Red Book

..”They Were Both Into Jung…”

by Stephen Parker, Ph.D (Article Selection and Commentary) on September 6, 2010


The Red Book was part of the plot of Law and Order on June 9, 2010:

Excerpt from the plot line of Children of the Lost Blood:

A Goth-looking college student, Sarah Price, is found dead in her bed after a night of partying with a guy. Later, with Detectives Zach Nichols (Jeff Goldblum) and Serena Stevens on the scene, ME Rodgers determines Sarah has been exsanguinated. Nichols sees a new edition of a book by Carl Jung called the “Red Book” and it has a note inscribed from “K.” When Sarah’s sister Caroline, and father, an Ohio congressman (Dan Butler) arrive, her sister says Sarah like to read about the occult and thought her recent attire meant something was wrong. Her father thinks it was a phase. Caroline said Sarah hated her father’s world, the public life, and she longed to escape. Her father thinks whatever she found killed her….

Back at Major Case, Nichols watched a TV interview with Sarah’s father and comments that he used the word “phase” several times in the interview. Stevens has a record of a Kyle Wyler (Christopher Abbott) making several calls to Sarah. He dropped out of school last quarter and they decide to bring him in. Later, they have him in interrogation and ask him about the Red Book and he says they were both into Jung…

Jung has a bad rep about being associated with the occult… This show does not put him in a positive light, obviously… Have you noticed how many cop shows are on TV these days? Cop shows are often about the collective, about maintaining order and the fear of the shadow…. The collective probably has good reason to fear Jung… To believe what he has to say would mean that one would have to examine one’s personality and stop projecting one’s shadow onto other people… Whoa. That could be dangerous. Better get some cops here right away… It’s that other guy that is evil, not me…..

Source

Jungian Blogger: Heidekolb’s Blog

by Stephen Parker, Ph.D (Article Selection and Commentary) on August 23, 2010

There are several thousand Jungian Analysts; as far as I can tell, Heidi Kolb is the only one who is an active blogger. (Please let me know if you know of others). Her articles have accompanying images (I think the right brain is usually under-emphasized by Jungian authors) and are written in depth….

In the excerpted blog post, she writes about The Red Book; surprisingly, although there are many references to the Red Book now on the internet, there are almost no websites that write about it in depth.



Excerpt from June 27, 2010

Honor thy Devil and Trust thy Body
C.G.Jung~The Red Book Reflections

Jung never wanted to be the authority so many turned him into in his later years. But he showed us a way. And the way leads into the invisible world of the unconscious. Jung tells us of his meeting with the Red One, an imaginal figure in one of his fantasies. Imaginal but equally real as the ego world, he is to be met with respect and openness. Inner figures have a way of responding the way they are being met. Jung writes in the RB : “I know just as little who you are, as you know who I am”…..Surely this Red One was the devil, but my devil…I earnestly confronted my devil and behaved with him as with a real person. This I have learned in the Mysterium to take seriously every unknown wanderer who personally inhabits the inner world, since they are real because they are effectual.”

Disregarding, ignoring or pathologizing inner figures prevents the development of an authentic center of authority within us. Our inner knowing gets pushed further into the dark forest of the unconscious. It moves outside the grasp of psyche, but may settle deep within the cells & structures of our body and if we are lucky, yes, if we are lucky, the body develops symptoms. Every symptom has a story to tell and its meaning needs to be understood. We may have our moods, our little episodes of madness, a particular sensitive day with erratic behaviors. For centuries, women in particular have been pathologized as “hysterical”, nowadays as “borderline” or just as “hypersensitive” or “fragile.”

Link to full article

Jung, Mama Grizzlies, Sarah Palin

by Stephen Parker, Ph.D (Article Selection and Commentary) on August 11, 2010


Arianna Huffington
August 1, 2010 06:11 PM
Sarah Palin, “Mama Grizzlies,” Carl Jung, and the Power of Archetypes

(excerpt)

It is not Palin’s positions people respond to — it’s her use of symbols. Mama grizzlies rearing up to protect their young? That’s straight out of Jung’s “collective unconscious” — the term Jung used to describe the part of the unconscious mind that, unlike the personal unconscious, is shared by all human beings, made up of archetypes, or, in Jung’s words, “universal images that have existed since the remotest times.”

Unlike personal experiences, these archetypes are inherited, not acquired. They are “inborn forms… of perception and apprehension,” the “deposits of the constantly repeated experiences of humanity.” This is the realm Palin is working in — I’m sure unintentionally — and it’s why she has connected so deeply with a large segment of the public. In fact, her evocation of mama grizzlies has a particularly resonant history in the collective unconscious.

According to the Jungian Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism, “The bear has long fascinated mankind, partly because of its habit of hibernation, which may have served as a model of death and rebirth in human societies.”  (Source)

← Previous Entries