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Nearly a century ago, in October-November 1913 on two train journeys in Switzerland C. G. Jung experienced waking visions which began as fantasies
he deliberately allowed into consciousness. The material initially terrified Jung; as a psychiatrist he recognized the mythic quality of the content and feared for his psychological stability. Remarkably, he intentionally entered into and recorded this material along with his fantasies and dreams during the period from November 1913 through April 1914. His ability to engage these productions phenomenologically and then to reflect on their psychological meaning was essential to his mental well-being and came to form the basis for his method of ‘active imagination,’ the deliberate engagement with the unconscious through direct exploration of internal image and affect. The contemporary use of analytic reveries in assessing activations in the interactive field can be seen as deriving from this approach.
Realizing the importance of this archaic material for his own psychological development, Jung wrote down the fantasies and dreams along with his reflections in black leather notebooks (The Black Books) and then typed drafts. Reworking the drafts, elaborating and refining commentaries, he gradually produced a calligraphic volume bound in red leather in the fashion of a medieval illuminated manuscript. Two texts comprised of folio pages were constructed, Liber Primus and Liber Secundus. A series of paintings associated with these experiences were also done by Jung and are included in the calligraphic volume, the whole being entitled Liber Novus. Jung continued to work on this volume until 1930; although he briefly resumed work on it in 1959, it was left incomplete at the time of his death in 1961. He specified in his will that: “The Red Book and the Black Books should remain with his family;” he did not want them included in his collected works (Shamdasani, p. viii).
After careful consideration Jung's heirs accepted a proposal b