Sitting before me is a piece of buried treasure: an over-sized manuscript with a red fabric binding and a very simple title: The Red Book. I open the cover and gingerly thumb through the thick pages, setting my eyes on beautifully ornate paintings of mythical creatures paired with calligraphic text. I find myself transfixed, and I know I am not the only one. The whole of the Jungian community was abuzz when, in 2009, W. W. Norton published this more than 350-page volume. And dreamers all over the globe are still tingly. Carl Jung's personal journal, The Red Book, had been kept in a Swiss bank vault for decades, until the Jung family finally allowed it to reach the public. Why was its release such a big deal? The answer to that question rests in the transcendent tome's history. In 1913, at the age of 38, Carl Jung had a crisis during which he found himself shaken by visions of gods and demons. To deal with his breakdown, he sequestered himself in the evenings with a red-leather bound volume of parchment paper in which he wrote about, and elaborately illustrated, his emotionally charged imaginal world. What is now called The Red Book served not only as a way for Jung to process his chaotic inner life, but also as a chronicle of the evolution of his fundamental theories. In a 2009 NPR interview, the book’s editor and translator, Sonu Shamdasani, described The Red Book as the story of "how Jung recovers his soul, recovers meaning in his life through enabling the rebirth of the image of God in his soul. In so doing, he created a psychology that created a vehicle for others to regain meaning in this." Wow! So Jung found the sacred within himself and created a whole new genre of psychology just by what amounts to some serious journaling time? Imagine what any of us could do by paying equally close attention to our dreams and images. Granted, Jung’s soul-rattling visions were a little more than dreams. But, still, even with just our lowly nightmares and imaginal visitations from ex-lovers, we have the power to do what Jung did: heal ourselves. That’s what I love about The Red Book: It’s concrete proof of the psyche’s innate capacity to achieve a sense of wholeness. If Jung can do it, so can you. Want to know more about this much celebrated work? Check out the trailer for the book on YouTube, as well as Sarah Corbett's in-depth New York Times article, "The Holy Grail of the Unconscious," which served as the primary source for this blog entry. Want to know more about yourself? Start recording your dreams and come to one my dream circles, or book a private dream work session. Not ready to commit? Join The Night Is Jung Dream Discussion Group on Facebook and/or write me at thenightisjung@gmail.com for a free 20-minute phone/Zoom session.
Photo: Mandala from The Red Book