The Red Book, page 4
On July 10, the Zürich Psychoanalytical Society voted by 15 to 1 to leave the International Psychoanalytic Association. In the minutes, the reason given for the secession was that Freud had established an orthodoxy that impeded free and independent research.76 The group was renamed the Association for Analytical Psychology. Jung was actively involved in this association, which met fortnightly. He also maintained a busy therapeutic practice. Between 1913 and 1914, he had between one and nine consultations per day, five days a week, with an average of between five and seven.77
The minutes of the Association for Analytical Psychology offer no indications of the process that Jung was going through. He does not refer to his fantasies, and continues to discuss theoretical issues in psychology. The same holds true in his surviving correspondences during this period.78 Each year, he continued his military service duties.79 Thus he maintained his professional activities and familial responsibilities during the day, and dedicated his evenings to his self-explorations.80 Indications are that this partitioning of activities continued during the next few years. Jung recalled that during this period his family and profession “always remained a joyful reality and a guarantee that I was normal and really existed.”81
The question of the different ways of interpreting such fantasies was the subject of a talk that he presented on July 24 before the Psycho-Medical Society in London, “On psychological understanding.” Here, he contrasted Freud’s analytic-reductive method, based on causality, with the constructive method of the Zürich school. The shortcoming of the former was that through tracing things back to antecedent elements, it dealt with only half of the picture, and failed to grasp the living meaning of phenomena. Someone who attempted to understand Goethe’s Faust in such a manner would be like someone who tried to understand a Gothic cathedral under its mineralogical aspect.82 The living meaning “only lives when we experience it in and through ourselves.”83 Inasmuch as life was essentially new, it could not be understood merely retrospectively. Hence the constructive standpoint asked, “how, out of this present psyche, a bridge can be built into its own future.”84 This paper implicitly presents Jung’s rationale for not embarking on a causal and retrospective analysis of his fantasies, and serves as a caution to others who may be tempted to do so. Presented as a critique and reformulation of psychoanalysis, Jung’s new mode of interpretation links back to the symbolic method of Swedenborg’s spiritual hermeneutics.
On July 28, Jung gave a talk on “The importance of the unconscious in psychopathology” at a meeting of the British Medical Association in Aberdeen.85 He argued that in cases of neurosis and psychosis, the unconscious attempted to compensate the one-sided conscious attitude. The unbalanced individual defends himself against this, and the opposites become more polarized. The corrective impulses that present themselves in the language of the unconscious should be the beginning of a healing process, but the form in which they break through makes them unacceptable to consciousness.
A month earlier, on June 28, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, was assassinated by Gavrilo Princip, a nineteen-year-old Serb student. On August 1, war broke out. In 1925 Jung recalled, “I had the feeling that I was an over-compensated psychosis, and from this feeling I was not released till August 1st 1914.”86 Years later, he said to Mircea Eliade:
As a psychiatrist I became worried, wondering if I was not on the way to “doing a schizophrenia,” as we said in the language of those days . . . I was just preparing a lecture on schizophrenia to be delivered at a congress in Aberdeen, and I kept saying to myself: “I’ll be speaking of myself! Very likely I’ll go mad after reading out this paper.” The congress was to take place in July 1914—exactly the same period when I saw myself in my three dreams voyaging on the Southern seas. On July 31st, immediately after my lecture, I learned from the newspapers that war had broken out. Finally I understood. And when I disembarked in Holland on the next day, nobody was happier than I. Now I was sure that no schizophrenia was threatening me. I understood that my dreams and my visions came to me from the subsoil of the collective unconscious. What remained for me to do now was to deepen and validate this discovery. And this is what I have been trying to do for forty years.87
At this moment, Jung considered that his fantasy had depicted not what would happen to him, but to Europe. In other words, that it was a precognition of a collective event, what he would later call a “big” dream.88 After this realization, he attempted to see whether and to what extent this was true of the other fantasies that he experienced, and to understand the meaning of this correspondence between private fantasies and public events. This effort makes up much of the subject matter of Liber Novus. In Scrutinies, he wrote that the outbreak of the war had enabled him to understand much of what he had previously experienced, and had given him the courage to write the earlier part of Liber Novus.89 Thus he took the outbreak of the war as showing him that his fear of going mad was misplaced. It is no exaggeration to say that had war not been declared, Liber Novus would in all likelihood not have been compiled. In 1955/56, while discussing active imagination, Jung commented that “the reason why the involvement looks very much like a psychosis is that the patient is integrating the same fantasy-material to which the insane person falls victim because he cannot integrate it but is swallowed up by it.”90
It is important to note that there are around twelve separate fantasies that Jung may have regarded as precognitive:
1–2. OCTOBER, 1913
Repeated vision of flood and death of thousands, and the voice that said that this will become real.
3. AUTUMN 1913
Vision of the sea of blood covering the northern lands.
4–5. DECEMBER 12, 15, 1913
Image of a dead hero and the slaying of Siegfried in a dream.
6. DECEMBER 25, 1913
Image of the foot of a giant stepping on a city, and images of murder and bloody cruelty.
7. JANUARY 2, 1914
Image of a sea of blood and a procession of dead multitudes.
8. JANUARY 22, 1914
His soul comes up from the depths and asks him if he will accept war and destruction. She shows him images of destruction, military weapons, human remains, sunken ships, destroyed states, etc.
9. MAY 21, 1914
A voice says that the sacrificed fall left and right.
10–12. JUNE–JULY 1914
Thrice-repeated dream of being in a foreign land and having to return quickly by ship, and the descent of the icy cold.91
Liber Novus
Jung now commenced writing the draft of Liber Novus. He faithfully transcribed most of the fantasies from the Black Books, and to each of these added a section explaining the significance of each episode, combined with a lyrical elaboration. Word-by-word comparison indicates that the fantasies were faithfully reproduced, with only minor editing and division into chapters. Thus the sequence of the fantasies in Liber Novus nearly always exactly corresponds to the Black Books. When it is indicated that a particular fantasy happened “on the next night,” etc., this is always accurate, and not a stylistic device. The language and content of the material were not altered. Jung maintained a “fidelity to the event,” and what he was writing was not to be mistaken for a fiction. The draft begins with the address to “My friends,” and this phrase occurs frequently. The main difference between the Black Books and Liber Novus is that the former were written for Jung’s personal use, and can be considered the records of an experiment, while the latter is addressed to a public and presented in a form to be read by others.
In November 1914, Jung closely studied Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which he had first read in his youth. He later recalled, “then suddenly the spirit seized me and carried me to a desert country in which I read Zarathustra.”92 It strongly shaped the structure and style of Liber Novus. Like Nietzsche in Zarathustra, Jung divided the material into a series of books comprised of short chapters. But whereas Zarathustra proclaimed the death of God, Liber Novus depicts the rebirth of God in the soul. There are also indications that he read Dante’s Commedia at this time, which also informs the structure of the work.93 Liber Novus depicts Jung’s descent into Hell. But whereas Dante could utilize an established cosmology, Liber Novus is an attempt to shape an individual cosmology. The role of Philemon in Jung’s work has analogies to that of Zarathustra in Nietzsche’s work and Virgil in Dante’s.
In the Draft, about 50 percent of the material is drawn directly from the Black Books. There are about thirty-five new sections of commentary. In these sections, he attempted to derive general psychological principles from the fantasies, and to understand to what extent the events portrayed in the fantasies presented, in a symbolic form, developments that were to occur in the world. In 1913, Jung had introduced a distinction between interpretation on the objective level in which dream objects were treated as representations of real objects, and interpretation on the subjective level in which every element concerns the dreamers themselves.94 As well as interpreting his fantasies on the subjective level, one could characterize his procedure here as an attempt to interpret his fantasies on the “collective” level. He does not try to interpret his fantasies reductively, but sees them as depicting the functioning of general psychological principles in him (such as the relation of introversion to extraversion, thinking and pleasure, etc.), and as depicting literal or symbolic events that are going to happen. Thus the second layer of the Draft represents the first major and extended attempt to develop and apply his new constructive method. The second layer is itself a hermeneutic experiment. In a critical sense, Liber Novus does not require supplemental interpretation, for it contains its own interpretation.
In writing the Draft, Jung did not add scholarly references, though unreferenced citations and allusions to works of philosophy, religion, and literature abound. He had self-consciously chosen to leave scholarship to one side. Yet the fantasies and the reflections on them in Liber Novus are those of a scholar and, indeed, much of the self-experimentation and the composition of Liber Novus took place in his library. It is quite possible that he might have added references if he had decided to publish the work.
After completing the handwritten Draft, Jung had it typed, and edited it. On one manuscript, he made alterations by hand (I refer to this manuscript as the Corrected Draft). Judging from the annotations, it appears that he gave it to someone (the handwriting is not that of Emma Jung, Toni Wolff, or Maria Moltzer) to read, who then commented on Jung’s editing, indicating that some sections which he had intended to cut should be retained.95 The first section of the work—untitled, but effectively Liber Primus—was composed on parchment. Jung then commissioned a large folio volume of over 600 pages, bound in red leather, from the bookbinders, Emil Stierli. The spine bears the title, Liber Novus. He then inserted the parchment pages into the folio volume, which continues with Liber Secundus. The work is organized like a medieval illuminated manuscript, with calligraphic writing, headed by a table of abbreviations. Jung titled the first book “The Way of What Is to Come,” and placed beneath this some citations from the book of Isaiah and from the gospel according to John. Thus it was presented as a prophetic work.
In the Draft, Jung had divided the material into chapters. In the course of the transcription into the red leather folio, he altered some of the titles to the chapters, added others, and edited the material once again. The cuts and alterations were predominantly to the second layer of interpretation and elaboration, and not to the fantasy material itself, and mainly consisted in shortening the text. It is this second layer that Jung continually reworked. In the transcription of the text in this edition, this second layer has been indicated, so that the chronology and composition are visible. As Jung’s comments in the second layer sometimes implicitly refer forward to fantasies that are found later in the text, it is also helpful to read the fantasies straight through in chronological sequence, followed by a continuous reading of the second layer.
Jung then illustrated the text with some paintings, historiated initials, ornamental borders, and margins. Initially, the paintings refer directly to the text. At a later point, the paintings become more symbolic. They are active imaginations in their own right. The combination of text and image recalls the illuminated works of William Blake, whose work Jung had some familiarity with.96
A preparatory draft of one of the images in Liber Novus has survived, which indicates that they were carefully composed, starting from pencil sketches that were then elaborated.97 The composition of the other images likely followed a similar procedure. From the paintings of Jung’s which have survived, it is striking that they make an abrupt leap from the representational landscapes of 1902/3 to the abstract and semifigurative from 1915 onward.
Art and the Zürich School
Jung’s library today contains few books on modern art, though some books were probably dispersed over the years. He possessed a catalogue of the graphic works of Odilon Redon, as well as a study of him.98 He likely encountered Redon’s work when he was in Paris. Strong echoes of the symbolist movement appear in the paintings in Liber Novus.
In October of 1910, Jung went on a bicycle tour of northern Italy, together with his colleague Wolfgang Stockmayer.99 In April 1914, he visited Ravenna, and the frescos and mosaics there made a deep impression on him. These works seemed to have had an impact on his paintings: the use of strong colors, mosaic-like forms, and two-dimensional figures without the use of perspective.
In 1913 when he was in New York, he likely attended the Armory Show, which was the first major international exhibition of modern art in America (the show ran to March 15, and Jung left for New York on March 4). He referred to Marcel Duchamp’s painting Nude Descending a Staircase in his 1925 seminar, which had caused a furor there.100 Here, he also referred to having studied the course of Picasso’s paintings. Given the lack of evidence of extended study, Jung’s knowledge of modern art probably derived more immediately from direct acquaintance.
During the First World War, there were contacts between the members of the Zürich school and artists. Both were part of avant-garde movements and intersecting social circles.101 In 1913, Erika Schlegel came to Jung for analysis. She and her husband, Eugen Schlegel, had been friendly with Toni Wolff. Erika Schlegel was Sophie Taeuber’s sister, and became the librarian of the Psychological Club. Members of the Psychological Club were invited to some of the Dada events. At the celebration of the opening of the Gallery Dada on March 29, 1917, Hugo Ball notes members of the Club in the audience.102 The program that evening included abstract dances by Sophie Taeuber and poems by Hugo Ball, Hans Arp, and Tristan Tzara. Sophie Taeuber, who had studied with Laban, arranged a dance class for members of the Club together with Arp. A masked ball was also held and she designed the costumes.103 In 1918, she presented a marionette play, King Deer, in Zürich. It was set in the woods by the Burghölzli. Freud Analytikus, opposed by Dr. Oedipus Complex, is transformed into a parrot by the Ur-Libido, parodically taking up themes from Jung’s Transformations and Symbols of the Libido and his conflict with Freud.104 However, relations between Jung’s circle and some of the Dadaists became more strained. In May 1917, Emmy Hennings wrote to Hugo Ball that the “psycho-Club” had now gone away.105 In 1918, Jung criticized the Dada movement in a Swiss review, which did not escape the attention of the Dadaists.106 The critical element that separated Jung’s pictorial work from that of the Dadaists was his overriding emphasis on meaning and signification.
Jung’s self-explorations and creative experiments did not occur in a vacuum. During this period, there was great interest in art and painting within his circle. Alphonse Maeder wrote a monograph on Ferdinand Hodler107 and had a friendly correspondence with him.108 Around 1916, Maeder had a series of visions or waking fantasies, which he published pseudonymously. When he told Jung of these events, Jung replied, “What, you too?”109 Hans Schmid also wrote and painted his fantasies in something akin to Liber Novus. Moltzer was keen to increase the artistic activities of the Zürich school. She felt that more artists were needed in their circle and considered Riklin as a model.110 J. B. Lang, who was analyzed by Riklin, began to paint symbolic paintings. Moltzer had a book that she called her Bible, in which she put pictures with writings. She recommended that her patient Fanny Bowditch Katz do the same thing.111
In 1919, Riklin exhibited some of his paintings as part of the “New Life” at the Kunsthaus in Zürich, described as a group of Swiss Expressionists, alongside Hans Arp, Sophie Taeuber, Francis Picabia, and Augusto Giacometti.112 With his personal connections, Jung could easily have exhibited some of his works in such a setting, had he so liked. Thus his refusal to consider his works as art occurs in a context where there were quite real possibilities for him to have taken this route.
On some occasions, Jung discussed art with Erika Schlegel. She noted the following conversation:
I wore my pearl medallion (the pearl embroidery that Sophie had made for me) at Jung’s yesterday. He liked it very much, and it prompted him to talk animatedly about art—for almost an hour. He discussed Riklin, one of Augusto Giacometti’s students, and observed that while his smaller works had a certain aesthetic value, his larger ones simply dissolved. Indeed, he vanished wholly in his art, rendering him utterly intangible. His work was like a wall over which water rippled. He could therefore not analyze, as this required one to be pointed and sharp-edged, like a knife. He had fallen into art in a manner of speaking. But art and science were no more than the servants of the creative spirit, which is what must be served.
As regards my own work, it was also a matter of making out whether it was really art. Fairy tales and pictures had a religious meaning at bottom. I, too, know that somehow and sometime it must reach people.113
For Jung, Franz Riklin appears to have been something like a doppelganger, whose fate he was keen to avoid. This statement also indicates Jung’s relativization of the status of art and science to which he had come through his self-experimentation.
