Genius or Psychosis? | The Red Book Book Review

um book review so recently i read the red book or liber novus by the one and only carl jung and wow this might be the most fascinating written work of all time but what initially hooked me was the back story who the heck was carl jung a genius a psychologist a psychiatrist an artist an important figure in anthropology archaeology philosophy and religious studies a student of the one and only papa freud the therapist of the great physicist wolfgang pauli an important spy for the oss during world war ii who predicted hitler's suicide well yes and it starts with the red book the year is 1912. carl jung a young psychoanalyst receives a letter from none other than the father of psychoanalysis sigmund freud it ends with one who while behaving abnormally keeps shouting that he is normal gives ground for the suspicion that he lacks insight into his illness accordingly i propose that we abandon our personal relations entirely jung had at one time been declared by freud to be his heir and his crowned prince but now was more like his prodigal son he had not only lost a father figure and a friend but burned a valuable bridge in the academic world tensions between these psychology titans had grown and jung's theory concerning the nature of the unconscious drifted from freud the letter was the snapping point and now jung was left to prove himself alone amid all the stress and uncertainty the unimaginable happened while on a train he looked out and saw a sea of blood covering europe like a great flood jung had worked in mad houses studying schizophrenic patients for over a decade so we knew the symptoms this was an episode a vision a psychotic break and likely a prophetic warning of his impending madness he was doomed to schizophrenic insanity freud would be proven right and jung's name would be lost in history when world war one occurred he was relieved it became clear to him that the appropriate interpretation of his vision was the forewarning of the global conflict rather than his personal insanity his unconscious had predicted the future still the psychotic episodes didn't stop there every night he entered a state of creative psychosis while during the day he continued his therapeutic practice trying to maintain a mask the facade of stability at times he slept with a loaded pistol by his bed ready to blow his brains out in case the stress of his nightly episodes became too great luckily it never went that far but perhaps he was looking at it all wrong perhaps this was fate nightly he descended into and confronted the very unconscious he had suspicions that freud was wrong about this was a chance to study it firsthand so he decided to write accounts of his psychotic episodes down in small black books he scribbled down the allegorical creative insanity fervently and from all that chaos came what would be the nucleus of his later theories he would later abridge the black books into a book he titled liber news or the new book which was bound in red leather earning its more common name the red book in it he wrote with calligraphy pens and added his own paintings and illustrations making the final book somewhat of an art piece in his own words this book became his bible and it was never completed and ever published he led very few see it and for the most part it was kept secret parts referenced only a few times in his lectures and shown to close acquaintances even after his death it was locked away in a bank fault in zurich for more than 25 years the question is why what could a book contain that a man such as carl jung wouldn't want published in his lifetime well luckily after years of prodding the book was made public in 2009. so now we have the opportunity to answer the question of what is written in this most sacred and personal of young's work shrouded in mystery for over 25 years to say what it's about is no simple task that's like asking me to say what uh niches thus spoke zarathustra is about or what all of christian scripture is about it's archetypically rich and moving in certain cases where i'm not even sure why and so i'm hesitant to propose a simplistic summary it would be a more reasonable task to split it up and explain parts of it even then interpreting the book can feel like interpreting someone else's dream for them something that as a psychotherapist you aren't supposed to do instead you're supposed to help the dreamer interpret their own dream this is likely why jung deemed it his personal bible and kept it to himself rather than preparing it for mass consumption how could the world even understand it as he did instead he recommended his patients create their own red books using active imagination he says think of it in your imagination and try to paint it then when these things are in some precious book you can go to the book and turn over the pages and for you it'll be your church your cathedral silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal if anyone else tells you that it's morbid or neurotic and you listen to them then you will lose your soul for this book is your soul so rather than interpreting the red book in depth for you and reviewing it i think we ought rather to look at the red book as an example what were these bouts of psychotic genius and why were they important to him for jung the red book contained the prototype of his own individuation process he recognizes that the goal of man is neither to become subject to the unconscious nor to repress it but to integrate it a stance that is often overlooked in its significance at the time the freudian emphasis was focused on repression as the cause of neurotic behavior a result primarily of christianity christianity had lost its original meaning people began to see the complete domination of logos as a virtue the ego is subject to unconscious drives and out of fear of becoming dominated by these drives to the point of animalistic determinism we repressed them completely in order to individuate this is seen somewhat in the mosaic laws then collectively we were ready for the next step in our conscious progression so the new ethos was established with the arrival of christ the transformation symbol the catalyst an example for achieving the self or integrating our unconscious aspects however the message was lost and god died in western culture freud addressed the neurotic result of these religious misunderstandings but what was the world to do now that the christian mythos was either misinterpreted or abandoned the goal was neither to repress nor become slaves to the unconscious but to integrate it this in essence is like tapping back into what matters what truly matters which isn't a relative choice is like gaining self-mastery becoming full and self-aware to explore the nature of consciousness which holds significant value both on a more concrete psychological level and a more transcendent metaphysical level accordingly the theme or plot of the red book follows his pursuit to regain his soul the book contains his transformative journey he comes to term with the blind eros of his unconscious in the form of siloam from the bible salome for those of you who don't know is the incestuous bloodthirsty stepdaughter of herod who danced for him and was promised that any wish she had would be granted so she asked for and received the head of john the baptist a strange embodiment of the psyche for one to come to terms with indeed in his own words no tree it is said can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell so this book was by no means pleasant he dove into the depths of his own hell and acted as a refining fire so what about the rest of us jung found his soul but for many of us god is still seemingly dead the west is rootless and we need a replacement for such a significant loss this in a time such as ours is as important as ever you can feel the tension on our social fabric building the threat of its snapping is omnipresent and why because of the people we in the west exist in a sickening culture masses of neurotic people prone to conflict and polarization and it's no wonder when we take away the transformative myths that once attempted to teach integration the world slips into the pitfalls of possession repression projection and countless other neurotic traits how can anyone diagnose such an illness on a mass scale you can't instead you can only demonstrate the path to self-understanding on an individual level you can only lead the horse to water to show others how to once more find their souls and hope they choose to undertake the journey by their own free will here's a clip of jung himself the world hangs on a thin thread and at this psyche of man assume that certain fellows in moscow lose their nerve or their common sense for a bit and the whole world is in fire and not flames it is nowadays we are not threatened by elementary catastrophes there is no such thing as an h-bomb that is all man's doing we are the great danger the psyche is the great danger what if something goes wrong with society you see and so you see it is demonstrated to us in our days what what the power of psyche is of man how important it is to know something about it but we know nothing about it so i decided to take jung's advice and make my own red book to explore my own psychological makeup and the mythos that have sort of shaped my culture and me as an individual the experience has been absolutely amazing and i think it offers real potential as a therapeutic practice for those who can't afford traditional therapy one can use it to fully integrate past traumas to explore religious stories and consider metaphysical questions three things that we all ought to do more often so this is a challenge i challenge you guys to make your own red books your own cathedrals your own holy places dedicate an hour of your life to pondering introspection letting your unconscious sort of express itself and manifest and write it down and tell me how it goes i'll probably do the same and hopefully i'll have an update in a week or two uh definitely read the red book so you know what you're kind of getting into it's amazing and it's worth your time and that's my review 10 out of 10 good [Music] stuff [Music] you

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Id: 9R-AmZPVpwc

Length: 10min 54sec (654 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 02 2021