Comment on A Strange Fire

The editors of the Journal have invited me to contribute a short companion-piece to David Sagar and Marcus West's paper to draw out some of what they describe as ‘the intriguing parallels with The Red Book and the way this paper underscores the potential ongoing contemporary pertinence of The Red Book'. I have accepted their invitation with three considerations in mind.

First, A Strange Fire does indeed suggest some parallels with Liber Novus1. Sagar entitles his record ‘a piece of active imagination' and so invites comparison with other records of active imagination, Jung's own ‘Layer 1' material in Liber Novus being the original example on the basis of which Jung subsequently elaborated a technique to foster the individuation process. This process is described and recommended in many of his writings subsequent to Liber Novus, and the Visions Seminar (1998) conducted between 1930 and 1934 is the most extensive clinical account Jung has left of the use of active imagination as the key technique used to foster it. My first aim is therefore to compare and contrast Sagar's record of his experience both with Jung's own process as recorded in The Red Book and other accounts of active imagination in the corpus of Jung's published work.

Secondly, West's commentary on the primary record of Sagar's imagination is immediately suggestive of comparison with Jung's ‘Layer 2' text in Liber Novus, added in the second half of 1914, in which he comments on and elaborates retrospectively each section of his active imaginations. Comparison of Jung's and West's approaches to the fantasy material might mutually illuminate what each author is implicitly attempting.

Thirdly, both authors of A Strange Fire invite comparison between what they are trying to do and Jung's approach by specifically referencing Liber Novus. This affords me the opportunity to comment on some methodological and contextual considerations arising from the present paper which I think may be relevant to any reader trying