October 21st, 2009
Like An Open (Red) Book
I went to the opening night lecture and premier of C.G. Jung’s Red Book a couple of weeks ago and have not stopped thinking about the man and his work since.
The Red Book is a large, red, leather-bound journal Jung laboriously assembled over the course of his adult life. The journaling and sketches happened primarily between the years 1914–1916, but the transcription of his active imaginations into an ornate calligraphic script and illustrations of eastern-inspired mandalas, took a lifetime for him to complete. Jung poured everything he had–consciously and unconsciously–into the Red Book. It is a masterpiece: one man’s attempt to understand Transformation (Enlightenment? Transcendence?) from a psychological, not merely spiritual, point of view. And yet, when he was done, he ended the work with this postscript; “I did this as well as I could,” a neat piece of humility in the face of the enormity of the effort.
Deliver Us from Eva movie Jung’s family kept the book private for nearly 100 years, though during his lifetime, Jung left it open in his office and often referred patients to its passages and paintings. Now, for the first time, it is being published in its entirety. The night I saw it the atmosphere was charged with anticipation. Many Jungians have been waiting their lives for this. Among that crowd the buzz was that this book may be the most important piece of scholarly work (Esoterica? Religious text? Psychological manifesto?) released in generations. It could change our understanding of man’s place in the world. It will definitely underscore and give further definition to Jung’s major contribution to modern psychology–the idea of the collective unconscious.
In my opinion, it is no accident that this book has surfaced now. It’s up to us to figure out how to use the information contained within. I have some ideas; a few of which are personal, but a few I plan to explore openly with friends and clients:
The collective unconscious versus the individual’s experience–In research I run across this all the time: there are trends, words, memes that surface from interview to interview. The patterns are like a tapestry weaving the lives, hopes, and fears of the subjects together even when they are geographically and psychographically dispersed. These patterns are important because they bring efficiency to the act of communication.
What’s conscious and what’s…not Rush Hour full
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–I’ve been bothered for a while by the shortcomings of the typical ethnographic interview. I am good at formulating questions and fashioning scenarios that take the subject beyond the surface of their perception, but even so you can’t ask a person to tell you what they don’t know about themselves. Not sure how to solve this one…yet.
The limitations of language in our ability to truly communicate–Jung struggled with finding a language to describe his experiences beyond the realm of the recognizable. The expert I heard discuss the Red Book said many passages read like nonsense, contain sentence fragments, and intentional misuse of words. Jung was literally at a loss for words, and he was a man quite used to helping patients articulate such esoteric experiences as dreams and fantasies. Words dominate our cultural landscape and social interactions. We talk to each other constantly, but do we really know what the other is saying? The more attention I pay to this the more I see how critical it is, in my position as a translator–a bridge between the commercial entity and the client or customer–to be sure both parties are saying what they mean to say and hearing what they’re meant to be heard. So that we may at least say at the end of our conversation, as Jung did, “I did this as well as I could.”
If you find yourself in NYC before January 25, 2010, go see The Red Book at the Rubin Museum Sams Lake buy .
posted by schuyler brown
Filed Under: Seen and Heard