Shaman/Scientist: Jungian Insights for the Anthropological Study of Religion

Anthropology still regards the experience of religion the same way it did when its interpretive paradigm was based on "scientific objectivity." To understand this situation, the work of C. G. Jung is helpful in two ways. First, by exploring how anthropology has dismissed Jung as a cultural universalist and/or mystic, often without an actual consideration of his writings, we see how he signifies what the field defines itself against. Second, Jung's empirical forays into the religious worldview provide us with both methodological and descriptive insights about that realm in which many of our informants (and even some anthropologists) live.