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The Red Book: Liber Novus the Years...Whenipursued the Inner Images, Were the Most Important Time of My Life

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The Red Book: Liber Novus the Years...Whenipursued the Inner Images, Were the Most Important Time of My Life ART AND IMAGES IN PSYCHIATRY SECTION EDITOR: JAMES C. HARRIS, MD The Red Book: Liber Novus The years...whenIpursued the inner images, were the most important time of my life. Every- thing else is to be derived from this....Myentire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me....Everything later was merely the outer classification, the scientific elaboration and the integration into life. C. G. Jung, 19571(p vii) N THE FALL OF 1913, 38-YEAR- In 1911 and 1912, Jung published 2 ar- about his relationship to Freud and psy- old Carl Jung (1875-1961) faced ticles that laid out his analysis of the pub- choanalysis but before the actual break a personal midlife crisis just lished fantasies of a young woman he be- with him. When he asked Freud, he too months before the onset of the lieved demonstrated the prodrome to was bewildered by these dreams. IFirst World War. It resulted in him aban- schizophrenia. In the published book4 Under Freud’s influence, Jung wrote doning his promising academic career he questioned key Freudian views. that he had been at the university in Zurich, Switzer- That year, 1912, Jung had a puzzling dream about Freud. In it Jung was walk- looking on the unconscious as nothing but land, and his leadership in the psycho- the receptacle of dead material, but slowly the analytic movement. Four years earlier, ingwithsomeonealongacountryroadand idea of the archetypes began to formulate it- he had received international recogni- self in my mind...aconviction that the un- tion when he, Sigmund Freud, and Adolf conscious did not consist of [repressed] in- Meyer accepted honorary degrees from ert material only...there was something Clark University in Worcester, Massa- living down there. I was greatly excited at the 2 idea of there being something living in me that chusetts. On his return to Switzerland 3(p40) in 1909, Jung built a new home for his I did not know anything about. growing family on Lake Zurich and re- He concluded that Freud’s psychoanaly- signed his hospital appointment to fo- sis was a living relic; a psyche viewed as cus his attention on psychoanalysis, as- a tabula rasa (blank slate)—like the cus- suming the editorship of the Yearbook toms official in the dream, psychoanalysts of Psychoanalysis and in 1910 the presi- rummaged through old baggage—but dency of the newly formed Interna- Jung’s dream of the 12th-century knight tional Psychoanalytic Association (IPA). suggested to him a deeper mythological As a medical student, Jung had cho- archetypal structure, one later referred sen psychiatry over medicine and physi- to as the mythopoeic unconscious.5 It be- ological chemistry after reading Richard came more apparent to Jung that he von Krafft-Ebing’s Textbook of Insanity, needed to find his own approach. Based on Clinical Observations. As a stu- Despite his misgivings, Jung ac- dent he imagined that as a psychiatrist he cepted reelection as president of the IPA would work “out the unconscious phe- at the Congress held September 7 and 3(p7) nomena of the psychosis.” His choice Figure 1. Tree of Life. Permission WW Norton. 8, 1913, in Munich, Germany. He gave surprised him too because his father, with a lecture at that meeting on psychologi- whom he often disagreed, had been the came to a crossing. Suddenly an old man cal types, proposing differences be- Protestant pastor to the insane asylum in wearing the uniform of an Austrian cus- tween Freud (an extrovert) and Alfred the Swiss canton where he grew up. Jung toms official appeared; it was Freud. Jung Adler (an introvert) based on their re- began his psychiatric training in 1900 at wrote, “In the dream the idea of censorship spective psychological orientations; one the Burghölzli psychiatric hospital in came to my mind. Freud didn’t see me and focused on the dynamics of sexuality and Zurich. Thus his clinical experience was butwalkedawaysilently.[Mycompanion] the other on the dynamics of power. in hospital work, and unlike Freud, he said to me, ‘Did you notice him? He has While riding on a train to visit his primarily worked with major mental ill- been dead for thirty years, but he can’t die mother-in-law on October 17, 1913,3,6 nesses. He stayed on at the Burghölzli to properly....’”3(p39) The dream scene in the fall before the outbreak of the First become chief assistant to director Eugen changed and Jung found himself walking World War, Jung experienced cata- Bleuler (1857-1939). In 1908 Bleuler in- with the same man along a medieval street: strophic fantasies; he witnessed a flood, troducedthetermschizophreniatoreplace the deaths of countless thousands, and dementia praecox, later noting that al- All at once I saw among [the local people] a rivers of blood. He could not get them though he used the word in the singular very tall man, a Crusader dressed in a coat out of his mind. To him, a psychiatrist, it referred to a group of several diseases. of [chain]mail, whom I viewed with aston- these fantasies were so frightening that ishment; what was he doing there? My com- Jung too focused on psychosis and panion said he has been dead since the twelfth he questioned his sanity. Yet the fanta- speculated on the similarity of a pa- century, but he is not yet properly dead. He sies quickly passed and he returned to tient’s hallucination to an ancient myth always walks here among the people, but they his work and daily routine. Jung was not unknown to the patient. Increasingly as don’t see him.3(p39) alone in experiencing anxiety in that era he sought to understand his severely before the war. The poet Thomas Hardy mentally ill patients, his views about psy- Jung was bothered by this dream, one that expressed similar fears in his poetry (eg, choanalysis differed from those of Freud. occurred while he was still ambivalent Channel Firing); politically countries (REPRINTED) ARCH GEN PSYCHIATRY/ VOL 67 (NO. 6), JUNE 2010 WWW.ARCHGENPSYCHIATRY.COM 554 ©2010 American Medical Association. All rights reserved. Downloaded From: https://jamanetwork.com/ on 10/02/2021 were building up their fortifications. On ing his private practice, meeting his fam- ner turmoil and are quite personal. Never October 27, 1913, Jung’s difficulties with ily obligations, and completing a period published in his lifetime, The Red Book Freud worsened and he resigned his edi- of obligatory military service. Some have is essentially his personal diary, reveal- torship of the Yearbook.2 mistakenly claimed that Jung was psy- ing his conflicts with his religious up- Jung had reached the peak of his pro- chotic during this time because of his vivid bringing, personal life experiences, pos- fession but found himself increasingly dis- descriptions of his visual experiences. That sible reference to his being sexually satisfied, writing: “I had achieved every- he made his observations in full con- molested by a trusted adult during his thing that I had wished for myself. I had sciousness, maintained his daily rou- adolescence, and extensive fantasy ma- achieved honor, power, wealth, knowl- tines, and carried out his usual family and terial that he worried would lead oth- edge, and every human happiness. Then civic responsibilities indicates his reality ers to question his scientific integrity. So my desire for the increase of these trap- testing was intact throughout. In one fan- personal is the material that Jung’s heirs pings ceased, the desire ebbed from me tasy he recorded, Jung finds himself in an denied scholars access to the book un- and horror came over me,”1(pp231,232) as he insane asylum. He tells the professor that til 2001, when Sonu Shamdasani, later remembered the vision of the flood; “at he summoned these images, that they are its editor, showed them a copy of The the beginning of the following month not abnormal but the product of the in- Red Book text that Johns Hopkins– (November 12, 1913) I seized my pen and tuitive method.1(p295) In 1925 in a profes- trained physician and Jung translator began” to write.1(p232) From that day un- sional seminar, he clearly distinguished Cary F. Baynes had copied out for Jung til April 19, 1914, he continued to record his voluntary active imagination experi- in 1924. This text had been deposited his personal turmoil in 6 black note- ences at that time from those of psycho- in the Yale University Library archives. books. His entries in these notebooks over sis in psychiatric patients.3(p43) Jung wrote, The Red Book or Liber Novus (New those 5 months would later comprise [T]he essential thing is to differentiate one- Book) is a 205-page manuscript compris- the source material for The Red Book. self from these unconscious contents by per- ing 53 full images, 71 pages that contain Throughout those difficult months, he sonifying them, and at the same time bring both text and artwork, and 81 pages of grounded himself in his private psychi- them into relationship with consciousness. pure calligraphic text. Some illustrations atric practice, his family life, and the hope It is of course ironical that I, a psychiatrist, refer to the text and others are not con- that his inner exploration would allow nected to specific text but show his vi- him to better understand his patients. sual journey in encountering the Self, the Searching the depths of his soul in those term Jung used to indicate mature tran- months, he found a new perspective and scendence achieved through the integra- concluded his last notebook on April 19, tive linking of his ego with the arche- writing, “This is the Way.”1(p330) Later he typal underpinnings of the psyche.
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