The Red Book of C.G. Jung

Jung's Red Book (Liber Novus) was published to great acclaim in 2009. Around that time, we published two articles by Roger Woolger on the book, as well as a review. The editor, Sonu Shamdasani, also gave a talk to the London group. Here, Walter Boechat reflects on what the book means in terms of the future of psychological theory and psychotherapy, especially as an example of Jung's own method of active imagination. He explains the gestation of the book, its structure, the various heroes depicted in it, the margin at the edge of creativity and madness, the legacy of the dead, and the search for the centre in the process of individuation. Like Hesse, Jung was greatly influenced by Gnosticism and was fascinated by the Janus figure of Abraxas, who also appears in Hesse's Demian. The Red Book itself contains many extraordinary mandalas as symbols of the centre, the midpoint between the ego and the unconscious. An important part of our journey is moving our centre from self to Self, represented for him by the figure of Philemon, who is depicted in the book. Is important part of his search for wholeness was his activity at Bollingen, with its simple activities of chopping wood, carving, tending the fire and cooking. I think the author is right in highlighting the way in which the book and the time at which it was written express a radical cultural crisis in the West, which is still going on as we seek to achieve planetary vision of wholeness with a corresponding ethic of interconnectedness.