Writing down his visions and dreams from 1913-1915, reflecting on them for more than a decade, and recording the growth of consciousness that resulted, served many functions for C.G. Jung. The process was certainly an assertion of intuition in the evolution of his standpoint as both psychologist and person. It was also, however, the expression of his feeling, that World War I meant nothing less than that European consciousness had gone astray and that it was the duty of each European to rectify the situation in his or her own way. Jung’s way was to search for the soul that he felt he had left behind in the pursuit of heroic individual achievement as a psychological pioneer. What emerged was the Red Book, a striking instance of inner work in the service of conscience. This lecture will explore the way Jung worked on his integrity in its pages.
John Beebe, MD is the author of Integrity in Depth, Toward a Jungian Analysis of Character, and many other writings that address the psychology of moral wholeness. He is a psychiatrist and Jungian analyst in practice in San Francisco.