Jung, C. G. - Undiscovered Self, The (Princeton, 2011)

With the publication of Liber Novus----Jung's Red Book1-a new chapter

opens in the reading ofjung's works. For the first time, one is

in a position to grasp the constitution of Jung's work from 1914

onward, and to trace the intimate connections between his selfexperimentation

and his attempts to determine the typical features

of this process through his work with his patients and translate his

insights into a language acceptable to a medical and scientific public.

Thus, reading Liber Novus brings with it the task of rereading

Jung's Collected Works-much of which appears in a wholly new light.

In the winter of 1913, Jung embarked on a process of selfexperimentation.

He deliberately gave free rein to his fantasy thinking

and carefully noted what ensued. He later called this process

"active imagination." He wrote down these fantasies in the Black

Books. These are not personal diaries, but rather the records of a selfexperimentation.

The dialogues that form these active imaginations

can be regarded as a type of thinking in a dramatic form.

vVhen vVorld War I broke out, Jung considered that a number

of his fantasies were precognitions of this event. This led him to

compose the first draft of Liber Novus, which consisted of a transcription

of the main fantasies from the Black Books, together with

a layer of interpretive commentaries and lyrical elaboration. Here

Jung attempted to derive general psychological principles from

the fantasies, as well as to understand to what extent the events

portrayed in the fantasies presented, in a symbolic form, developments

that were to occur in the world.