These lectures are now available online - See Below
C. G. Jung and the Red Book
Imagination, Vision and Psychology
A series of four lectures by Lance S. Owens MD
In November of 1913 C. G. Jung embarked upon an extraordinary imaginative journey; in later life he called it his “confrontation with the unconscious”. An “enigmatic stream” of visions flooded upon him, and for the next decade he labored to accurately document these events in his private journals. As the work progressed, Jung felt a need to give the “revelations from his Soul” a more formal elaboration. With great artistic craft – employing antique illuminated calligraphic text and stunning artwork – he transcribed the record of his visions into a massive red leather-bound volume: This is the mysterious Red Book. Jung titled it Liber Novus, the “Book of the New”. Near the end of his life, Jung remarked about his work:
The years … when I pursued the inner images were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this. It began at that time, and the later details hardly matter anymore. My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me. That was the stuff and material for more than only one life.... Everything later was merely the outer classification, the scientific elaboration, and the integration into life. But the numinous beginning, which contained everything, was then.
For nearly a century the Red Book, Liber Novus, remained Jung’s hidden treasure. Only a handful of Jung’s most trusted students and colleagues were allowed to see it during his life; after his death in 1961, all requests for access to the volume were refused by his family. But now, after decades veiled in mystery, the Red Book has finally been released to the world in a magnificent facsimile edition. This singular visionary volume – a book that defies category or comparison – is the crux for any developed understanding of Jung’s
psychological work.
In this series of four lectures, Dr. Lance Owens will discuss the genesis and content of the Red Book, and explain its central place in the life and work of C. G. Jung.
Come join us for this amazing narrative of vision, imagination, science, and the birth of a new psychology....
Lectures are presented at Westminster College in the
Gore Auditorium
• Thursday, January 14, 2010
Lecture 1 -- Anticipations: The Coming of the Red Book
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• Thursday, January 28, 2010
Lecture 2 -- Imagination, Vision and Psychology
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• Thursday, February 11, 2010
Lecture 3 --The Prophet's Bride: C.G. Jung and the Red Book
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• Thursday, February 25, 2010
Lecture 4 -- Liber Novus and the Hermeneutics of Vision
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All lectures begin at 7:30 p.m. The Gore Business Auditorium is on the Westminster College main campus, 1840 South 1300 East, Salt Lake City. Tuition is $10 per lecture at the door.
(This lecture series has a companion series, J.R.R. Tolkien: An Imaginative Life. You may find these lectures helpful in finding context and comparison for C. G. Jung's imaginative experience.)
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