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In 1913, C. G. Jung began his “confrontation with the unconscious” via a method he called “active imagination,” by which he translated emotions into images in order “to get to the bottom of his unconscious processes.” This self-exploration lasted until 1930. He first recorded these thoughts and images in black notebooks, which he then revised, recording his reflections in a new book—Liber Novus. Bound in red leather, it included his own paintings and has always been known as the Red Book. Its existence has been known since 1962, but it was published only in 2009.
In 1930 Jung put the Red Book aside; in 1959 he tried to complete it and wrote an epilogue but broke off in mid-sentence for unknown reasons. As late as 1957 (Jung died in 1961 when he almost eighty-six), he said that the Black Books and the Red Book were autobiographical and he did not want them published in his Collected Works. On the frontispiece of this volume is a quote from 1957:
The years, of which I have spoken to you, 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 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.
This Red Book under review is a coffee-table-size book, a beautiful work of art with a simple red cover and pages that give the impression of