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Jung regarded his Red Book: Liber Novus as the record of “the numinous beginning, which contained everything.” In his lifetime, Jung only showed this book to a handful of trusted colleagues whom he thought truly grasped the nature of the book’s vivid confrontations with the unconscious. Its publication in 2009, and translation into many languages, now gives us all the opportunity to engage with it. In conversation with Patricia Martin, the internationally respected Jungian scholar George Bright discusses how and why Jung wrote and painted his Red Book, and draws out key themes that help us understand Jung’s encounter with his soul as chronicled in the Red Book. Bright suggests why reading the enigmatic work may be worth the effort in service of our own transformation.
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 which provides two-year courses to study Jung’s Liber Novus and Black Books. He has worked in private practice in London for the past 35 years. His 1997 paper Synchronicity as a basis of analytic attitude won the Michael Fordham Prize.
