"The Red Book: Jung’s Inner Life Revealed"
Week 2: July 11-16, 2010
The Red Book is the personal (once private) written and magnificently illuminated journal of C.G. Jung. Originally titled “Liber Novus” (A New Book in Latin), it has been informally known for the decades since Jung’s death as “The Red Book” and until just this past year withheld from publication by the Jung family.
Though Jung finished compiling the Red Book over 80 years ago, and volume upon volume of his writing and work have been published since, the question of whether or not Jung intended publication of the Red Book is one that has divided many in the Jungian world. Jung himself was concerned that the disturbing nature of his visions, waking fantasies, illustrations and writings might not be understood, easily misinterpreted or seen as psychotic.
However, the contrary has proven true. In the Red Book, we witness and are privy to Jung in a way we have never seen before — not just the psychiatrist, scientist, researcher, and prolific author he is recognized for today, but as a gifted creative artist. A pioneer in the exploration of the Unconscious, he was courageous enough to confront the frightening depths of his own psyche. Through the Red Book, we have become even more aware of the genius and creativity of Jung. As an artistic work, the Red Book is a visual feast and masterpiece, accompanying an in depth view of Jung’s inner life during the period he was encountering his “dark night of the soul.”
It was during this period of his work on the Red Book that Jung formed the foundation for many of his later theories, including Archetypes, the Collective Unconscious, Active Imagination, and the Individuation process…concepts which we will explore during the course of this seminar.
Stephen A. Martin, Psy.D.
(with Gilda Frantz, M.S., and John Peck, Ph.D.)
The Red Book: From Inception to Publication
Dr. Stephen Martin, whose vision and inspiration were instrumental aspects in the Red Book’s publication, will share with us its history (the subject of rumor, legend and myth since Jung’s death over 50 years ago); its relevance to the world of analytical psychology; his role in this endeavor, and some of the drama involved in the publication of the Red Book. Joining Dr. Martin in this discussion will be Jungian analysts John Peck, one of the Red Book’s translators, and Gilda Frantz, co-editor in Chief of “Psychological Perspectives” and Board Member of Philemon, the Foundation whose fund raising and energy enabled the Red Book to see the light of day.
Gilda Frantz, M.A.
In Jung’s Footsteps:
Active Imagination — Our Inner Guide
In the Red Book, Jung lays bare his inner world through illustrations of his dreams, fantasies and “active imagination.” The process of active imagination is a powerful achievement of thinking and imagination — a process that produces inner images as we dialogue with our own internal partner. In presentation and experiential workshop, Gilda Frantz will help us understand how (as Jung illustrated so powerfully in the Red Book) by lowering the threshold of one’s ego consciousness, images from the unconscious can flow into view, enabling us to consciously activate a meeting between Ego and Self.
Stephen A. Martin, Psy.D., and Ami Ronnberg, M.A.
The Art of the Red Book: A Panel Discussion
Dr. Martin, Jungian analyst, Founder and former President of the Philemon Foundation and Ami Ronnberg, National Curator of the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (ARAS) will engage Dr. O’Connor in a spirited discussion on the Art of the Red Book — from the visual to the analytical, exploring Jung’s work from the unique, gifted artistic perspective of Jung to its groundbreaking use of the symbolic and mythical…and how it informs Jungian psychology today.
Francis V. O’Connor, Ph.D.
C.G. Jung’s ‘Styles of Sanity’:
The Red Book in Word and Image
The Red Book consists of 182 handwritten, illuminated pages in the style of a medieval manuscript with 70 full or half-page color illustrations. Dr. O’Connor will analyze the Red Book in respect to its visual aspects and illustrations and explore Jung’s various “styles of sanity”— that is the influences of artistic and verbal styles found in the work of those whom Jung treated in his early practice and which ultimately led him through a personal individuation process.
Morning Presentation
Sanford Drob, Ph.D.
The Red Book on Science, Reason, Nonsense,
Madness, Chaos and Evil
Dr. Drob will illustrate how the Red Book is neither folly nor madness, and that in the acerbic critique of science and reason, as well as the celebration of nonsense, madness, chaos and evil that we find within it, there is in fact a systematic effort to transform the values of empirical psychology and to compensate for the tide of rationality, science, and “ethics” that, for Jung, threatened to destroy not only the gods but the human psyche as well.
Afternoon presentation:
Wrestling with God
Few of Jung’s ideas have elicited as much interest and controversy as his equation of the God archetype with the Self. Here, we find Jung wrestling (like the Biblical Jacob) with the relationship between Self and God, the question of God’s sickness and death and Jung’s own role in forming a new relationship to the Divine — the healing as well as the ailing Deity. Dr. Drob will examine Jung’s struggles with the Divine in the Red Book and relate these struggles to Jung’s treatment of God and Self archetypes in his later works.
Ann Belford Ulanov, Ph.D.
What Jung’s Red Book Shows Us
The Red Book shows us how Jung found his own way by delving into the depths of his psyche, confronting personal demons and allowing himself (with the help of active imagination and visual expression) to utilize the unconscious as a means to his individuation. So too, by taking the emotional and psychological risks necessary to tap into our inner drama, will we find our own way.
John Peck, Ph.D.
Jung’s Fortress-Church in Liber Novus
(Red Book)
During the course of this seminar, which will focus on Jung’s “Fortress Church” in the Red Book, Dr. Peck will link both text and paintings to the Golden- Palace Mandala of 1928 and to aspects of Jung’s collected works and seminars. The aim of Dr. Peck’s presentation will be to offer a demonstration case, by carefully amplifying elements in that climactic painting, and grounding those amplifications in both the rest of Jung’s work and in the cultural history to which parts of this powerful imagery may be tied.
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