From the Discovery of Lonergan to Psychic Conversion

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Contained here are essays written between the time of my discovery of Lonergan in the summer of 1967 and the emergence of the notion of psychic conversion in the mid-1970s. Initial explorations of the latter notion, down to around 1980, will be included.

The first paper I wrote on Lonergan was about his notion of the consciousness of Christ. This was written for a Christology course at Saint Louis University in the 1967-1968 school year. That paper is the initial entry in this collection.

It is followed by three book reviews written for AMERICA magazine, again in 1967-68: reviews of Herbert Richardson, TOWARD AN AMERICAN THEOLOGY, of Louis Roberts, THE ACHIEVEMENT OF KARL RAHNER, and of Gabriel Moran, VISION AND TACTICS.

The third entry is a paper written for William Richardson at Fordham University in the spring semester of 1969, in a course on the Later Heidegger. It traces the relationship between Being and thinking in INTRODUCTION TO METAPHYSICS, THE ESSENCE OF TRUTH, and LETTER ON HUMANISM. No references are made to Lonergan. The paper highlights the shift in mood in the so-called "later Heidegger." That the connection to National Socialism should have been highlighted is now obvious to me. It wasn't at the time.

A fourth entry is a paper on the structuralism of Claude Levi-Strauss and on Paul Ricoeur's critique of it: Structuralism and History. It contains a bit of material on Lonergan's relation to the discussion. This paper was the product of a good deal of work on structuralim and Ricoeur in 1968-69. I suspect the actual date of this paper was 1970.

A fifth item is a paper on Schleiermacher's Hermeneutics, 1970-71 or 1969-1970. This was written for a doctoral seminar under Dr Kenneth Hagen, on 19th-Century Protestant Theology, Marquette University.

Sixth, Conscience and Newman's Organum Investigandi, written for Rev. William Kelly, S.J, for a doctoral seminar on Newman at Marquette University in the 1969-1970 academic year.

Seventh, Schubert Ogden on the Problem of God and the Nature of Theology, written for a doctoral seminar at Marquette in 1969, on the problem of God. Professor: Rev William Van Roo, S.J.

Eighth, Religion, The Young American, and the University. A lecture given to a Wisconsin Province of the Society of Jesus meeting, Summer 1971, reflecting on my first year as Director of the new Campus Ministry program at Marquette University.

Ninth, Paul Ricoeur: Philosophical Reflection and the Interpretation of the Sacred. A paper written for W. Taylor Stevenson, graduate seminar at Marquette, fall semester, 1971.

Tenth, there is another paper on Ricoeur. This became an article in ANGLICAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 1973 entitled "Paul Ricoeur: Toward the Restoration of Meaning." But the present paper does not yet draw the conclusion regarding psychic conversion. The published paper will be uploaded soon.

Eleventh, the breakthrough to the notion of psychic conversion came while I was writing extensive notes on Heidegger's KANT AND THE PROBLEM OF METAPHYSICS. Some of those notes, the most important, were preserved, and they are offered here, in handwriting. I may try to turn these into a typed paper, if I have the time.

Twelfth, this was followed by the publication of "Paul Ricoeur: Toward the Restoration of Meaning." Here is a typescript of that article as it appeared in ANGLICAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW.

Thirteenth, there was a paper written for another course with Taylor Stevenson, "Psychic Conversion and the Foundations of Theology."

Fourteenth, at Regis College in 1973 I composed twenty-five methodological theses that I shared with Bernard Lonergan. His gracious reception of the theses remains with me to this day.

Fifteenth, through Lonergan's intervention I was invited to speak at the first Lonergan Workshop at Boston College, 1974. The paper I prepared was entitled "Psychic Conversion." In re-reading it I see how its themes have stayed with me and my work to this day.

The sixteenth piece shows the revision of the same paper "Psychic Conversion." At the bottom of p. 20 it says (over), and the reverse side is not given. It reads as follows (and this is important): Second immediacy can only be approached through the complementarity of the two mediations. Psychic conversion thus corrects what I believe to be a possible implicit intellectualist bias in Lonerganâ€™s thought, especially in Insight. According to this implicit bias, the intellectual pattern of experience would be the privileged pattern of experience. While the emergence in Method in Theology of a fourth level of intentional consciousness and thus of a notion of the good as distinct from the intelligent and reasonable implicitly corrects this bias, the explicit compensation comes from highlighting the psychic dimensions of this fourth level, the level of existential subjectivity.

In the seventeenth place, there is a paper delivered to a group of campus ministers at Loyola University, Chicago, in June of 1975, "Campus Ministry and the Emerging Religious Consciousess." It respresents an advance in the notion of psychic conversion beyond Jungian "wholeness" to "crucified Love."

The eighteenth contribution is a lecture that I gave to PsiChi, a group of Psychology major at Marquette, on April 10, 1976: "The significance of Jung's Psychology for the Cultural Crisis of Our Time." Here the movement beyond wholeness to self-transcendence continues, and the cultural and social significance of psychic conversion begins to come into greater prominence.

Next, we move to a course I taught at Marquette in 1975, Jung and the Psychology of Religious Experience. Entries 19 and 20 are my notes for the first two classes.

Next, entries 21 and 22: my notes for classes 3 and 4. A page is missing from the notes for class 4. It will be supplied in the near future.

Then, entries 23-26: my notes for classes 5 to 8 of the Jung course.

And the concluding notes, entries 27-34, the remainder of the course.

The next set of papers consists of notes on secularity and modernity, written while I was preparing a course at Marquette (THEO 143) entitled Religion and Culture. The course was offered in the spring semester of 1976. The preliminary papers are:

D0097 - Notes on the Revisionist Model (Tracy_
D0098 - Notes on Gilkey, Naming the Whirlwind, Chapter 1
D0099 - The Characteristics of Secularism, Background to Radical Theology
D0100 - Notes on Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order
D0101 - Notes on Secularity
D0102 - Rough Outline of THEO 143, Spring 1976
D0103 - Notes on Theology and Modernity
D0104 - Readings on the Faith of Secularity
D0105 - Subject, Psyche, and Theology's Foundations - The version delivered at Boston College Lonergan Workshop June 1976. See below, the entry for Jund 27, 2016. This is a transcript of my oral comments at BC. I do not remember who did the transcript. I have prepared a more legible version of it.
D0106 - Cards and Note related to THEO 143, Religion and Culture

There follow 44 small files containing notes for the course THEO 143 Religion and Culture Marquette 1976, spring. The course contains some seeds of materials that eventually found their way into THEOLOGY AND THE DIALECTICS OF HISTORY.

Then there are 33 files containing notes for the course THEO 160, Christian Personality Development, Marquette, also 1976, fall. Again there are seeds of materials that found more mature expression later.

Theology 160, Fall 1976, Christian Personality Development, Schedule of Classes.
D0149 - Class 1, Sept. 1
D0150 - Class 2, Sept. 3
D0151 - Notes for class 2 and/or 3, taken from Jung, Memories Dreams Reflections and â€˜The Stages of Lifeâ€™
D0152 - Sept 8, Faith and the Stages of Life
D0153 - Sept. 15, Notes on Memories, Dreams, Reflections, chapters 4-6
D0154 - Sept 10 Intro to Memories, Dreams, Reflections
D0155 - Notes mainly on MDR chapter 1
D0156 - Sept. 15, 10 handwritten pp. on MDR mainly cc. 2-3
D0157 - Sept 17, MDR on God, Christian response
D0158 - Notes on Jung auxiliary to reading of MDR and to lectures. Sums up previous lectures on MDR 1-3
D0159 - Sept. 20. Differentiation and integration, explaining Personality no. 1 and no. 2
D0160 - Sept 22, Differentiation and Integration, introducing feelings
D0161 - Sept 24, Intentional and Nonintentional Feelings
D0162 - Sept 27. Conversion
D0163 - Sept 29, Oct 1. Start of material on willingness and ability, personality and character.
D0164 - October 4, Self-transcendence and questions
D0165 - October 6. Basic intro to conversion
D0166 - Oct 8 and 11, review, then the reality of evil
D0167 - Oct 11 Contrast of Jung and our position on evil. Contraries and contradictories
D0168 - October 13 Willingness and Conversion
D0169 - October 15. Elements of Conversion. Seeds of chapter 8 in TDH.
D0170 - October 13 notes, more on conversion
D0171 - October 18, Conversion
D0172 - October 25, Jung on Complexes
D0173 - November 5, Psychic Wholeness
D0174 - November 5. Elements of Jung's science of the psyche
D0175 - November 8, Psychic energy
D0176 - November 10, more on Jung's science of psyche
D0177 - November 12 - repression, shadow, collective ucs, self
D0178 - November 15, Archetypes
D0179 - late November and early December, archetypes, Self, evil, questions to Jung from RD
D0180 - December 3, Critique of Jung
D0181 - December 10 Review for Final

Next, two printings of the same paper, "Psychic Conversion" – the first (D0207)an offprint of the paper as it appeared in THE THOMIST in 1977, and the second (D0210) a typescript of the same paper.

Added on June 27, 2016: A typescript of "Subject, Psyche, and Theology's Foundations" as it appeared in JOURNAL OF RELIGION in 1977. A couple of corrections have been indicated.

Next, "Aesthetics and the Opposites," which appeared in THOUGHT in 1977. Here we have an offprint of the article.

Next, a handwritten copy of the lecture I gave at the Boston Lonergan Workshop in 1977, when the paper that I distributed was "Dramatic Artistry in the Third Stage of Meaning." That paper will be uploaded soon.

Next, there is the paper itself, "Dramatic Artistry in the Third Stage of Meaning." Here we have a photocopy of the paper as it appeared in volume 2 of LONERGAN WORKSHOP.

"Christ and the Psyche" is the next entry. It was first published in 1977 in a Festschrift for Frederick E. Crowe, Trinification of the World, ed. Jean-Marc Laporte and Thomas A. Dunne.

This is followed by "The Theologian's Psyche: Notes toward the Reconstruction of Depth Psychology." This appeared in vol. 1 of LONERGAN WORKSHOP.

"Insight and Archetype" was a major synthesis paper. It went through several versions, and was finally published in the first volume of the Marquette volumes entited THEOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS. It is key to the position on the interrelation of intentionality and psyche. It foreshadows a good deal of THEOLOGY AND THE DIALECTICS OF HISTORY. The version that eventually was published is presented here.

Closely related to "Insight and Archetype" is a short handwritten piece entitled "Lonergan and Jung: A Dialectic," and another called "Archetypal and Anagogic Symbols." These, too, are important background for TDH.

There follows 'A Response to Walter J. Kukkonen, "The Beyond Within: Where Theology and
Psychology Ought to Meet'" American Theological Society, Nov. 4, 1977