The Red Book Paintings: Jung’s Confrontation with the Spiritual Unconscious

Jung’s Red Book, a magnificent illuminated manuscript, written and painted a century ago but first published in 2009, has revolutionized our understanding of Jung and his work and challenged our conception of the boundaries of psychology.  This full day seminar will focus on Jung’s paintings and examine the aesthetics, meanings, and psychological factors that inform them.  Participants will have an opportunity exchange thoughts and reactions to Jung’s paintings as well as to several of the paintings of Jung’s patient Christiana Morgan, the subject of his 1930-34 Visions Seminar. Sanford Drob will also share some of his own archetypal paintings and in the process discuss the ways in which art can involve active imagination and the unveiling of the personal and collective unconscious. The seminar is appropriate both for those who wish to enter the world of The Red Book through Jung’s paintings and those who are familiar with Jung’s text and wish to now engage with his art.