The Cactus Man Review: December 2009

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by by Michael Dirda Starting in 1912, Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), a specialist in the treatment of schizophrenia, began to experience strange dreams and frightening visions. Once when returning home on a train, the 38-year-old Swiss psychologist hallucinated that everywhere he looked he could see nothing but "rivers of blood." In one enigmatic dream a bird-girl hauntingly announced, "Only in the first hour of the night can I become human, while the male dove is busy with the twelve dead"; in another he encountered a wise old man, with wings, holding four keys. After a while, Jung began to carry on conversations with the winged "Philemon" during his daytime walks. Was he going mad? After World War I broke out in 1914, Jung decided with relief that his disturbed imagination had actually been sensing the coming conflict. He also concluded that he had entered what we would now call a midlife crisis, a period in which he was being compelled to reexamine his life and explore his deepest self. To do this, he recorded some of his dreams and visions in what were later called his "Black Books" (which have been available for some while). But he also began a remarkable visionary text, illustrated with his own bizarre paintings: "The Red Book" or "Liber Novus." This he composed during a state of "active imagination" -- that is, of reverie or waking dream. As he said, he wanted to see what would happen when he "switched off consciousness." To the modern reader, the result recalls an allegorical-mythological amalgam of Nietzsche's "Also Sprach Zarathustra," Blake's illuminated poems, Renaissance Neoplatonic dialogue, Eastern scripture, Dante's "Inferno," Yeats's "A Vision" and even the biblical book of Revelation. Jung's pictures sometimes resemble simplified versions of Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings and sometimes the symbol-laden images in treatises about alchemy (a subject that Jung was soon to study intently). Throughout, one finds illuminated capitals, interlaced roundels that call to mind stained-glass windows, stars, half moons, swords, crosses, dying animals. Jung also drew circular patterns that he later recognized as versions of the mystical shape called the mandala. "The Red Book" was never published during the psychologist's lifetime, though a few friends and disciples were allowed to examine it. Apparently Jung felt it was not only too personal and quirky for publication, but also that he had already mined the text for the insights set forth in his later writings. As editor Sonu Shamdasani stresses, "The overall theme of the book is how Jung regains his soul and overcomes the contemporary malaise of spiritual alienation. This is ultimately achieved through enabling the rebirth of a new image of God in his soul and developing a new worldview in the form of a psychological and theological cosmogony." After Jung's death, "The Red Book," was safely locked away in a bank deposit box. But, as happens, Jung's heirs and disciples have now decided to bring out this facsimile edition (with English translation), as well as mount an exhibition about "The Red Book" at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York (through January). The resulting volume is certainly one of the most distinctive gift books of the upcoming holiday season. With a rich crimson dust jacket, thick cream-colored paper and calligraphied pages, this huge tome is the size of a lectern Bible and looks like the kind of spell book a wizard might consult. During the initial period covered by "The Red Book" -- mainly 1913 through the 1920s -- Jung broke permanently with the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, and resigned from his teaching position at the University of Zurich. When Jung emerged from this period of crisis, he brought with him the first inklings of his most important contributions to psychology -- positing the existence of a collective unconscious common to all human beings. This primordial ocean within us affects our lives through various universal "archetypes" -- forces or situations that represent our inmost needs, desires and fears. To the most common archetypes, Jung assigned names: anima and animus, the wise old man, the shadow. The anima, for instance, represents the feminine side of a man, his idealized woman, his fatal type. The shadow embodies everyone's dark side, the impulses we suppress, the immoral and evil aspects of our personality. The good Dr. Jekyll's "shadow" was the wicked Mr. Hyde. Gradually, Jung also shifted the focus of psychoanalytic therapy. Early on he had speculated that our libidinal energies are either outer-directed or inner-directed, i.e., people are primarily extroverts or introverts. But this was just a beginning. Where Freud emphasized early childhood and sexuality in his explanation of human neuroses, and Alfred Adler focused on the drive to be superior to others, Jung soon directed his clinical attention to the second half of life and to the process he called individuation. According to editor Shamdasani, "The Red Book" presents "the prototype of Jung's conception of the individuation process." In Jung's view a successful life was all about balance, wholeness. If our lives erred too much in one direction, our unconscious would compensate for the inequality. Thus, in the film "The Blue Angel," the ultra-rationalist professor played by Emil Jannings readily succumbs to naughty Lola, the showgirl played by Marlene Dietrich. Above all, in midlife, a person is called upon to achieve an authentic and balanced self, one that acknowledges every aspect of his or her character. By the age of 40 or 50, one has established a career and nurtured a family, and it is time to turn from the external public life to the needs of the inner man or woman. The process of individuation is essentially the psychological harmonizing of all aspects of the self. When successful, the result is an inner concord, the achievement of a personal serenity that prepares us to accept aging and death. Symbolically, Jung said, the outline of our lives may be glimpsed in the so-called "hero's journey" -- birth in obscurity, various ordeals, confrontation with and defeat of a dragon or similar monster, return home, happy marriage, sacrificial death. This now famous mythic pattern was later elaborated by such Jung-inspired scholars as Otto Rank ("The Myth of the Birth of the Hero"), Lord Raglan ("The Hero") and Joseph Campbell ("The Hero With a Thousand Faces"). As it happens, one must be something of a hero to actually read all of "The Red Book." At times, Jung sounds spiritually anguished: "I am weary, my soul, my wandering has lasted too long, my search for myself outside of myself." At other times, his writing resembles the directions in some fantasy video game: "I am standing in a high hall. Before me I see a green curtain between two columns. The curtain parts easily. . . . In the rear wall, I see a door right and left. . . . I choose the right." At still other times, there are philosophical and religious dialogues of self and soul, or conversations with various mythic characters like Philemon. In short, this is a volume that will be treasured by the confirmed Jungian or by admirers of beautifully made books or by those with a taste for philosophical allegory. Anyone merely interested in Jung's ideas would do better to start with one of the several anthologies of his writings now available. The one compiled by Anthony Storr is particularly good, as is Storr's concise "Modern Masters" guide to the psychologist's thought. bookworld@washpost.com
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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 Kellsand 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.