Red Book (Jung)
2009 publication
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| Author | Carl Gustav Jung |
|---|---|
| Original title | Liber Novus ("The New Book") |
| Translator | Mark Kyburz John Peck Sonu Shamdasani |
| Publisher |
Philemon Foundation and W. W. Norton & Co. |
|
Publication date
|
2009 |
| Pages | 404 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 317919484 |
| 150.19/54 22 | |
| LC Class | BF109.J8 A3 2009 |
The Red Book is a red leather‐bound folio manuscript crafted by the Swiss physician and psychologist Carl Gustav Jung between 1915 and about 1930. It recounts and comments upon the author's imaginative experiences between 1913 and 1916, and is based on manuscripts first drafted by Jung in 1914‐15 and 1917. Despite being nominated as the central work in Jung’s oeuvre, it was not published or made otherwise accessible for study until 2009.
In October 2009, with the cooperation of Jung's estate and after 13 years of exhaustive editorial work by Sonu Shamdasani, The Red Book: Liber Novus was published by W. W. Norton in a facsimile edition, complete with an English translation, a comprehensive introduction written by Shamdasani, three appendices, and over 1500 editorial notes. Editions and translations in several other languages soon followed.
In December 2012, Norton additionally released a "Reader's Edition" of the work; this smaller format edition includes the complete translated text of The Red Book: Liber Novus along with the introduction and notes prepared by Shamdasani, but it omits the facsimile reproduction of Jung's original calligraphic manuscript.
While the work has in past years been descriptively called simply "The Red Book", Jung did emboss a formal title on the spine of his leather-bound folio: he titled the work Liber Novus (in Latin, the "New Book"). His manuscript is now increasingly cited as Liber Novus, and under this title implicitly includes draft material intended for but never finally transcribed into the red leather folio proper.
Jung was associated with Freud for a period of approximately six years, beginning in 1907. Over those years, their relationship became increasingly acrimonious. When the final break of the relationship came in 1913, Jung retreated from many of his professional activities to intensely reconsider his personal and professional path. The creative activity that produced Liber Novus came in this period, from 1913 to about 1917.
Biographers and critics have disagreed whether these years in Jung's life should be seen as "a creative illness, a period of introspection, a psychotic break, or simply madness."Anthony Storr, reflecting on Jung's own judgment that he was "menaced by a psychosis" during this time, concluded that the period represented a psychotic episode. According to Sonu Shamdasani, Storr's opinion is untenable in light of currently available documentation.
During the years Jung engaged with his "nocturnal work" on Liber Novus, he continued to function in his daytime activities without any evident impairment. He maintained a busy professional practice, seeing on average five patients a day. He lectured, wrote, and remained active in professional associations. Throughout this period he also served as an officer in the Swiss army and was on active duty over several extended periods between 1914 and 1918, the years of World War I in which Jung was composing Liber Novus. Jung was not "psychotic" by any accepted clinical criteria during the period he created Liber Novus. Nonetheless, what he was doing during these years defies facile categorization.
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