Bogoslovska smotra, Vol. 96 No. 2, 2026.
Review article
https://doi.org/10.53745/bs.96.2.8
Eucharist and Psychotherapy: A Jungian Understanding of the Regulation of the Psyche in Modern Society
Andrija Piskać
; University of Zagreb, Faculty of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Zagreb, Croatia
Antun Volenik
; University of Zagreb, Faculty of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The paper analyses the relationship between the Eucharist and psychotherapy within the framework of Carl Gustav Jung’s analytical psychology, with respect to his thesis on the psychological necessity of religion. It addresses the problem of secularization and its psychological consequences, particularly the loss of collective symbolic mechanisms for the regulation of suffering, guilt, and the numinous. The concept of the autonomy of the unconscious establishes that the repression of religion does not eliminate the numinous, but rather leads to its return in pathological, ideological, and collective forms. In this context, the Eucharist is interpreted as a collective ritual of transformation that structures the community’s relationship to evil, sacrifice, and meaning. Particular attention is given to Jung’s interpretation of transubstantiation as a psychologically real transformation of one’s relationship to experience. The paper demonstrates that the Eucharist and psychotherapy operate upon the same deep structures of the psyche, but at different levels: the collective and the individual. In conclusion, the Eucharist, understood from a Jungian perspective, remains a psychologically relevant response to the crisis of meaning in modern society.
Keywords
Eucharist; C. G. Jung; individuation; psychotherapy; secularization
Hrčak ID:
350635
URI
Publication date:
7.9.2026.
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