Obviously not the New Testament figure.
There are barely some elements of Christian iconography,
but way far from real iconography or the real biblical figure.
It's rather Jung's "active imagination" (as he called it)
which might be something more than mere imagination...
This is about an article on the recently discovered and published book of Carl Gustav Jung, the famous Swiss psychologist and father of Analytical Psychology. From Jung's theory of shadow (part of human personality structure and psyche's component to Jung's own "shadow" or revealed dark side... Was he a "saint" or a "sinner"? Besides of being the father of Depth Psychology and a pioneer of modern psychodynamic and humanistic psychologies, was he also the father of a new religion...even the father of New Age, as some scholars claim? Was he a Christian, a pagan or even of his own religion? Mainstream psychology of the academic establishment has acted as a gatekeeper of any psychological theory that integrates psychology and spirituality/religion/ancient & indigenous cultures/new science & quantum physics.
What happened while Jung was writing the Red Book? Who was Philemon? Was he a spirit that visited him? Was it a figment of his imagination, a delusion, a hallucination, an interdimensional being, an existing lifeform or energy force of the collective unconscious, an angel or even a demon as some scholars, theologians and priests may argue? Did he just lose his mind? Did his work took over his everyday life? How can we explain the fact that they were witnesses when unexplained phenomena happened, such as apparitions, objects moving in the house, footsteps, noises, doorbell ringing and nobody was there? Although some Christians, especially Greek Orthodox priests and theologians (usually those whose background is limited to conservative/fundamentalist close-minded theology only) may not approve the Jungian perspective, especially after the new revelations made by the discovery of the Red Book, still many Christians, such as Greek Orthodox psychologists and even priests who are also pastoral counselors, psychologists or psychiatrists may approve the Jungian perspective and use it in their practice.
One thing is certain: Jung surpassed Freud by taking psychology and psychoanalysis to the next level, which is the collective unconscious. Freud misused Greek mythology, because he lacked a basic knowledge and understanding of classics unlike Jung. So Freud came up with Oedipus Complex, a psychological phenomenon that truly exists and he brilliantly discovered, indeed, but with a wrong name, because it should not be "Oedipus". Freud spoke about a concept that Sophocles never thought of: Oedipus unconscious tendencies of incest. All that Sophocles wanted to say was something even more important than the Oedipus Complex and that was "Fate" or "Pepromenon" in Greek. Greeks of all ages, from antiquity to the present, we still say in 5th century BC classical Greek a famous proverb: "To pepromenon fygein adynaton" (it's impossible to get away with Fate"), which is not deterministic or fatalistic or against "free will" (well, there is some free will to a certain point, but still there are rules in the universe), but it refers to some universal forces operating like a blueprint in the acausal/quantum field that is beyond space-time and that is keen to the World/Transpersonal/Collective Unconscious. So what Sophocles actually talked about was the Numen's interference with every human life and psyche in an acausal field of no space-time. And, as it is already said, that definitely comes from the World/Transpersonal/Collective Unconscious. For Jung, Philemon belonged to that world. His Red Book, a modern illuminated manuscript with beautiful imaginative and colorful pictures and medieval revival-styled, particularly Gothic-styled calligraphy laboriously painted by his own hand, is a long account of such occurrences, manifestations, and concepts that uses an elaborate visual language to convey meanings that overturn all we know or we think we know in this post-modern and post-human world! Some people who reside in the ivory towers of academia and professional practice in psychology and mental health that would be really dangerous, especially for their careers that are primarily based on academic politics... That's why Philemon and the Red Book were kept a secret by Jung himself and were locked in a drawer until they were accidently found!
Unlike Freud, Jung went beyond sexual drives and automatic functions of the psyche. He used the Greek word "psyche" for soul, including many tenets of Greek psychology/philosophy, and emphasized all these subjects which were neglected at his times and...some of them are still neglected: midlife, history and culture, religion and spirituality, ancient philosophy in psychology, classics, early Christian/patristic/byzantine studies, psychoanalytic anthropology, ethnographic studies of indigenous cultures in psychology, femininity and the sacred, ancient wisdom, mythology, alchemy, mandala, astrology, new science, mind/body medicine, and quantum physics.
The fact that Jung believed that he was visited by Philemon, does not necessarily mean that he endorsed all that Philemon said to him. Of course, that applies only in the case we don't believe that it was not his own voice of his own unconscious or even a mere figment of his imagination, a delusion or a hallucination. Jung did not really attack Christianity in his writings. On the contrary, he put theology, early Christian Studies, and Byzantine Studies in the ballgame of psychology, which was so far inaccessible to those subjects, even ridiculous to think of that! He actually showed respect to those writings and used their language and semiotics as important constructive tools for his psychological theories and interpretations of the psyche and its surrounding world. So what if Philemon actually came from the Collective Unconscious world, a world whose glimpses and reflections we can barely start to see now with the most recent advances of quantum mechanics and mind/body medicine? What if Jung wrote his book to warn us about what is coming to our world and to our times of Globalization and all the nightmarish things proposed in the song "Imagine" that is a global dictatorship disguised as a peaceful one just to find out soon that it has no religion, no nation, no history, no culture, no diversity, no individuality? We all know that Jung was not just a psychologist and a psychiatrist, but also a philosopher and a visionary. So what if he had foreseen all that and warned us about it? What if the Red Book is the manuscript in the bottle lost in the sea that we found today offshore with the message from the past concerning the future?
Jung proved that nothing is closed to an open mind, despite that some "scholars" who claim that they are making psychology super scientific are actually close-minded in the 21st century and because of them academia looks like a dark medieval library, like that in Eco's brilliant masterpiece "The Name of the Rose"... I chose to answer them in Latin, as Jung used Greek and Latin a lot, but I doubt if they will understand it, as all they know is mainstream psychology and modern and...post-modern knowledge (if post-modern is knowledge and not a social construct of ultra modern theorists declaring a war against tradition/orthodoxy). Well, too bad! That's their problem! So here it is: "non umbra diem" or to use Eco's closing words of the aforementioned book: "Stat rosa pristina nomine nomina nunda tenemus"!
Carl Gustav Jung and mandala
Sigmund Freud
