Freud, Adler, Jung & Jesus

                     Both religion and spirituality deal with the ultimate concerns of people and that a spiritual perspective can illuminate the origins of some of the most profound human strivings. Therefore one of the functions of a religious belief system and a spiritual world view is to provide “an ultimate vision of what people should be striving for in their lives” (Pargament & Park, 1995, p. 15) and the strategies to reach those ends.

                  Freud, Adler and Jung, three leading psychologists of 20^th century, have different views about man’s striving. While for Freud ‘people are hungry for love’, for Adler, people are hungry for significance. For Jung, people are hungry for security. Thus, according to these perspectives, people’s priorities, goals and concerns are signature determinants of their overall quality of life. The possession of and progression toward important life goals are essential for both long-term well-being and positive life. At first glance, it might seem odd to speak of religious or spiritual goals, the way one talks about achievement goals, health goals, or financial goals. Yet we speak quite openly of a “spiritual Quest”, of a searching for the sacred that fill our “existential vacuums.” In form there is nothing inherently different about spiritual religious goals in comparison to any other type of goal. They are, like other goals, internal mental representations of desired states toward which a person has committed to working.  At the level of goals or concerns, spirituality is seen as a motivating force that drives and directs personalised goals that one strives to obtain.

                      Thus, it was in the 9^th standard when my sole purpose of existence was ever being questioned for the first time. “Do you eat to live or live to eat?” asked the Catholic Nun, my Religion teacher.  At some point everyone asks such a existential question ‘What am I doing on earth?’ or ‘What is the point of life?’ or ‘Is there any purpose to life?’ In 1980s and 1990s, when psychology saw an explosion of inventories in the field of religion, spirituality was defined as “a way of being and experiencing that which comes about through awareness of a transcendent dimension and that is characterised by certain identifiable values in regard to self, others, nature, life, and whatever one considers to be Ultimate” (Elkins, 1988, p.10). The multilevel approach to spirituality by Robert A. Emmons assumes that spirituality is multidimensional and is related in people’s subjective experience in distinct, though related, ways.

                      So, to answer the question asked by my Religion teacher, should I say “Freud says, ‘people are hungry for love’, and so do I”, or “Adler says, ‘people are hungry for significance’, and so do I” or “Jung says, ‘people are hungry for security’, and so do I”? Instead, I said, “Jesus says, ‘I am the bread of life.”