My goal in this brief article is to consider a specific pastoral question: What is a wise approach to those in your church who see a secular therapist? Since this question is part of a long and winding road, we will make a couple of stops before we arrive at an answer.
The modern therapeutic era made its first obvious appearance with Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and his associates in the early 1900s. The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875–1961) was among those associates. Both men were aware that their therapeutic approaches offered an alternative to the Christian beliefs of their day.
Freud’s theory created a doctrine of the person that attempted to explain both the conscience and belief in God as mechanisms within the person rather than as evidence of humanity-before-God. Jung was even more deliberately anti-Christian as he reacted against his Swiss Reformed upbringing.1 He replaced God with the Self and sought to rectify what he thought were imbalances in Christianity. His teaching is less frequently cited today (perhaps with the exception of Jordan Peterson). You will, however, find that Jung’s Self and the centrality of our internal experience quietly remain the center of modern psychotherapy. Together, Freud
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