The Black Books

In 1913, 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 Jung's 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 from 1913 to 1916, but Jung actively kept the notebooks for many more decades.

Presented in a magnificent, seven-volume boxed collection featuring a revelatory essay by noted Jung scholar Sonu Shamdasani—illuminated by a selection of Jung's vibrant visual works—and both translated and facsimile versions of each notebook, The Black Books offer a unique portal into Jung's mind and the origins of analytical psychology.

“"[The Black Books] represent the coalface of Jung's introspection, from which he mined and polished his more accessible Red Book.... The Black Books detail Jung's visionary encounters with entities such as Phanes the star god, Ha the sorcerer, and Philemon, the wise magician who became Jung's internal guru."”

"[The Black Books] represent the coalface of Jung’s introspection, from which he mined and polished his more accessible Red Book.… The Black Books details Jung’s visionary encounters with entities such as Phanes the star god, Ha the sorcerer, and Philemon, the wise magician who became Jung’s internal guru." -- Phil Baker - Times Literary Supplement
"The hundreds of thousands who have bought the Red Book and have profited from studying it will in all probability also read the Black Books and this will add to the urgency in the professional analytic world for analysts to integrate an understanding of these primary sources for interpreting and teaching Jung’s legacy... This first edition of the Black Books in seven separate volumes has been prepared with exemplary care. The first volume is a stand-alone Introduction which will repay careful reading and re-reading for contextual guidance through the six notebooks. Each of these is presented in facsimile form followed by English translation, providing as close an experience as is possible to handling the original books, right down to front and back end papers which replicate the originals. High quality paper, smart red silk headbands and a substantial slip-case give this the aesthetics of a luxury edition to complement the exemplary style of the facsimile Red Book edition." -- Journal of Analytical Psychology

C. G. Jung (1875– 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of analytical psychology. Sonu Shamdasani is a professor at University College London. He lives in London. Dr. Martin Liebscher is a Principal Research Associate at the UCL Health Humanities Centre. John Peck has taught literature at Princeton, Mount Holyoke, Skidmore, and the University of Zurich, and worked as a Jungian analyst in New England for fifteen years. The author of Collected Shorter Poems and Red Strawberry Leaf, he has translated Luigi Zoja, edits for the Philemon Foundation, and lives in Connecticut.

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