|
The Red Book | 
| Author: C. G. Jung
Creators: Sonu Shamdasani, Mark Kyburz, John Peck
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.
List Price: $195.00
Buy New: $114.07
as of 11/22/2009 01:56 CST details
You Save: $80.93 (42%)
New (6) Used (2) from $114.07
Seller: Amazon.com
Rating:  21 reviews
Sales Rank: 169
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 416
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 9.6
Dimensions (in): 18 x 12.3 x 2.4
ISBN: 0393065677
Dewey Decimal Number: 150.1954
EAN: 9780393065671
ASIN: 0393065677
Publication Date: October 19, 2009
Shipping: Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 1 to 3 months
| |
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The most influential unpublished work in the history of psychology. When Carl Jung embarked on an extended self-exploration he called his “confrontation with the unconscious,” the heart of it was The Red Book, a large, illuminated volume he created between 1914 and 1930. Here he developed his principle theories—of the archetypes, the collective unconscious, and the process of individuation—that transformed psychotherapy from a practice concerned with treatment of the sick into a means for higher development of the personality.
While Jung considered The Red Book to be his most important work, only a handful of people have ever seen it. Now, in a complete facsimile and translation, it is available to scholars and the general public. It is an astonishing example of calligraphy and art on a par with The Book of Kells and the illuminated manuscripts of William Blake. This publication of The Red Book is a watershed that will cast new light on the making of modern psychology.
212 color illustrations.
|
| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 21
 Long Awaited Wonders .... November 13, 2009
Tim Warneka (Cleveland, OH USA)
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Other reviewers have described this marvel, so I'll spare future readers from repeated verbiage.
I began reading Jung over 20 years ago when I was in undergraduate. It was Jung's works that inspired me to move from studying business to learning psychology ... (and what a long, strange trip that experience has been!) I've been making my living as a counselor for over 15 years now.
In all the time I studied Jung, the Red Book was something that Jungians whispered existed, but no one (whom I spoke to anyway) had ever seen it.
This is a wonderful book that was clearly lovingly and carefully written by one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century. I'm very excited by its publication, as I truly did not think it would be published in my lifetime (if ever).
So ... many thanks to everyone who was involved in bringing this book to print, and to the heirs of Jung for allowing the Red Book to be printed!
Judging from the reviews, several other reviewers apparently read the Red Book quite quickly.
I prefer to savor it and read it slowly. The parts I've read have been amazing. I'm blogging about my journey through the Red Book here:
[...]
If you are at all interested in Jung's word, this book is a must read.
Highly recommended.
Tim Warneka
Author
Leading People the Black Belt Way: Conquering the Five Core Problems Facing Leaders Today
The Way of Leading People: Unlocking Your Integral Leadership Skills with the Tao Te Ching
Black Belt Leader, Peaceful Leader: An Introduction to Catholic Servant Leadership
Healing Katrina: Volunteering in Post-Hurricane Mississippi
deeply fascinating November 10, 2009
Lars (DK)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
How can i possibly review this book, was my first thought, and it still is. I decided to do so anyway, because i think it might bring something to the table.
The book is huge, the imagery alone would take a tremendous amount of time to study. These things contribute to a certain "wow" effect that needs to settle before one begins reading the actual text, or, well at least in my case, even think of doing a review of the book.
So here we are: The book itself. The first's part of the book contains a preface by Ulrich Hoerni Followed by Jung's artwork and calligraphy presented as an original re production of Liber Novus. At the back of the book is the translation, which I think is very well done, I should say I do read German, but I'm in no way a professional translator. The book is devided into liber primus and liber secundus and scrutines which contain an entry of black book 5 (bare with me but I'm gonna quote Sonu Shamdasani from a Harpers magazine article instead of explaining the black books myself:
"To begin with, one must clearly differentiate Jung's Black Books, in which he initially wrote his fantasies together with reflections on his mental states, from Liber Novus. The former were records of a self-experiment, while the latter drew in part on these materials to compose a literary and pictorial work."
So is there a "before and after the red book" which has been state before. I cant say, I don't think anyone can for sure. After reading the book I had a lot of AHA! moments contributing to a better understanding of some of Jung's other works. The book has given me a much much clearer image of Jung as a person, but that image is inheritably flawed, simply because I did not know Jung. So weather or not the book, takes away from Jung's image, or adds to it, is in the end, not really that interesting.
The book is more straightforward in its text then many of Jung's academic works and as such is easier to read. The concept though, is far from straightforward and might take a lot longer to absorb then the usual academic material from Jung.
Extraordinary November 3, 2009
B. Hill (Pasaden, California USA)
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
In 1913, a 40 year old world renowned psychologist suffers recurring dreams and visions of world catastrophe. His expertise as a psychiatrist working with incurable psychotics forces him to conclude that he is on a course to madness. His training as a scientist compels him to meticulously document what he imagines will be his unavoidable decline into insanity. With the outbreak of World War I, he experiences relief in the realization that the images that have haunted him over the prior ten months pictured not his own undoing, but that of the world. As the outer conflict unfolds, he continues to record the process unfolding within his own psyche, which is reflective of the events in the larger collective. He continues the process until near the War's end, and then spends more than a decade devotedly elaborating, amplifying and illustrating the material that burst upon him during that time in order to render it comprehensible.
The Red Book is not "personal" as we use that word now. It is "personal" in the sense that it details one individual's very unique experience of coming into relationship with what Jung termed the Self, and in prior times was referred to as God, but it is at the same time very impersonal, and actually universal, in cataloguing the drama inherent in any person's formation of that relationship. The book is at home with The Odyssey, The Divine Comedy, Goethe's Faust, and, as much as anything, The Red Book is Jung's response to Thus Spoke Zarathustra and to Nietzsche's proposition that for modern man, God is dead. The response is that God is neither dead nor to be found in outer religious, national or political containers, but is to be discovered and struggled with in the living of each individual life.
A not uncommon dream is of stumbling upon a previously unknown addition or wing of one's dwelling, which addition is found to be many, many times the size of the existing structure, and to contain objects and treasures of previously unimaginable value, interest and numinousity. One is filled with awe and wonder at the new found wealth and possibilities. The experience of encountering The Red Book after spending 30 years in Jung's existing body of work is equally stupefying. That there could be so much more that Jung had to share and communicate about the human soul seems not just improbable, but impossible. Yet The Red Book is that much, much larger, more nuanced and tremendously numinous structure that is behind, under, around and the foundation for all of Jung's subsequent ideas, theories, publications and works. Extraordinary.
An Encounter with Mana October 29, 2009
Chaz Gormley (Santa Fe, NM)
14 out of 14 found this review helpful
I finished the Red Book last night. It is a magnificent book of power. Here, you will find a side of the chameleon Jung that cannot be found in any of his Collected Works, his published Seminars, or his published Letters (all of which I have read). The only book that sometimes points, tonally, in this direction is Memories, Dreams, Reflections. The Red Book unleashes Jung the Poet, Jung the Painter, Jung the Prophet, and Jung the Shamanic Explorer and Revealer of the depths. Combined with his previously published oeuvre, the Liber Novus demonstrates the remarkably large personality that Jung was, and his cultural importance for our time.
My first impression in browsing the book, examining the vividly detailed art work and calligraphy was that the Red Book is reminiscent of the Book of Kells, or medieval Islamic or Christian Illuminated Manuscripts. As a previous reviewer mentioned, this book has a Presence. It generates a circle of energy, a power that can't be missed. It renews a respect for the printed book, so long second nature to educated humans, which can be forgotten in this age of digital media. The dust jacket has a sort of cheap look and feel, so I immediately was a bit put off; however, the quality of the pages, the color and vividness of the art work and the printing left me amazed that the Philemon Foundation could sell the book at the price they do and hope to make a profit.
Jung's words answer many questions about the development of his personality, his psychology and Active Imagination. Shamdasani's Introduction is outstanding in places, answering other questions and providing very helpful background; in other places it is superficial and some of his statements about Jung's psychology are dubious. It is more effective as an Epilogue than an Introduction, as it sets the wrong tone for this remarkable exploration of the Unconscious. The included Notes (translator and editorial) are interesting but written in high Academese; they feel a bit out of place. Still, Shamdasani, and all those involved, have achieved a tremendous opus, themselves, in releasing this buried treasure.
The Red Book demonstrates, in magnificent, poetic words, and breathtaking, unforgettable imagery, nothing less than the Process of Self-transformation, of Individuation. As Jung says, "the supreme meaning is the path, the way and the bridge to what is to come." In this Book of Mana, Jung reveals that process of creating/finding/building the New Path/Way/Bridge.
A Weighty Tome October 27, 2009
Sylvia Hawley (Springfield, OR USA)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
Okay, now I've read it all, whew!!! Starting the second time through and taking notes. This is historic literature and the second time even better since the introductory materials by editor and translators are even more valuable and more transparently astute and, well, brilliant.
It is touching to see Jung sweating blood (red means a lot of things and blood is one of them) to arrive at understandings that have by now become so much a part of our worldview, so much a part of psychology, so much a part of our myth with Joseph Campbell and all the better known authors and scholars working with Jung's understandings.
There are schools of astrology infused with the very understandings Jung found on his self-experiments and exploration. No wonder he considered this the genesis of everything he did later and his most important. And no wonder he hesitated again and again to publish it. He felt it would defeat his insistence on sticking to science, to the empirical, for in this journey through his own subconscious mind, he had to toss science and words away. Because there's more than that going on in us.
Two schools that are directly infused with all these understandings are Liz Greene's London School of Astrology (she's Zurich trained Jungian) and Jeffrey Wolf Green's Pluto School of Evolutionary Astrology. Jeffrey got his understandings the same way Jung did, on the inner planes, but expressed them often in Jung's terms because, after all, these terms (archetypes, collective unconscious) are now a part of our worldview. That is what Jung hoped for. But also he hoped (and said) that a time would come we would realize we ARE each other and that what we do toward one another we do to ourselves. So we would no longer make war or hurt each other because we could just skip the middle man and do it to ourself.
I will leave the former review I made before I read the book all just in case it is not too long to break the program at Amazon.
The Red Book arrived, 16 inches high, 12 inches wide,2 inches thick and weighing just over 9 pounds. Not going to be easy to carry around. The complete colorful facsimile of Jung's original journal, with its beautiful calligraphy and amazing artwork makes up the first part and the translation the rest. Needless to say I have not read it all yet. There's a spell check glitch in the word collaborated somewhere in the preface or acknowledgements. This surprised me but now I cannot find it. Jung scholars greater than I will be digging into this wonderful work for longer than we all will live. My expectation is that this will create a wider and deeper appreciation for Sonu Shamdasani and his work. In Shamdasani's introductory chapters, he shows that his understanding of Jung's work is comprehensive enough to answer many of our questions, the more famous things we all wonder about, and the key or core advances in Jung's courage to go forward with his own work. I would think that one day, this much bigger than coffee-table edition will grow smaller, perhaps in two volumes, perhaps in cloth, making it easier to tote. My own admiration and gratitude to the family members who trusted Shamdasani with this. I know the day will come when the version with the typo will be most highly prized and valued. Naturally, I recommend the book. There's just that sacred feeling. Then there's that sacred satisfaction.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 21
|
|
|
|
Return to Math.com | |
