When Carl Jung embarked on an extended self-exploration, he called it his “confrontation with the unconscious.” The heart of this journey was The Red Book, a large, illuminated volume he created between 1914 and 1930. Here, he developed his principal theories—of the archetypes, the collective unconscious, and the process of individuation—that transformed psychotherapy from a practice concerned with the treatment of the sick into a means for the higher development of the personality.

While Jung considered The Red Book to be his most important work, only a handful of people have ever seen it. Now, in a complete facsimile and translation, it is available to scholars and the general public. It is an astonishing example of calligraphy and art on a par with The Book of Kells and the illuminated manuscripts of William Blake. This publication of The Red Book is a watershed that will cast new light on the making of modern psychology.

This exact facsimile of The Red Book reveals not only an extraordinary mind at work but also the hand of a gifted artist and calligrapher. Interspersed among more than two hundred lovely illuminated pages are paintings whose influences range from Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East to the native art of the new world. The Red Book, much like the handcrafted “Books of Hours” from the Middle Ages, is unique. Both in terms of its place in Jung’s development and as a work of art, its publication is a landmark.