An Answer to Job: Suffering, Loss and the Limits of Meaning

Jung, Job, and the Problem of Evil

The Book of Job begins with a terrible and apparently unanswerable problem.
A good man suffers catastrophic loss, seemingly because of a wager made between God and Satan.
Job loses his children, his possessions, his health and, perhaps most importantly, his confidence in the moral order of the world.  

His friends try to explain his suffering. Job refuses their explanations. He demands an answer from God.  
More than two thousand years later, C. G. Jung took up Job's challenge in one of his most personal, provocative and controversial works, Answer to Job.

The question of why human beings suffer runs throughout the book, but Jung goes considerably further.
What does Job's suffering reveal about God? And what happens when a human being finds himself morally at odds with the divine order itself?



"It does not seem to fit God’s purpose to exempt man from conflict
and hence from evil."
~Carl Jung, Answer to Job, Para 659.



Over six weeks we will read the Book of Job alongside Jung's Answer to Job, allowing these two extraordinary texts to open a wider exploration of suffering, loss, meaning and the limits of explanation.  
At the centre of the programme is the experience of irrevocable loss: events after which life cannot simply be restored to what it was before.

The death of someone we love is one form of such loss.
Many others: the loss of a relationship, health, youth, innocence, faith, a future we had imagined, or a way of understanding ourselves and the world that can no longer be sustained.  

We will consider what happens when the explanations we use to make suffering bearable cease to satisfy us.
What are we entitled to protest?
What happens when life appears to betray the assumptions upon which we have built it?
How do we live when there is no possibility of returning to the person we were before?  
There may be experiences for which no satisfactory explanation is available.

Job himself refuses the consolations offered to him by those who insist that his suffering must somehow make sense.
His refusal, his anger, and his demand that God answer him are central to the story's extraordinary psychological power.
 
Our concern will be what happens afterwards: how a person continues to live when something cannot be undone, and what new relationship to life might emerge from that knowledge.



Starts: Sunday 1st of November, 2026

Duration: 6 Weeks

Cost: US$290
or
US$150 per month for two months

Webinars are presented on Sundays.
4 pm London and 11:00 AM NYC.

These seminars will be recorded for students who are unable to attend live.



Alongside our readings, participants will undertake a series of experiential and imaginal applications, gradually developing their own response to the questions raised by Job and Jung.

The programme will culminate in a final piece of personal work which we are calling My Answer to Job.


Expect a thoughtful, atmospheric discussion of psychological insight, reflection, conversation, and meaningful exploration in an intimate setting.

No prior knowledge of Jungian psychology is required.

For more information email info@appliedjung.com.

Presenters

Stephen Anthony Farah, MA, is the co-founder and Head of Learning and Research at The Centre for Applied Jungian Studies South Africa. He is the past co-Chair of the International Association of Jungian Studies and served on the IAJS Executive Board for nine years. Stephen holds an honours degree in analytical philosophy from the University of the Witwatersrand and a master’s degree in Jungian and Post-Jungian Studies from the University of Essex. Stephen’s interests include psychoanalysis, film, psychoeducation, consciousness, individuation, and Future Studies. His published papers include ‘True Detective and Jung’s Four Steps of Transformation’ published in ‘The Routledge International Handbook of Jungian Film Studies’ (2018) and ‘The Freak: in Search of Jung’s second Personality’, in the anthology ‘The Spectre of the Other in Jungian Psychoanalysis: Political, Psychological and Sociological Perspectives’ (Routledge 2022), which Stephen co-edited.
Carl Lindemann is a storyteller who merges religion, science and politics. He studied Ancient Philosophy at Wesleyan University, then trained for Unitarian ministry at Harvard Divinity School, focusing on pastoral counselling. After serving as a boarding school chaplain at Phillips Exeter Academy and in parish ministry at First Church in Salem, Massachusetts (infamous for the witch trials), he changed course into media and advocacy. He moved from Austin, Texas, to South Africa in 2017 to deepen his interfaith, comparative perspective on diverse democracy. His interests reach beyond the humanities into the sciences through his passion for astronomy. He frequently guides visitors through the night skies on clear, starlit nights in the Karoo wilderness outside of Cape Town.

Welcome to 'An Answer to Job'!

This is your go-to page to access course materials. Module materials will be made available in the course player below as they are released. Introductory reading materials have been made available below.

This course will start with our opening session on Sunday November 1st, 2026. Thereafter, you will receive an application on the Monday following each weekly live session, and a live session reminder on each Tuesday. 

This course is also supported by a facilitated forum which will be made available closer to the start date.

Course Materials