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24-531: The Foundation was established in 2003 to support the work of Sonu Shamdasani , a London-based historian, in his then ongoing work of preparing Jung's Red Book for publication. Shamdasani is the co-founder of the Philemon Foundation with American Jungian analyst Stephen A. Martin. The works to date constitute the Philemon series. Several translators and editors have contributed within the series, developing

48-421: A collection of seven private journals recorded by Carl Gustav Jung principally between 1913 and 1932. They have been referred to as the "Black Books" due to the colour of the final five journal covers (the first two journals actually have a brown cover). The portion of the journal account that is of particular interest begins in the second of the seven journals, on the night of 12 November 1913. Jung's motivation

72-455: A drama. These fantasies may be understood as a type of dramatized thinking in pictorial form.... In retrospect, he recalled that his scientific question was to see what took place when he switched off consciousness. The example of dreams indicated the existence of background activity, and he wanted to give this a possibility of emerging, just as one does when taking mescaline. The "Black Books" have been edited by Sonu Shamdasani for publication in

96-510: A facsimile edition: The Black Books of C.G. Jung (1913-1932) , ed. Sonu Shamdasani, (Stiftung der Werke von C. G. Jung & W. W. Norton & Company). They were published in October 2020. In preview information about this publication, the editor further explained the relationship between the "Black Books" and Jung's Red Book : The text of The Red Book draws on material from The Black Books between 1913 and 1916. Approximately fifty percent of

120-454: A few topical sub-series on dreams, psychology, correspondence, lectures. Many publications currently comprise the published work of the Foundation, including Jung's internationally recognized Red Book . The various individual works within the Philemon series have been published by different publishers, including Princeton University Press and W. W. Norton & Company . In addition to

144-749: A professor at the Institute. In a 2009 interview with the Times of India , Shamdasani gave this brief biographical note: "I am a Sindhi , I was born in Singapore and grew up in England. I first encountered Jung when I was travelling in India in my teens, looking for a guru . The first work of his that I came across was his commentary to The Secret of the Golden Flower , which was my first introduction to psychology. I then saw

168-532: Is at the center of Jung's life and work. [Understanding Jung] without an accurate account of it would be like writing the life of Dante without the Commedia , or Goethe without Faust . Jung's heirs had for many decades held the original manuscript of the Red Book in a bank vault for safe-keeping. They withheld its publication and declined offers to do so. During the 1990s Shamdasani's research, however, had uncovered

192-578: The Red Book , the Philemon Series includes: Sonu Shamdasani Sonu Shamdasani (born 1962) is a London-based author, editor in chief , and professor at University College London . His research and writings focus on Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) and cover the history of psychiatry and psychology from the mid-nineteenth century to current times. Shamdasani edited the first publication of Jung's important work, Liber Novus, The Red Book . Although its title had been well known for years, it

216-497: The Red Book . In August 1915, after completing a first draft of Liber Novus , the visionary events and journal entries resumed. By 1916, Jung had filled six of the seven journals. Entries become more sporadic after about 1920, but occasional entries were added to the seventh and last "Black Book" through at least 1932. Biographer Barbara Hannah , who was close to Jung throughout the last three decades of his life, compared Jung's imaginative experiences recounted in his journals to

240-529: The "Black Books". These journals are Jung's contemporaneous clinical ledger to his "most difficult experiment", or what he later describes as "a voyage of discovery to the other pole of the world." He later termed the process "mythopoetic imagination". The events and visions were recorded nightly in the "Black Book" journals. The first entry on 12 November 1913 begins with this petition: My soul, my soul, where are you? Do you hear me? I speak, I call you–are you there? I have returned, I am here again. I have shaken

264-433: The dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you, I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I have come to you again.... Do you still know me? How long the separation lasted! Everything has become so different. And how did I find you? How strange my journey was! What words should I use to tell you on what twisted paths a good star has guided me to you? Give me your hand, my almost forgotten soul. How warm

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288-468: The encounter of Menelaus with Proteus in the Odyssey . Jung, she said, "made it a rule never to let a figure or figures that he encountered leave until they had told him why they had appeared to him." In his introduction to Liber Novus , Shamdasani explains: From December 1913 onward, he carried on in the same procedure: deliberately evoking a fantasy in a waking state, and then entering into it as into

312-596: The existence of text from the Book outside the family's control. Another transcription was found by Marie-Louise von Franz . It was demonstrated that Jung had sent a copy of his manuscript to a publisher. Shamdasani entered into delicate negotiations with Jung's descendants in Zürich and, in May 2000, obtained their agreement "to release the work for publication". His editing tasks then began. Black Books (Jung) The Black Books are

336-657: The foundation's General Editor. Currently (2016) Shamdasani serves as a professor in the School of European Languages, Culture, and Society (SELCS) at University College London, and is also Director of the UCL Centre for the History of Psychological Disciplines. By 2000 Shamdasani had arranged to begin work editing Jung's The Red Book . In 2003 he stepped in as editor of the Philemon Foundation's successful project to publish, in 2009, this much awaited volume. Although Jung had worked on

360-417: The images that appeared when reliving it all—as well as I could." Shamdasani describes Jung's unusual work, an illustrated volume of calligraphy, as "the book that stands at the center of his oeuvre" which "has long been recognized as the key to comprehending" Jung. The Red Book "was at the center of Jung's self-experimentation." Earlier Shamdasani stated: If one does not place Jung's confrontation with

384-419: The joy at seeing you again, you long disavowed soul. Life has led me back to you. ... My soul, my journey should continue with you. I will wander with you and ascend to my solitude. The record continues with increasing intensity through the summer of 1914. A hiatus in the journal entries came between June 1914 and late summer of 1915. During this period Jung drafted his first manuscript of Liber Novus . After

408-449: The outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Jung perceived that his visionary experiences during the prior year had been not only of personal relevance, but entwined with a crucial cultural moment. In late-1914 and 1915 he compiled the visions from three of the completed journals, adding a commentary on each imaginative episode, into a draft manuscript. This draft text served as the beginning of

432-715: The text as promising the possibility of a mediation between Eastern mysticism and Western rationality. After further study, I thought that contemporary psychology and psychotherapy was in a mess, and I wanted to figure out how it had got into this state. This led me to the studying the history of psychology". In 2003 Shamdasani founded, along with Stephen Martin, the Philemon Foundation , which sought to publish all of Jung's works. Although Jung's Collected Works had been published in twenty volumes, there were manuscripts and other works by Jung that remained unpublished. Shamdasani commenced and continues now his labors at Philemon as

456-533: The text of The Red Book derives directly from The Black Books , with very light editing and reworking. The "Black Books" are not personal diaries, but the records of the unique self-experimentation which Jung called his ‘confrontation with the unconscious’. He did not record day to day happenings or outer events, but his active imaginations and depictions of his mental states together with his reflections on these. The material which Jung did not include in The Red Book

480-487: The unconscious in a proper perspective, or understand the significance of the Red Book , one is in no place to understand fully Jung's intellectual development from 1913 onwards, and not only that, but his life as well: it was his inner life which dictated his movements in the world. ... For Jung's work on his fantasies in Black Books and the Red Book formed the core of his later work, as he himself contended. The Red Book

504-533: The unconscious." This ledger of experiences was the foundation for the text of Jung's Red Book: Liber Novus . The majority of the journal entries were made prior to 1920, however Jung continued to make occasional entries up until at least 1932. Though the "Black Books" are referenced and occasionally quoted by Sonu Shamdasani in his editorial to The Red Book: Liber Novus , the journals have otherwise previously been unavailable for academic study. Jung recorded these deliberately-evoked fantasies or visions in

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528-430: The writing and the designs for it between 1914 and 1930, he did not then have it published. In 1959 Jung added a short Epilogue to his Red Book , commenting on his 'confrontation with the unconscious' that started prior to World War I: "It could have developed into [madness] had I not been able to hold the overpowering force of the original experiences. ... I knew of nothing better than to write them down... and to paint

552-433: Was not until 2009 that its contents were revealed to the public and practicing psychotherapists . He gained his BA from Bristol University in 1984, followed by an MSc in the History of Science and Medicine at University College London / Imperial College London . Later Shamdasani was awarded a PhD in the History of Medicine from University College London's Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine . He then became

576-422: Was to conduct a difficult "experiment" on himself consisting of a confrontation with the contents of his mind, paying no heed to the daily occurrences of his ordinary life. The journal entries continue over several following years and fill the next six notebooks. In these notebooks Carl Jung recorded his imaginative and visionary experiences during the transformative period that has been called his "confrontation with

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