The Red Book: A Reader's Edition

by C.G. Jung

THE YEARS, OF WHICH I HAVE SPOKEN TO YOU, 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, the scientific elaboration, and the integration into life. But the numinous beginning, which contained everything, was then. C. G. JUNG, 1957

Jung’s voracious reading started at this time, and he was particularly struck by Goethe’s Faust. He was struck by the fact that in Mephistopheles, Goethe took the figure of the devil seriously.

Jung also had a sense of living in two centuries, and felt a strong nostalgia for the eighteenth century. His sense of duality took the form of two alternating personalities, which he dubbed NO. 1 and 2. NO. 1 was the Basel schoolboy, who read novels, and NO. 2 pursued religious reflections in solitude, in a state of communion with nature and the cosmos. He inhabited “God’s world.” This personality felt most real. Personality NO. 1 wanted to be free of the melancholy and isolation of personality NO. 2. When personality NO. 2 entered, it felt as if a long dead yet perpetually present spirit had entered the room. NO. 2 had no definable character. He was connected to history, particularly with the Middle Ages. For NO. 2, NO. 1, with his failings and ineptitudes, was someone to be put up with. This interplay ran throughout Jung’s life. As he saw it, we are all like this—part of us lives in the present and the other part is connected to the centuries.

In his university days, the interplay between these personalities continued. In addition to his medical studies, Jung pursued an intensive program of extracurricular reading, in particular the works of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Swedenborg,11 and writers on spiritualism.

“I am no longer alone with myself, and I can only artificially recall the scary and beautiful feeling of solitude. This is the shadow side of the fortune of love.”17 For Jung, his marriage marked a move away from the solitude to which he had been accustomed.

Toward the end of his studies, he was much occupied with painting for about a year.

He painted in both oil and watercolor.

“If we feel our way into the human secrets of the sick person, the madness also reveals its system, and we recognize in the mental illness merely an exceptional reaction to emotional problems which are not strange to us.”

He found the mythological work exciting and intoxicating. In 1925 he recalled, “it seemed to me I was living in an insane asylum of my own making. I went about with all these fantastic figures: centaurs, nymphs, satyrs, gods and goddesses, as though they were patients and I was analyzing them.

One without a myth “is like one uprooted, having no true link either with the past, or with the ancestral life which continues within him, or yet with contemporary human society.”

I was driven to ask myself in all seriousness: “what is the myth you are living?” I found no answer to this question, and had to admit that I was not living with a myth, or even in a myth, but rather in an uncertain cloud of theoretical possibilities which I was beginning to regard with increasing distrust . . . So in the most natural way, I took it upon myself to get to know “my” myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks—for—so I told myself—how could I, when treating my patients, make due allowance for the personal factor, for my personal equation, which is yet so necessary for a knowledge of the other person, if I was unconscious of it?

“was the beginning of a conviction that the unconscious did not consist of inert material only, but that there was something living down there.”

“I thought to myself, ‘If this means anything, it means that I am hopelessly off.’ ”42 After this experience, Jung feared that he would go mad.

He now turned to analyze his fantasies, carefully noting everything, and had to overcome considerable resistance in doing this: “Permitting fantasy in myself had the same effect as would be produced on a man if he came into his workshop and found all the tools flying about doing things independently of his will.”50 In studying his fantasies, Jung realized that he was studying the myth-creating function of the mind.

When I had been pondering many different things to myself for a long time, and had for many days been seeking my own self and what my own good was, and what evil was to be avoided, there suddenly spoke to me—what was it? I myself or someone else, inside or outside me? (this is the very thing I would love to know but don’t).

I said to myself, “What is this I am doing, it certainly is not science, what is it?” Then a voice said to me, “That is art.” This made the strangest sort of impression upon me, because it was not in any sense my impression that what I was writing was art. Then I came to this, “Perhaps my unconscious is forming a personality that is not I, but which is insisting on coming through to expression.” I don’t know why exactly, but I knew to a certainty that the voice that had said my writing was art had come from a woman . . . Well I said very emphatically to this voice that what I was doing was not art, and I felt a great resistance grow up within me. No voice came through, however, and I kept on writing. This time I caught her and said, “No it is not,” and I felt as though an argument would ensue.

“In putting down all this material for analysis, I was in effect writing letters to my anima, that is part of myself with a different viewpoint from my own. I got remarks of a new character—I was in analysis with a ghost and a woman.”

hypnagogic

In retrospect, he recalled that his scientific question was to see what took place when he switched off consciousness. The example of dreams indicated the existence of background activity, and he wanted to give this a possibility of emerging, just as one does when taking mescalin.

His procedure was clearly intentional—while its aim was to allow psychic contents to appear spontaneously. He recalled that beneath the threshold of consciousness, everything was animated. At times, it was as if he heard something. At other times, he realized that he was whispering to himself.

While he was painting this image, he found a dead kingfisher (which is very rarely found in the vicinity of Zürich) in his garden by the lake shore.

Synchronicity

Thus he maintained his professional activities and familial responsibilities during the day, and dedicated his evenings to his self-explorations.80 Indications are that this partitioning of activities continued during the next few years. Jung recalled that during this period his family and profession “always remained a joyful reality and a guarantee that I was normal and really existed.”

He argued that in cases of neurosis and psychosis, the unconscious attempted to compensate the one-sided conscious attitude. The unbalanced individual defends himself against this, and the opposites become more polarized. The corrective impulses that present themselves in the language of the unconscious should be the beginning of a healing process, but the form in which they break through makes them unacceptable to consciousness.

In 1955/56, while discussing active imagination, Jung commented that “the reason why the involvement looks very much like a psychosis is that the patient is integrating the same fantasy-material to which the insane person falls victim because he cannot integrate it but is swallowed up by it.”

But whereas Zarathustra proclaimed the death of God, Liber Novus depicts the rebirth of God in the soul.

But art and science were no more than the servants of the creative spirit, which is what must be served.

During his self-explorations, he experienced states of turmoil. He recalled that he experienced great fear, and sometimes had to hold the table to keep himself together,116 and “I was frequently so wrought up that I had to eliminate the emotions through yoga practices. But since it was my purpose to learn what was going on within myself, I would do them only until I had calmed myself and could take up again the work with the unconscious.”

The overall theme of the book is how Jung regains his soul and overcomes the contemporary malaise of spiritual alienation. This is ultimately achieved through enabling the rebirth of a new image of God in his soul and developing a new worldview in the form of a psychological and theological cosmology.

Liber Novus itself can be understood on one hand as depicting Jung’s individuation process, and on the other hand as his elaboration of this concept as a general psychological schema.

Jung wrote that it was a difficult task to differentiate the personal and collective psyche. One of the factors one came up against was the persona—one’s “mask” or “role.” This represented the segment of the collective psyche that one mistakenly regarded as individual. When one analyzed this, the personality dissolved into the collective psyche, which resulted in the release of a stream of fantasies: “All the treasures of mythological thinking and feeling are unlocked.”152 The difference between this state and insanity lay in the fact that it was intentional.

For some people, Jung noted, it was simple to note the “other” voice in writing and to answer it from the standpoint of the I: “It is exactly as if a dialogue were taking place between two human beings . . . ”159 This dialogue led to the creation of the transcendent function, which resulted in a widening of consciousness.

He differentiated between two situations in which the collective unconscious became active. In the first, it became activated through a crisis in an individual’s life and the collapse of hopes and expectations. In the second, it became activated at times of great social, political, and religious upheaval. At such moments, the factors suppressed by the prevailing attitudes accumulate in the collective unconscious. Strongly intuitive individuals become aware of these and try to translate them into communicable ideas. If they succeeded in translating the unconscious into a communicable language, this had a redeeming effect.

He also noted that the soul gave rise to images that were assumed to be worthless from the rational perspective. There were four ways of using them: The first possibility of making use of them is artistic, if one is in any way gifted in that direction; a second is philosophical speculation; a third is quasi-religious, leading to heresy and the founding of sects; and a fourth way of employing the dynamis of these images is to squander it in every form of licentiousness.

“I can fully understand and accept this. However, it is dark to me, how the knowledge could be transformed into life. You must teach me this.” His soul said, “There is not much to say about this. It is not as rational as you are inclined to think. The way is symbolic.”

Whoever speaks in primordial images speaks with a thousand voices; he enthrals and overpowers . . . he transmutes our personal destiny into the destiny of mankind, and evokes in us all those beneficent forces that ever and anon have enabled humanity to find a refuge from every peril and to outlive the longest night.178

Jung went so far as to suggest that his patients prepare their own Red Books. Morgan recalled him saying: I should advise you to put it all down as beautifully as you can—in some beautifully bound book. It will seem as if you were making the visions banal—but then you need to do that—then you are freed from the power of them. If you do that with these eyes for instance they will cease to draw you. You should never try to make the visions come again. Think of it in your imagination

and try to paint it. Then when these things are in some precious book you can go to the book & turn over the pages & for you it will be your church—your cathedral—the silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal. If anyone tells you that it is morbid or neurotic and you listen to them—then you will lose your soul—for in that book is your soul.

In a letter to J. A. Gilbert in 1929, he commented on his procedure: I found sometimes, that it is of great help in handling such a case, to encourage them, to express their peculiar contents either in the form of writing or of drawing and painting. There are so many incomprehensible intuitions in such cases, phantasy fragments that rise from the unconscious, for which there is almost no suitable language. I let my patients find their own symbolic expressions, their “mythology.”

The tower was an ongoing, evolving work. He carved this inscription on its wall: “Philemonis sacrum—Fausti poenitentia” (Philemon’s Shrine—Faust’s Repentance).

Only now do I see for that the dream of 23/24 December 1923 means the death of the anima (“She does not know that she is dead” ). This coincides with the death of my mother . . . Since the death of my mother, the A. [Anima] has fallen silent. Meaningful!

In his 1926 revision of The Psychology of the Unconscious Processes, he highlighted the significance of the midlife transition. He argued that the first half of life could be characterized as the natural phase, in which the prime aim was establishing oneself in the world, gaining an income, and raising a family. The second half of life could be characterized as the cultural phase, which involved a revaluation of earlier values. The goal in this period was one of conserving previous values together with the recognition of their opposites. This meant that individuals had to develop the undeveloped and neglected aspects of their personality.218 The individuation process was now conceived as the general pattern of human development. He argued that there was a lack of guidance for this transition in contemporary society, and he saw his psychology as filling this lacuna.

The Relations between the I and the Unconscious,

Read this

After the assimilation of the personal unconscious, the differentiation of the persona, and the overcoming of the state of godlikeness, the next stage that followed was the integration of the anima for men and of the animus for women. Jung argued that just as it was essential for a man to distinguish between what he was and how he appeared to others, it was equally essential to become conscious of “his invisible relations to the unconscious” and hence to differentiate himself from the anima. He noted that when the anima was unconscious, it was projected. For a child, the first bearer of the soul-image was the mother, and thereafter, the women who aroused a man’s feelings. One needed to objectify the anima and to pose questions to her, by the method of inner dialogue or active imagination. Everyone, he claimed, had this ability to hold dialogues with him- or herself. Active imagination would thus be one form of inner dialogue, a type of dramatized thinking. It was critical to disidentify from the thoughts that arose, and to overcome the assumption that one had produced them oneself.220 What was most essential was not interpreting or understanding the fantasies, but experiencing them. This represented a shift from his emphasis on creative formulation and understanding in his paper on the transcendent function. He argued that one should treat the fantasies completely literally while one was engaged in them, but symbolically when one interpreted them.

The first effect is that the range of consciousness is increased by the inclusion of a great number and variety of unconscious contents. The second is a gradual diminution of the dominating influence of the unconscious. The third is an alteration in the personality.

After one had achieved the integration of the anima, one was confronted with another figure, namely the “mana personality.” Jung argued that when the anima lost her “mana” or power, the man who assimilated it must have acquired this, and so became a “mana personality,” a being of superior will and wisdom. However, this figure was “a dominant of the collective unconscious, the recognized archetype of the powerful man in the form of hero, chief, magician, medicine man, and saint, the lord of men and spirits, the friend of Gods.”223 Thus in integrating the anima, and attaining her power, one inevitably identified with the figure of the magician, and one faced the task of differentiating oneself from this.

Jung wrote: “It might as well be called ‘God in us.’ The beginnings of our whole psychic life seem to be inextricably rooted to this point, and all our highest and deepest purposes seem to be striving toward it.”

The self could be characterized as a kind of compensation for the conflict between inner and outer . . . the self is also the goal of life, because it is the most complete expression of that fateful combination we call individuality . . . With the experiencing of the self as something irrational, as an indefinable being to which the I is neither opposed nor subjected, but in a relation of dependence, and around which it revolves, very much as the earth revolves about the sun—then the goal of individuation has been reached.

“Golden flower,”

The Secret of the Golden Flower The Secret of the Golden Flower was first translated into German by sinologist Richard Wilhelm, a friend of Carl Jung, who had been introduced to the work by his Chinese teacher.[17] The work was later translated from German to English by Cary F. Baynes.[18] Jung provided comments to both of Wilhelm's major Chinese translations, including (in 1949) the nineteen-page (pp. xxi–xxxix) foreword to the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the I Ching, discussing the transpersonal aspect, and The commentary on The secret of the golden flower (1929). See "The Golden Castle" mandala by Jung

He was amazed it hadn’t broken him as it had done others, such as Schreber.

In The Red Book, Jung writes of Schreber as one who was “broken by the spirit” (a paraphrase — the original wording varies slightly by translation). This “brokenness” refers to: 1. Ego Dissolution Schreber’s ego-structure shattered under the influx of transpersonal energies — archetypal contents so powerful that his ordinary consciousness could no longer mediate them. Where a mystic might endure the encounter and integrate it, Schreber was overwhelmed by it. In Jung’s model, this marks the border between individuation and psychosis. 2. Possession by the Unconscious Instead of symbolizing the experience (as art, myth, or ritual might), Schreber identified with the archetypal drama itself — he lived it literally. His mind became the battleground of gods and cosmic forces, leaving no autonomous ego to contain them. 3. A Necessary Tragic Example For Jung, Schreber exemplified the danger of confronting the unconscious without sufficient strength or symbolic form. In Jung’s own descent (the visionary material that became The Red Book), he felt himself on the same precipice — and feared becoming “like Schreber,” broken and lost in madness. The difference, Jung believed, was that he maintained dialogue with the figures of the unconscious rather than becoming them.

I have naturally used this method on myself too and can affirm that one can paint very complicated pictures without having the least idea of their real meaning. While painting them, the picture seems to develop out of itself and often in opposition to one’s conscious intentions.