12/03/2024
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The Red Book
Jung’s Red Book: Liber Novus was composed of working drafts from his personal journals, now known as the Black Books, which he began producing following a rupture in his relationship with Sigmund Freud.
Produced between 1913 to 1930, the Red Book was foundational to Jung’s developing conceptual framework and psychological theory, as well as his own experience of Individuation. While a personal crisis began the creation of Liber Novus, it’s genesis coincided with World War I, leading Jung to believe that his visionary experiences were not only personal but held cultural and historical relevance.
Critics disagree as to whether the Red Book should be viewed as a period of introspection, creative illness or evidence of a psychotic breakdown. While Jung himself claimed to be “menaced by a psychosis” during its composition, he nevertheless maintained his professional practice and daytime activities unaffected, only conducting his inner work at night. This involved a voluntary engagement with the unconscious through the deliberate evocation of fantasies or visions during a waking state, whereupon he would enter into their drama.
Despite its significance in Jung’s oeuvre, the Red Book was not published until 2009. It is speculated that this was due to a fear of ridicule on the part of the author, who never wished for the work to be published.
In 1959, after hardly touching the work for nearly thirty years, Jung wrote the following epilogue: "To the superficial observer, it will appear like madness."
Speaking on the process which gave rise to the Red Book, Jung stated in an interview with Aniela Jaffe:
“The years ... when I pursued the inner images, were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this. It began at that time, and the later details hardly matter anymore. My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me. That was the stuff and material for more than only one life. Everything later was merely the outer classification, scientific elaboration, and the integration into life. But the numinous beginning, which contained everything, was then.”
— Liber Novus, p. vii.
