C.G. Jung (1875-1961) is widely recognized as a major figure in modern Western thought, and his work continues to spark controversies. He played critical roles in the formation of modern psychology, psychotherapy, and psychiatry, and a large international profession of analytical psychologists work under his name. His work has had its widest impact, however, outside professional circles: Jung and Freud are the names that most people first think of in connection with psychology, and their ideas have been widely disseminated in the arts, the humanities, films, and popular culture. Jung is also widely regarded as one of the instigators of the New Age movement. However, it is startling to realize that the book that stands at the center of his oeuvre, on which he worked for over sixteen years (1914-1930), is only now being published.
From the introduction by Sonu Shamdasani
Jungian scholar and editor of the first edition published in 2009
I myself am by no means an expert in Jungian psychology and have only a superficial understanding of its foundational concepts, such as the collective unconscious, archetypal symbols, and synchronicity. At its core, Jungian thought suggests that humanity shares a vast repository of universal images and symbols that transcend geographical and cultural boundaries, accessible only through the subconscious mind.
While I don’t own The Red Book, I’ve browsed through its contents online (see here) and have compiled the visual material I could find below.
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.
CG Jung, 1957
In conversation with Aniela Jaffe about the Red Book
