The Red Book (Not Little)

The Red Book Unlike his former adviser and friend Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung believed in the importance of mythology and religion. He believed that our dreams and unconscious were indelibly tied to a collective unconscious shared by an ancestry of people. In this regard, Carl Jung was not only a clinician and psychologist. He also played the role of mystic and inspired counter-cultural movements in arts and politics.

At age 38, Jung suffered bouts of hallucinations and nightmares that he observed as a terrifying confrontation with his unconscious. For sixteen years, he wrote about his sufferings, scrawling away in his large red leather notebook. At his death in 1961, he left no instructions in regards to “The Red Book” and up until recently the descendants of Carl Jung have refused to allow its publication. This month, The Red Book will finally be available to the public in 416 pages of inspired meditations on dreams and the unconscious. The book contains Jung’s hand-painted illustrations as well as extensive footnotes provided by British historian and Red Book editor Sonu Shamdasani.

In collaboration with the design agency O Group, The Red Book contains a faithful typographic treatment and layout to the original manuscript. O Group Design Director Eric Baker says in a press release:

It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience to be able to partner with Jungian scholars and other design colleagues to bring this important work, which had been long sequestered by the Jung family, to the general public. Throughout the process, it was critical to treat the reproduction of The Red Book in a reverential way, ensuring that the overall design of the translation as well as the layout of each page was readable and appropriate to the original work. It was particularly challenging to layout each page, given the massive number of footnotes added to the tome, and to fit each footnote on the same page as referenced.

Publisher W. W. Norton noted that The Red Book is an astonishing example of calligraphy and art on a par with The Book of Kells and the illuminated manuscripts of William Blake. This may also be one of the most intimate windows to the soul of a great thinker and modern mystic.

The Red Book