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Saturday, January 18, 2020

CARL JUNG

THE RED BOOK

Carl G. Jung. Red Book (Liber Novus). 1914-1930.

The first words of Carl Gustav Jung’s Red Book are “The way of what is to come.” What follows is 16 years of the psychoanalyst’s dive into the unconscious mind, a challenge to what he considered Sigmund Freud’s - his former mentor’s - isolated world view. Far from a simple narrative, the Red Book is Jung’s voyage of discovery into his deepest self. - Karen Michel
Jung had a bookbinder make an enormous volume covered in red leather into which he poured these explorations into himself - 205 pages of written text and illustrations, all in his hand, including drawings of mythical characters of his dreams and waking fantasies - explorations that Jung feared were not scholarly enough to publish. So he kept it mainly secret, and for 50 years following his death in 1961, the book was locked away in a Swiss bank vault, completely unknown to the world.

The Red Book’s wildly creative illuminations and text were a product of a technique developed by Jung which he termed ’active imagination’


















I've not read it but these images make me wish to . . . . . 

 “In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.“ – Carl Jung
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3 comments:

  1. Martin Cooke8:37 pm

    Thanks for this post, Andy; I was a big fan of Jung in the seventies, when I was at school and wondering about the wider world; but by the millennium my interests had moved into other areas, and so I had no idea that this book even existed. You can imagine my excitement on reading your post! Many thanks for posting these pictures :-)

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  2. Andy Swapp10:57 am

    Thanks for the comments Martin. In my professional life I was taught by Jungians and my professional supervisor ws a Jungian and I always appreciated him and found him fascinating of course but somehow left him behind in my practice, if that doesn't sound too arrogant!? I appreciate Freud and Jung and Carl Rogers too, the humanists if you will, all of whom fed into my practice as a counsellor/psychotherapist dealing with addiction and the abused
    Thanks for dropping by you are most welcome

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  3. Martin Cooke12:17 am

    Jung was such a pioneer, I'm not surprised you went beyond him in your practice.
    ...thanks for your interesting blog

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