is the foremost psychologist on analytical psychology, Well worth the investment, a must have for any respectable psychiatrist/ therapist, Stunning presentation, each book has a fabric hard cover fully embossed, with fantastic binding, gloss paper and overal high production quality all throughout, Each book has both the translated text of Jung's diaries, as well as pages dedicated to scans of the original books hand written in his native language, giving you not only the textual insight of the evolution of Jung's mind as it grows but also the visual of his hand as it grows and writes with him.
At the current reduced price I could in no way justify the kindle edition, these books are too beautiful to not get this hardcover slipcase edition, Just started to read, but Im impressed beyond words, I feel as if I entered the mind of the worlds few true geniuses, Who will want to buy this very expensive collection First of all, if you have not read Jungs “The Red Book: Liber Novus” published in, and have not additionally read the extensive historical introduction given there by Dr.
Shamdasani, you will be completely lost reading this text, Just start with the “The Red Book: Liber Novus”, then come back here, This an essential book for the serious students of Jung, who want to dive deeper into the foundations of his life work, You should know something about C, G. Jung before reading this that background of understanding is essential, If you have that basic background, these diaries will be fascinating,
What are these seven black boxed volumes They are C, G. Jungs private handwritten diaries fromtothe majority of the entries were made betweenand around, In the diaries he recorded his visions and his imaginative dialogues with the Soul, Yes, that is strange. They were never intended by Jung for publication, but he did leave them with his heirs to be preserved for posterity,
The seven volumes in the box set include an initial volume that provides a long and detailed historical introduction to the publication, authored by Dr, Sonu Shamdasani, followed by translator notes, and an appendix including some relevant illustrations, Volumesinclude facsimile reproductions of every page in each of the six diaries Jung filled during this period, Following the facsimile images, each volume includes a complete English translation of the material, along with supplemental and explanatory footnotes added by the editor, The translation pages, combined, sum up to a several hundred pages,
Are there illustrations in the journals There are very few illustrations in the diaries, excepting a couple small drawings that punctuate the handwritten text, This is NOT a book of art this is Jungs raw contemporaneous chronicle of his imaginative experiences and visions, transcribed in the moment, If you read German, you will be able to decipher Jungs handwriting in the journal facsimiles, but it is not easy going,
Why are the diaries important The Black Book diaries are an essential supplement to anyone who has studied and read “The Red Book: Liber Novus, ” These documents compliment and explain each other, The diaries up throughare the textual source of the material Jung entered into the “Red Book” text along with his additional commentary on the experiences recorded in the diaries.
These diaries include that raw material, but continue on for SEVERAL YEARS after Jung completed his draft text for the Red Book, Quite a bit happened in his imaginative life and visions in the period extending fromon through the earlys, It is a fascinating primary record, but again, it will only be of use to the person who knows the historical background and has read “The Red Book: Liber Novus.
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In the diary material after, one encounters Jung struggle with the God image, and with his own resistance to falling into the thrall of his imaginative and visionary venture.
He saw his experience in the fashion of a revelation, but he refused to become its prophet, His struggle was finding another path forward, That is what he spent the rest of his life doing,
Also note, the illuminated images and paintings in the second portion of “The Red Book: Liber Novus” relate to events recorded in the diaries entries after, and cannot really be understood without the diaries.
I highly recommend readers also acquire another beautiful book, “The Art of C, G. Jung,” which reproduces many additional art works from this period that were not part of the Red Book,
Should one buy the print or the Kindle version I have both the Kindle edition, and the print edition, Since I write about this material, the advantage of the Kindle version is being able to annotate and copy quotations I prefer reading the Kindle edition mainly because I read all the footnotes too, and the footnotes in the print edition are in a very small font that is difficult on my eyes.
But I love books, and even though it is taking up lots of shelf space, this is a beautifully produced collection,
I have waited decades for this treasure trove of primary material, It will help transform Jung studies, I had the pleasure to both interview and hear Professor Sonu Shamdasani discuss the backstory of the Black Books, it has taken him overyears to compile, edit and translate what was originally Jung's private before sleep diaries including active imagination, dreams and reflection serving two distinct purposes to transform and hear his own Soul and to find relation with academia and science, in order to help others individuate, heal and express.
Unlike the Red Book meant in some way to be shared with the world, these were personal work diaries, As a performance artist and creator, I find the material relevant, timeless and regenerative, An insightful look into the psyche of the Master,st , sweet. Well. as it was a set of books, I intend to use them as reading matter, I might find other uses for it later, This is Jung at his most intimate, Very pleased with it. It is available in book form for a similar price to the kindle version, Now those readers and students of Carl Jung's work, those interested in science, humanities, medical history, psychology, philosophy, art, may, with keen focus, find new and greater insights.
The book set product
Jung's original self experimentation, hand written into notebooks with black and brown covers, spanned decades, certainly than the writings which were processed, edited, transcribed into his original calligraphic Liber Novus.
And they are now in my hands! As my review's title states, one could imagine Liber Novus as a pattern of processed and energized consciousness, while these Black Books are analogous to the total psyche, that which contains both the consciousness, and its shadow.
All is contained, essentially but in raw form, here in The Black Books,
These books are numbered, corresponding to the notebooks numbered, The first of Jung's numbered notebooks were from childhood and not part of this experimentation phase of his life so not included, And so while successfully maintaining the numbering scheme of original notebooks, the first book in this present book set containing acknowledgements, new writings by Sonu Shamdasani an editorial note, a new essay on Jung's notebooks "Toward a Visionary Science", also revisiting, incorporating some contents from the Introduction of The Red Book, an essay "Translating Jung's Runes", and additional sections: abbreviations, appendix, and a useful index that spans allbooks.
Sonu Shamdasani writes in his Editorial Note:
"The Black Book was the designation that Jung gave to the notebooks, . betweenandJung's singular designation indicates that he regarded these notebooks as an integral whole, They have subsequently been referred to in the plural as the Black Books in this edition we use the designation "the Black Books", "
The production quality of the books is very high, I am quite pleased with the appearance of the inside of the notebooks colours and design patterns, are reproduced also on the inside of the hard covers of each of the books except, which is a book of Introductions and essays
The books are very easy to handle, quite a bit like The Red Book reader's edition.
This is very beneficial for study,
Footnotes are rich, as one would expect from any work of Jung and Philemon Foundation, As one may have followed many of the footnotes in The Red Book since it was publishedyears ago, there is much noting about things being omitted from or changed in, or added into the later intermediate drafts.
My own thoughts, reflections, integration
Late, I had been studying, for nearly a year, Jung's Red Book Liber Novus, One night I drove through Prince Edward County, Ontario, for some hours, Drive "there and back again" to the extremity of the peninsula, retracing the road, and reflecting on the experience of watching the road in my rear view mirror as I drove forward on the path I'd previously taken, "retracing" my steps, but the image of the rear view mirror is that of the path seen going forward, but walked in reverse.
The thoughts and visuals I recorded while driving, dictating to a voice recorded, lead to some lasting fresh ideas, I've continued to study Jung's thoughts and the footnotes and external referenced material for the last two and a half years,
Most valued from such study are techniques I can intuit and use, and already in the last several days, cross referencing The Black Books and The Red Book have yielded new insights.
Like reading an artist's notebook, or a guitarist's notebooks, when taking a guitar out to watch ducks or trees and writing notes, with some thoughts on improving a deep meditation and creative mode for visual art or music.
Bonus are minor contents that go a bit outside words based language, Sketches in notebook margins, of shapes, or familiar forms, trees or stones, birds, animals, along side music lyrics and ponderings,
Indeed, from the grand, ambitious paintings The Red Book, some things came to mind, of technique that he captured, but I figured them out in my own words and uses.
Here is an example of my cross referencing, The Murder of the Hero has been one of several stories that stood out to me over the last two years, Jung's experiments began in Autumn, aboutmonths before the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, There were some visions in Decemberof assassination of a hero character Siegfried, Niebelunglied,, and these all were written, processed, While the Red Book does not contain an index, however Bookof "The Black Books" BBcontains the helpful index, However, it does not contain any reference to "assassination" or "Ferdinand" I recall the word "prince" being used multiple times in Red Book, but neither does "prince" appear in the BBindex.
A review of RBLN reader's edition Liber Primus Chapters, show these references are in Layerespecially Chapter, but alsoand the RBLN footnotes,,, This stretch of interesting writings, comes from pagesin BB, So reading the raw contents, brings back the stories, but also cross referencing with RBLN, allows an insight into what Jung may have been focussed on, between the experience, and the output for readers, and ast century reader may find a few extra moments of curiosity, like the omission of details on Siegfried's clothing.
Parting thoughts
The Black Books form a window into a far deeper, less filtered "self honesty" in an experimental chaos of another, The hand written pages, plus an additional typed dream interpretation inserted in BB, totalpages, Lots in here.
This is a draft version of my Black Books review, having skimmed the seven volumes briefly several times in the last week since release, A complete edit will come over the next two months as time permits to go into this further, The books are of exceptional quality, printed on beautiful paper, They come in a very nice holder, Each volume is
printed with gold lettering, Each volume is translated, and Jungs original writing is also there, You can not ask for anything better, I wil include pictures later,
This is worth the money, Get it before it sells out and goes out of print and sells forx the price,
A joy just like the Taschen XL JUNG RED BOOK, Not as large obviously, but a well crafted set bound tight Still reading through Jung's other books but I cannot wait to dig into these, Do be warned you might be used to getting books that can fit onto your shelf snugly, but the size of these books are HUGE, They're around double the size of books such as The Red Book, The quality is first rate, Allbooks are of reasonable size except for theth book and for good reason, Regardless, you're gonna need to clear your desk to pop open these bad boys because you'll be taking a lot of notes, I mean, the material presented here is gorgeous, to say the least, Not a family book but it's definitely a tomb containing keys to unlocking the deeper mysteries of the anima/animus unconscious,
Try reading at night with the "Gayane Ballet Suite Adagio" playing low in the background,
Sweet dreams Amazing journals in old saxon with english tranlation behind the photocopies, This is one happy fanboy, Until now, the single most important unpublished work by C, G. JungThe Black Books.
In, C. G. Jung started a unique self experiment that he called his confrontation with the unconscious: an engagement with his fantasies in a waking state, which he charted in a series of notebooks referred to as The Black Books.
These intimate writings shed light on the further elaboration of Jungs personal cosmology and his attempts to embody insights from his self investigation into his life and personal relationships, The Red Book drew on material recorded fromto, but Jung actively kept the notebooks for many decades,
Presented in a magnificent, seven volume boxed collection featuring a revelatory essay by noted Jung scholar Sonu Shamdasaniilluminated by a selection of Jungs vibrant visual worksand both translated and facsimile versions of each notebook, The Black Books offer a unique portal into Jungs mind and the origins of analytical psychology.
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