The Red Book (Liber Novus): Carl Jung's Descent into Darkness and the Birth of Analytical Psychology
For nearly a century, one of the most mysterious and mythic manuscripts in modern intellectual history sat locked inside a secure vault in a Swiss bank. Bound in thick red leather and written in calligraphic script adorned with luminous paintings, the book was known simply as Liber Novus — The Red Book . Authored by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung between 1913 and 1930, the manuscript was kept hidden from the public by his heirs for decades following his death. Scholars whispered of its existence, but it was not until 2009 that the vault was finally opened and the volume published. What The Red Book revealed shocked both the psychological and academic worlds. It was not a conventional scientific treatise. Instead, it was the raw, visionary record of Jung’s deliberate descent into the depths of his own unconscious—a heroic, terrifying confrontation that birthed the foundational concepts of Analytical Psychology . The Crisis of 1913: The Break with Freud In 1913, at age 38, Ju...