A Closer Look at Book One of Jung’s Liber Novus

Working with Jung’s Liber Novus, perhaps his most mysterious work, can be transformative.  In spring 2024, the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago offered an ambitious six month series on the whole Liber Novus called “A Fresh Look at the Red Book: Reading Jung’s Liber Novus with Jungian Psychoanalysts”. Now we want to offer a much slower paced, closer read of this great work starting with Book One.

We can understand what Jung was getting at in the Liber Novus, as well as the paintings in the Red Book version of the Liber Novus, as individuation, the “salvation of the soul.”  There is a difference between salvation and well-being. Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig writes that “well-being” can lead to a deadness in the marriage; the pursuit of savation may give it marriage a chance. The focus on well-being includes the pursuit of comfort and security; salvation involves conflict, struggle, sacrifice and transformation.

As one participant of A Fresh Look at the Red Book shared:

“I loved this course and really appreciated the scholarly involvement of both you [Dan Ross] and Boris, and of George Bright (his historical knowledge and ability to succinctly express this is phenomenal).  I’ve been in a red book reading group for 2 years but have not had the benefit of clinical feedback or interpretations.  I have definitely needed this. The historical overview of Jung’s process and development of his thinking integrates the material exceedingly well. And I need to keep hearing about ‘the new god’ so i can continue to process it and be aware of the process with my patients”

In this series, we will be working more slowly with just Book One of the Liber Novus over a nine-month period, with three-hour sessions the fourth Saturday of each month beginning in October 2024 and ending in June 2025.

NOTE: The final session of the series, on June 21, will meet in-person at the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago.

Learning Objectives

At the end of the series, attendees will be able to:

1. Discuss the origins of The Red Book from Jung’s life and lived experience rather than from the Freudocentric historical context in which it emerged.
2. Verbalize an understanding of George Bright’s belief that The Red Book came partially as a response to Jung’s hubristic use of science to understand the soul and the “loss of soul” that resulted.
3. Experience the “psychoactive” nature of The Red Bookand its transformative potential in reading it.
4. Be able to discuss how Jung’s Liber Novus is a description of his own process of individuation.
5. Identify the seeds of Jung’s later concepts in The Liber Novus such as Active Imagination, Individuation, Transcendent Function, Archetype, and the Self.
6. Draw on an understanding of the newly available foundational documents of analytical psychology to clarify how Jung intended his new concepts to be understood and used.
7. Consider the implications of a clarified understanding of analytical psychology for the practice of psychotherapy.
8. Discuss how the reading of the Liber Novus, alone and in class, has affected your understanding of Analytical Psychology.

Required Reading

Each salon will focus on a section of Liber Novus as outlined in our course description. We expect that you have and will be reading Liber Novus along with us. The facsimile which includes the paintings is more expensive but not necessary for our discussion, as it is quite expensive. We will present and discuss the images from Liber Novus during the salon sessions, so you have the option of purchasing the less expensive Reader’s Edition.

• Link to purchase The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition: https://amzn.to/4aPQZlX

Speakers

Daniel Ross, PMHNP is a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner and Diplomate Jungian Analyst. He brings a medical, psychiatric, and analytical perspective to the field of end-of-life care. As he searched for a deeper understanding of his hospice work and his own personal life journey, he first completed the two-year Clinical Training Program at the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago in 2008; then went on to complete the Analyst Training Program. Daniel is in private practice in the northwest suburbs working with adults seeking Jungian psychoanalysis. He has been Co-Director of the Jungian Psychotherapy Program and Jungian Studies Program (JPP/JSP) (2021-2023) at the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago and is currently the Director of Training as well as a Training Analyst for the Analyst Training Program (ATP) at the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago. He has presented widely on Death and Dying from a Jungian perspective. He has also presented at 2022 IAAP conference, Death and Immortality: From Gilgamesh to Frankenstein.

Boris Matthews, PhD, LCSW, NCPsyA graduated from the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago, and maintains a practice of analytical psychology in the Milwaukee and Madison, WI, areas. He is particularly interested in working with persons who recognize need to develop a balanced adaptation to the “outside” and to the “inside” worlds, work that involves awareness of the individual’s psychological typology. Dreams, active imagination, and spiritual concerns are integral elements in the analytic work, the ultimate goal of which is to develop a functioning dialog with the non-ego center, the Self. He is former Director of Training of the Analyst Training Program, regularly teaches classes for analytic candidates, and conducts study groups in Madison as well as by video conference.

George Bright was educated at Cambridge University and The London School of Economics. He is a Training & Supervising Analyst of the Society of Analytical Psychology and a co-founder of The Circle of Analytical Psychology, a London-based group engaged in the study of Jung’s Liber Novus and Black Books. He works in private practice in London. His 1997 paper Synchronicity as a basis of analytic attitude won the Michael Fordham Prize.