The Red Book, and more recently The Black Books, have led to reimagining Jung’s seminal concepts such as the Collective Unconscious, the Archetype, Individuation, and the Self. In this seminar we invite you to read The Red Book along with us and join in a series of six 3-hour salons in which we discuss and imagine our way into the space that became Jung’s The Red Book.
A leading Jungian Psychoanalyst guest will join Daniel Ross and Boris Matthews in each of the six salons. The first guest will be George Bright, a psychoanalyst from the United Kingdom. Echoing a student in his seminars on The Red Book, George Bright describes this work as “psychoactive material.” George Bright has been researching what he calls Jung’s more “esoteric” writings (The Red Book and Jung’s journals known as The Black Books) with a fresh look at his more “exoteric” writings (The Collected Works).
As Jung said in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, what he experienced and recorded in his journals, The Black Books, provided more than enough material for a life-time of work. Together, The Red Book, The Black Books, and the Collected Works constitute immediate experience and conscious, scholarly reflection over many decades.
As I (Daniel Ross) immersed myself in Jung’s Red Book, especially the first part, the “Liber Novus,” I came to realize that Bright’s perspective agrees with Sonu Shamdasani’s view that the decades-long “Freudocentric perspective” of Jung is no longer valid. Bright discovered that writing his 1912 Psychology of the Unconscious (translated by Beatrice Hinkel) was for Jung an act of hubris. In the “Liber Primus,” the first part of the Liber Novus, Jung calls for his soul: “My soul, where are you? Do you hear me?” By applying the scientific attitude to religion, an act of hubris, Jung had lost his soul: “I had judged her and turned her [my soul] into a scientific object.”
Over the years reading Jung, I (Boris Matthews) have more and more appreciated two of Jung’s early, foundational (circa 1916) statements. In the one, Jung emphasizes the necessity of adapting both to the world in which we exist–“outer adaptation”–and to what we essentially are–“inner adaptation”(CW 18, paras. 1084ff). In the second statement, Jung stresses the importance of following one’s own “life line,” i.e. the flow of one’s psychic energy (CW 7, paras. 500ff).
This salon will be online and live so that participants will be able to converse with the analysts and with each other. Anyone—lay or professional—interested in learning more about The Red Book and how it can be used personally and clinically is invited.
| Salon Schedule | |
| Monthly Saturdays, 9am-12pm North American Central Time |
|
| January 27 | Introduction by Sonu Shamdasani and first guest George Bright |
| February 24 | Liber Primus: “My soul, where are you?” |
| March 30 | Liber Secundus: The Red One |
| April 20 | Liber Secundus: The Incantations |
| May 25 | Liber Secundus: The Magician |
| June 29 | Scrutinies |
Learning Objectives
At the end of the series, attendees will be able to:
- Discuss the origins of The Red Book from Jung’s life and lived experience rather than from the Freudocentric historical context in which it emerged.
- Verbalize an understanding of Geroge Bright’s belief that The Red Book came partially as a response to Jung’s hubristic use of science to understand the soul and the “loss of soul” that resulted.
- Experience the “psychoactive” nature of The Red Book and its transformative potential in reading it.
Required Reading
Each salon will focus on a section of The Red Book as outlined in our course description. We expect that you have and will be reading the Red Book along with us. The first salon on January 27th will be an introduction to The Red Book and will require you read Sonu Shamdasani’s Introduction of the Reader’s edition of The Red Book. The facsimile which includes the paintings is more expensive but not necessary for our discussion.