of fire. Jung is referring to this as the God Image.
Hence through constant encounters, the significance of man is thus greatly enhanced. The very process of encountering the collective unconscious drags one into it and one becomes a participant in the process. The status of remote observer is not possible in the encounter with the unconscious. You can’t see it as it really is unless you participate, and then by the bare fact of witnessing the nature of the unconscious, you change it and you are drawn into the divine drama that it is an expression of. Man’s relation to God probably has to undergo a certain important change : instead of propitiating praise for an unpredictable king or a child’s prayer to a loving father, the responsible living and the fulfilling of the divine will within us will be our form of worship of and commerce with God (prayer isn’t the words you utter, prayer is how you live your life).
November 21, 2020
Good book to read concurrently with Jung's "Answer to Job".
April 20, 2021
Has plenty of useful amplifications and context material for broadening interpretation of C.G. Jungs "Answer to Job".
March 22, 2026
*To read Jung's Answer to Job
*On your own is intimidating
*To say the least. I found Edinger to be a knowledgeable & helpful
*Guide whose
*Insights enriched my own reading of Answer to Job.
*On your own is intimidating
*To say the least. I found Edinger to be a knowledgeable & helpful
*Guide whose
*Insights enriched my own reading of Answer to Job.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews