After having spent 50 years in safe-keeping in a bank vault in Zurich, The Red Book was finally published in 2009, and was a revelation to many who had an interest in the work of Carl Gustav Jung. As scholars have studied and deliberated over the contents, it has become evident that we cannot really fully appreciate Jung’s Collected Works, and other published works, until we fully appreciate the significance of the visionary experiences that he had between 1913 and 1916. The Red Book is a visual and literary record of these visionary experiences. The publication of Jung’s Red Book was therefore something of an anachronism, in that it was made available to the public long after he had developed and published his theories. Yet he stated clearly that everything that followed was based on these experiences.
Drawing on the work of Lance Owens, Alfred Ribi, Stephan Hoeller, Stephani Stephens and Peter Kingsley, this talk will reflect on Jung’s Red Book as an expression of his Visionary Experiences.