Jung: “Create Your Own Red Book”
Psychology Today
Guest Blogger: Dave Levitan
November 16, 2090
I call up Dr. Stephen Martin, a Jungian analyst and co-founder and President of the Philemon Foundation..
“You’re not going to buy the book and say ‘oh now I understand everything,'” Martin says. “If you want to have an intelligent discussion about the depth of the psyche, you’re now going to have to refer to the Red Book.
But it will be one of those longstanding processes of trying to understand something that’s immensely complex.”..
Martin cites the imperative that Jung himself used to deliver to his patients as a means to finding meaning in the book’s pages: “When Jung says, ‘create your own Red Book…’ what he means is, value the material that comes out of your own inner world, and treat it with respect, dignity and objectivity. And if you do that, your life will be different.” (more)
I wonder how many of us will be studying the Red Book rather than making the equivalent of our own Red Book. Maybe now is a good time to stop reading (and blogging), do some active imagination, create drawings, write in a journal…(See Michelle Frantom’s work in the Fish post)
sparker
Jung was right about this….when I talk about my own dreams and show people the images I make, so often people say “I had a dream like that, but different”. I think it is exciting that there are these archetypes, that they belong to everyone, but that each person re-creates, re-imagines them through their own individual psyche. It means we are the same but we are different, which is the best of both worlds really……As an art teacher I try to encourage this in my students, to trust their own images.
I began creating my own Red Book more than 30 years ago. When I began this journey towards individuation, I remember telling myself I would do the work, and, one day share my experiences. Unfortunately, no one is interested.