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  • An Intellectual Autobiography of a Jungian Theologian
  • Schuyler Brown (bio)
John P. Dourley. An Intellectual Autobiography of a Jungian Theologian. Edwin Mellen Press 2006. cxlviii, 122. US $119.95

John Dourley, professor emeritus at Carleton University, Jungian analyst, and Roman Catholic priest, previously published parts 2 and 3 of this book with Inner City Books: The Psyche as Sacrament (1981) and Love, Celibacy and the Inner Marriage (1987). Dourley’s ‘Autobiography’ is in part 1.

Following his introduction to Thomism in seminary, he went to study at St Michael’s College with Gregory Baum. (I must question his assertion that Baum ‘had’ to leave his teaching position, because of difficulties over sexual ethics. Baum was a tenured professor in the University of Toronto, and he accepted an invitation from McGill because Quebec did not have compulsory retirement at age sixty-five, as Ontario still did at the time.) At Fordham, where Dourley did his doctorate, he was advised to read Jung by his mentor, Ewert Cousins. Tom Driver, at Union Seminary, introduced Dourley to Tillich, and Fr Christ [sic] Mooney introduced him to Teilhard de Chardin.

Tillich recognized that Aquinas, by rejecting Anselm’s ontological ‘proof’ for the existence of God, had prepared the ground for modern atheism. But it was when he met Wilfrid Cantwell Smith at Harvard that the seed was planted that would lead Tillich, at the end of his life, to abandon the ‘provincialism’ of Christian theology, recognizing, perhaps, the role played by Christianity’s claim to ‘the final revelation’ in the tragedy of ‘the final solution.’

Today, when all wars are religious wars at bottom, the only hope for humankind is Jung’s recognition that all faith – religious or secular – is intrapsychic in origin. The union of the conscious mind with the unconscious, called unus mundus by the alchemist and nada by the mystic, undercuts the archetypal passions that are threatening our civilization. Unfortunately, the religious fanatic bent on slaughtering the infidel is rarely a mystic or an alchemist.

We are indebted to Professor Dourley for this candid and enlightening account of his spiritual pilgrimage. [End Page 457]

Schuyler Brown

Schuyler Brown, Faculty of Theology, University of St. Michael’s College

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