During WWI, Jung commenced an extended self-exploration that he called his “confrontation with the unconscious.” During this period, he developed his principal theories of the collective unconscious, the archetypes, psychological types and the process of individuation, and transformed psychotherapy from a practice concerned with the treatment of pathology into a means for reconnection with the soul and the recovery of meaning in life. At the heart of this endeavor was his legendary Red Book, a large, leather bound, illuminated volume that he created between 1914 and 1930, and which contained the nucleus of his later works. While Jung considered the Red Book, or Liber Novus (New Book) to be the central work in his oeuvre, it has remained unpublished till this day, and unavailable for study and unseen by the public at large. The work can be best described as a work of psychology in a literary and prophetic form. It is possibly the most influential unpublished work in the history of psychology. Its publication is a watershed that inaugurates a new era in the understanding of Jung’s life and work.
The years … when I pursued the inner images were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this. It began at that time, and the later details hardly matter anymore. My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me. That was the stuff and material for more than only one life.
Everything later was merely the outer classification, the scientific elaboration, and the integration into life. But the numinous beginning, which contained everything, was then.”
— C. G. Jung
“The years … when I pursued the inner images were the most important time of my life…”
PUBLICATION DATE OCTOBER 7, 2009
The Red Book: Liber Novus
C. G. Jung
Edited and Introduced by Sonu Shamdasani
Translated by Mark Kyburz, John Peck and Sonu Shamdasani
With a forward by Ulrich Hoerni
The folio size (11.57 inches by 15.35 inches) volume consists of 205 pages of text in Jung’s masterful calligraphic hand and, from his skilled brush, stunning paintings. Of them, 53 pages are full images, 71 pages contain both text and 81 images and pages are pure calligraphic text.
The Red Book is a work that brings to mind such illuminated works as the The Book of Kells and the prophetic books of William Blake.
Read a review of the Red Book that appeared in the Sunday New York Times Book Review on Sunday, December 6, 2009.
Preview how the book was produced at: DigitalFusion Captures History for Carl Jung’s Red Book « DigitalFusion
Read the first ever review of the Red Book in prestigious British magazine,
The Economist
Read an interview with Professor Sonu Shamdasani in Harper’s Magazine
Download PDF of Red Book Sample Pages
The Red Book, published on October 7, 2009 by W. W. Norton & Company (www.wwnorton.com), is a scholarly and historical edition made accessible to the general reader by an introduction that sketches the social and intellectual context of the work, its history, and the circumstances in which it arose. The volume is edited by Sonu Shamdasani, General Editor of the Philemon Foundation and the Philemon Reader in Jung History at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London. The Red Book is part of the Philemon Series sponsored by the Philemon Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to raising funds to prepare for publication the hitherto unpublished works of Jung.
The volume, exactly the same size as the original, consists of a full facsimile of Jung’s work, printed on the highest quality paper and with exquisite attention paid to reproducing Jung’s calligraphy and paintings as faithfully as possible. The English edition will include more than 200 additional pages (amounting to 220,000 words) that with will present a translation of the newly reconstructed text, scholarly apparatus, introduction and appendices.
SEE NEXT PAGE FOR INFORMATION ON ORDERING THE RED BOOK.
PUBLICATION DATE OCTOBER 7, 2009
Order
Standard Edition
Current donors to the Philemon Foundation should order the standard Red Book through Amazon.com and we are providing a ‘click-through’ link for this purpose. While we would like to provide you with your copy as a thank you for your support, Amazon’s deep discount and free shipping is actually a more advantageous purchase. For us to fulfill your order the Red Book would be more expensive because of the shipping costs. By allowing a ‘click through’ purchase, Amazon will credit a small percentage of the sale to the Philemon Foundation so your purchase helps to support our on-going work.
We are pleased to offer several ways to order the Red Book below:
English Edition
North America: Order on Amazon.com
Order on Barnes & Nobles.com
Europe: Order on Amazon.co.uk
German Edition
Europe: Order on Amazon.de
Deluxe Edition
The Deluxe Edition of the Red Book is no longer available.
Red Book Exhibition
The Red Book of C. G. Jung will be the centerpiece of the exhibition The Red Book of C. G. Jung: Creation of a New Cosmology. In addition to the original volume, materials including sketches, and other manuscripts that relate to the creation of the Red Book will be displayed. The exhibit will begin at Rubin Museum of Art in New York City, and from there, move onto the Library of Congress.
October 7, 2009 to January 25, 2010
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th Street, New York
www.rmanyc.org
June 17, 2010 to July 31, 2010
The Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave, SE
Washington, DC
www.loc.gov
Red Book Exhibition Press Release from the Rubin Museum of Art
RUBIN MUSEUM OF ART PRESENTS FIRST PUBLIC SHOWING OF JUNG’S RED BOOK, A FOUNDATIONAL TOME OF CONTEMPORARY CULTURE
Exhibition Makes Visible the Visual Oeuvre of A Founding Father of Modern Psychology
New York, NY — The preeminent psychologist C. G. Jung (1875–1961) considered his Liber Novus, the famous Red Book, to be the “prima materia for a lifetime’s work.” Many contemporary scholars regard it as the most influential unpublished work in the history of psychology.
Now this cultural touchstone—in which Jung developed his principal theories of archetypes, collective unconscious, and the process of individuation—is to go on public view for the first time in a special showing at the Rubin Museum of Art, West 17th Street and Seventh Avenue. Entitled The Red Book of C. G. Jung: Creation of a New Cosmology, the exhibition from October 7, 2009, to January 25, 2010, coincides with a major event in publishing: W.W. Norton & Company’s publication of a facsimile and translation of Jung’s original.
For a book that would transform psychotherapy from a practice concerned with the treatment of the sick into a means for the higher development of the personality, the Red Book is a strange hybrid of thought and image taking the form of a 11.57 × 15.35 inch red leather-
bound manuscript. In more than two-thirds of its pages, Jung paired his abstract and narrative brightly hued graphic forms with thoughts written in a beautiful calligraphic style. The work has never been seen in public before, outside the circle of Jung’s family.
Alongside the 95-year old volume the Rubin Museum will present a number of oil, chalk, and tempera paintings and preparatory sketches related to the Red Book and other original manuscripts, including the Black Books, which contain ideas and fantasies leading up to the Red Book. In addition, copies of the new publication will be available for perusal in a reference area in the gallery.
“This exhibition will cast new light on the genesis of Jung’s work and the making of modern psychology, and open up possibilities for understanding how mandalas and mandala-like structures are understood across cultures,” says Martin Brauen, Chief Curator, Rubin Museum of Art.
Dr. Brauen, who is particularly interested in the mandala-like paintings in the Red Book, first encountered Jung’s work as a student at the Jung Institute in Zurich and in his own research into mandalas. Mandala: The Perfect Circle, an exhibition he is organizing, will be on view concurrently at the museum with the Red Book this fall.
“Jung described the mandala as an ‘archetype of wholeness,’” continues Brauen. “The Red Book of C. G. Jung is in some way the focal point of all of the exhibitions we will present in Fall and Winter 2009/2010.”
(As well as Mandala: The Perfect Circle [August 14, 2009 – January 11, 2010], the Rubin Museum exhibition schedule includes Victorious Ones: Jain Images of Perfection [September 18, 2009 – February 15, 2010] and Visions of the Cosmos: From Milky Ocean to Black Hole [December 11, 2009 – May 10, 2010].)
Visitors to the Rubin Museum will be invited to see the ways in which Jung sought to translate the symbols he encountered in dreams and fantasies into contemporary graphic form, often using the circular diagrams of the mandala, which resembles structures represented in Tibetan Buddhist art. On display will be Jung’s first known mandala-like work: Systema mundi totius (1916), a cosmic representation of his reflections on spirituality and the soul, drawn from a
series of recorded personal fantasies. Jung considered this work—along with about 25 mandala sketches that he created while serving as a Medical Corps Doctor and Commander of a British internment camp in Switzerland during the last two years of World War I—to be important documentations of his psychological and spiritual development.
The works of art and archival materials included in The Red Book of C. G. Jung are on loan from the Foundation for the Works of C. G. Jung, the Jung family private archive, and private collections.
The volume is edited by Dr. Sonu Shamdasani, Philemon Reader in Jung History at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College, London. The Red Book is one of the volumes of the Philemon Series, sponsored by the Philemon Foundation.
The folio volume consists of 205 pages of Jung’s original text and images, of which 53 are images, 71 contain both text and image, and 81 are pure (calligraphic) text pages. The English edition will include more than 200 additional pages, including an introduction by Dr. Shamdasani that will outline the structure of the work and give an overview of its content, and the translation of the original German into English by Dr. Mark Kyburz, Dr. John Peck, and Dr. Shamdasani. The edition establishes the significance of The Red Book for the genesis of Jung’s later work.
The publication of the Red Book has already been hailed as a major event in the understanding of the cultural history of the 20th century.
About RMA
www.rmanyc.org The RMA holds one of the world’s most important collections of Himalayan art. Paintings, pictorial textiles, and sculpture are drawn from cultures that touch upon the arc of mountains that extends from Afghanistan in the northwest to Myanmar (Burma) in the southeast and includes Tibet, Nepal, Mongolia, and Bhutan.
About LOC
www.loc.gov The Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and serves as the research arm of Congress. It is also the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, maps and manuscripts in its collections.
Red Book Events
ADVANCE NOTICE
Prophecy, Divine Madness and Psychology: Liber Novus, The Red Book of C. G. Jung
A Public Lecture by Sonu Shamdasani, editor and co-translator of the Red Book, General Editor of the Philemon Foundation and Philemon Professor of Jung History at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London.
Friday, April 23, 2010
7:00-9:00 pm
Schoenberg Hall – UCLA
UCLA Campus, Los Angeles, CA 90024
General Admission: $50 (unreserved seating)
Donor Special Admission: $5000: Includes: private viewing of the Red Book and reception at the Hammer Museum, Saturday, April 10; priority seating for a screening of The World Within at the Hammer Museum, Sunday, April 11; three reserved seats for the Liber Novus lecture, Friday, April 23; a private donor salon and reception with Sonu Shamdasani on Saturday, April 24; reserved seating at the Hammer Dialogue series with Sonu Shamdasani and James Hillman on Sunday, April 25, and a private donor brunch.
Donor Special Admission: $1000: Includes: invitation to a private viewing of the Red Book and reception at the Hammer Museum, Friday, April 10; priority seating for a screening of The World Within at the Hammer Museum, Sunday, April 11; two reserved seats for the Liber Novus lecture, Friday, April 23; a private donor salon and reception with Sonu Shamdasani on Saturday, April 24.
Please visit Red Book Events in Los Angeles for related events and online registration.
Public Lecture:
OREGON FRIENDS OF C. G. JUNG PRESENTS: A WEEKEND PROGRAM ON C. G. JUNG’S RED BOOK
A Friday Presentation:
April 16, 7:30 p.m.
Portland, OR
The Way of What is to Come: Jung’s Liber Novus and the Past and Future of Jungian Psychology. A Presentation by Sonu Shamdasani, Ph.D., editor and lead translator of The Red Book, with an introduction by Daniel Baumann, President of the Zürich C. G. Jung Institute and great-grandson of C.G. Jung.
A Saturday Seminar:
April 17, 9:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Portland, OR
Understanding Jung and Jungian Psychology through Liber Novus.
A Seminar with Sonu Shamdasani, Ph.D., editor and lead translator of the Red Book.
A Celebration: Saturday evening
April 17th 6:30 – 11:00 p.m.
Portland, OR.
Jung Anew! Dinner, dance and fundraiser with Daniel Baumann
For details on ordering tickets go to: www.ofj.org
C.G. JUNG’S DREAM HOUSES: THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE HUMAN PSYCHE, by Andreas Jung.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
8:00 PM
Rosenthal Pavilion, Kimmel Center
New York University
60 Washington Square South
New York, New York 10012
Admission is free.
Andreas Jung is the Secretary of the Stiftung C. G. Jung Küsnacht, an architect, the grandson of C. G. Jung and current occupant of the Jung family home in Küsnacht.
Public Lecture:
Saturday, November 7, 2009
4:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Royal Society of Medicine
1 Wimpole Street, London W1
Lecture and Reception £55
Enquiries about the event to Maggie Stanway tel: 020 7235 8158 or email:
‘ Liber Novus’: The Red Book of C. G. Jung, by Professor Sonu Shamdasani, editor and co-translator, General Editor of the Philemon Foundation and Philemon Reader in Jung History at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College, London. This lecture is sponsored by The Association of Jungian Analysts, The Analytical Psychology Club, The British Association of Psychotherapists, The Guild of Analytical Psychology and Spirituality, The Independent Group of Analytical Psychologists, The Journal of Analytical Psychology, The Philemon Foundation, and The Society of Analytical Psychology.
PHILEMON FOUNDATION DONOR’S PRIVATE VIEWING OF C. G. JUNG’S RED BOOK
Thursday, October 8, 2009
6:30 PM to 9:00 PM
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th Street, New York
The Philemon Foundation is pleased to invite all of its donors to a private reception and viewing of C. G. Jung’s Red Book. Attendees will have an opportunity to meet Professor Sonu Shamdasani and members of the Board of Directors of the Philemon Foundation.
Friday, October 9, 2009
7:30 PM
New York Academy of Medicine
1216 Fifth Avenue at 103rd St.
New York, NY 10029
Tickets are $20 and may be purchased at the door.
www.nyam.org
Liber Novus: The Red Book of C. G. Jung by Sonu Shamdasani
On the occasion of the publication C. G. Jung’s legendary Red Book, the Philemon Foundation is pleased to sponsor a lecture together with a slide presentation of images from the work by Sonu Shamdasani, editor of the Red Book. The third volume of the Philemon Series, the Red Book is translated by Mark Kyburz, John Peck and Sonu Shamdasani, and published by W. W. Norton & Co.
Sonu Shamdasani is Philemon Professor of Jung History at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London, and General Editor of the Philemon Foundation.
MARTIN BRAUEN AND SONU SHAMDASANI IN CONVERSATION
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
7:00 PM
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th Street, New York
Martin Brauen, Chief Curator of the Rubin Museum of Art and Sonu Shamdasani, Guest Curator of the exhibition, The Red Book of C. G. Jung: Creation of a New Cosmology, will discuss cross-correspondences between this exhibition and the concurrent Rubin Museum exhibition, Mandala: The Perfect Circle.
Admission to the program is $12. Tickets may be purchased in advance from the museum’s box office at (212) 620-5000, ext. 344 or online at www.rmanyc.org/calendar.
Dr. Brauen is the author of Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism and Professor Shamdasani is General Editor of the Philemon Foundation and Philemon Professor in Jung History at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College, London.