‘The Way of What is to Come’: Jung’s “Liber Novus” and the Past and Future of Jungian Psychology

In 1913, when psychiatrist C.G. Jung was 38 years old, he began to experience an overwhelming number of waking dreams and visions.  Convinced that this was an opportunity to understand his own psyche as well as that of his patients, Jung began his “confrontation with the unconscious,” which he first documented in a series of small, black books, and later expounded upon, analyzed and illustrated in a large, red leather-bound journal.

At the onset of Jung’s encounter with psyche, he was in a state of disillusionment with scientific rationalism – what he called “the spirit of the times.” In the course of many quixotic encounters with his own soul and with other inner figures, he came to know and appreciate “the spirit of the depths,” a field that makes room for magic, coincidence and the mythological metaphors delivered by dreams.  During this time he developed his principal theories-of the archetypes, the collective unconscious, and the process of individuation-that transformed psychotherapy from a practice concerned with treatment of the sick into a means for higher development of the personality.

In this illustrated presentation, Dr. Shamdasani will explain how Jung regained his soul and overcame the contemporary malaise of spiritual alienation, which he ultimately achieved through enabling the rebirth of a new image of God and developing a new worldview in the form of a psychological and theological cosmogony.