The Religious Functions of the Psyche

with Lionel Corbett, MD

This episode is part one of the series The Religious Functions of the Psyche. In this seminar, Lionel Corbett reviews developments in self psychology from the point of view of the relationship between the Transpersonal Self and the personal self, a relationship with important implications for our understanding of spiritual growth. Includes discussions of suffering and the experience of the divine. Corbett explores Jung’s view of the innate capacity of the human psyche to have religious experience and to produce religious imagery. It was recorded in 1986.

Lionel Corbett, MD received his Medical Degree from the University of Manchester, England, in 1966; served as a military physician; and became a Member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 1974. In the USA, he did fundamental research into the biochemistry of the brain; began one of the first programs in the psychology of aging; was a hospital medical director of in-patient psychiatry; trained as a Jungian analyst at the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago 1978-1986; helped found a training program for Jungian analysts in Santa Fe, while carrying on a private practice and teaching psychiatry at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Corbett has studied various spiritual disciplines including Christian and Jewish mysticism, Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, and Yoga and has had a personal meditation practice for 20 years. He now teaches depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute near Santa Barbara, California, where he founded the Psyche and the Sacred program, a highly successful series that integrates spirituality with depth psychology. This program has developed a powerful approach to spirituality that is based on personal experience of the sacred, avoiding all forms of doctrine and dogma. He is the author of 5 books, several training films, and about 40 professional articles. Publications Include: Fire in the Stone: The Alchemy of Desire (essay); Psyche and the Sacred: Spirituality Beyond Religion; The Sacred Cauldron: Psychotherapy as a Spiritual Practice; The Religious Function of the Psyche.

For the complete series, click here.

To browse all of Dr. Corbett’s lectures, click here.

© 1986 Lionel Corbett. This podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may share it, but please do not change it, sell it, or transcribe it.

Music by Michael Chapman