Lecture 1 for Special Study Group: Jung's Red Book with Robert Bosnak Jan 19, 2013

Janet Fortess January 21, 2013 at 10:44pm

Hi Connie,
My comments are practical first, passionate second.
Glad you found your book.
Lecture One references the first four chapters in Liber Primus. In the Facsimile edition this is pages 229-235.
Chris uploaded the chapter titles for those using a different edition.

To Everyone:
I'd like to make an impassioned plea for working with the Facsimile Edition (2009) if at all possible.
From looking at Amazon.com, the Reader's edition has the English text and the German but no images. There are some peeved reviews saying this wasn't clear. And the glowing reviews refer to the original edition, not this one.
Having incubated my meeting with Jung's actual Red Book for beginning the Forum, I am quite attached to the body of the book.
The facsimile edition has a living presence--is an embodied image-which will not be in the readers edition.
Mimesis and Alterity, by Michael Tausssig-- which Robbie sites as a significant influence on his development of Embodied Imagination-- speaks to this:
"Why is embodiment itself necessary? p.8" "...can't we say that to give an example, to instantiate, to be concrete, are all examples of the magic of mimesis wherein the replication, the copy, acquires the power of the represented? And does not the magical power of this embodying inhere in the fact that in reading such examples we are thereby lifted out of ourselves into those images?...My point is not to assimilate this writerly practice to magic. Rather I want to estrange writing itself, writing of any sort, and puzzle over the capacity of the imagination to be lifted through representational media, such as marks on a page, into other worlds." p.16

So while not forcing anyone to buy anything, I feel passionate about the imaginal body of the original edition.
You can try to get the original from inter library loan or buy with friends or talk your library into buying it.
Janet

Linda AK Thompson, PhD > Janet Fortess January 23, 2013 at 12:24pm

Good morning Janet - the next time I venture into town, I will see if our library has a copy. That's a great solution for me. Nice to see your photo and also, thanks for including the Chapter associated with each Lecture for that is very helpful. Regards Linda

Constance Jennings January 21, 2013 at 5:00pm

I suppose emancipation occurs naturally like shedding an outdated developmental phase when we develop confidence in our spiritual vision such that it no longer makes sense to depend on more general directions from someone else who cannot see the individualized guiding vision within us.

By the way, I found my Red Book! I do not have the study guide however. Can we specify which pages are the basis for the discussion? Thank you!

Ava Lindberg, Ph.D. January 21, 2013 at 3:43pm

I am intrigued with the comments relating to going one's own way, expressed in Robert's lecture 1 and in The Red Book on page 231.

"May each go his own way."

"You seek the path? I warn you away from my own. It can also be the wrong way for you."

"There is only one way and that is your own way."

I like this idea on some levels, but it raises some questions.

The Red Book is suggesting a new form of autonomy, individuality, resonation of personal path, and intentional nonleadership. Nonfollowing. A group of beings who each listens to him or herself and the spirit of one's own depths and creates one's own path. Although TRB did not emerge into public view until a few years ago so this suggestion was not read until recently even though Jung seemed to express it in other works, still one wonders what this means. If one is led only by the spirit of the depths, then what is leading, following, and authentic individual goals and behaviors? Are there to be no role models, no principles, no theory, nothing or no one to emulate?

Is this nonleadership even possible unless one is a fully developed individual?

Especially on a vitally important day in which President Barack Obama is being inaugurated for a second term, as his words describe a new form of all-inclusive collaboration and unity, and a new form of progressive leadership that brings us back to the original Bill of Rights -- and as we are commemorating Martin Luther King who dreamed of all people having equal rights -- this form of not following another leader, no matter how inspiring or good, is arresting.

So, to go your own way, to insist that the only way is one's own way, seems like either a rather solitary experience for each of us, a kind of admonition that says that one must follow only an individual path in the guise of nonfollowing, a denial of the collective, a sense that there are no role models, that chaos or floundering may be OK in pursuing one's way, for a while, a moment, or a long time. What if one's own way is to inspire others or there is such charisma that one is followed despite one's desire?

When does one's way become concrete?

Such a question may be without answer (although I welcome thoughts from the study group) or it may lead to a review of the history of Jungian ideas and Jungian analysts since Jung's death. I just noticed a book by Samuel Andrews called Jung and the post-Jungians. A reviewer suggests (pdf article from online) --

"If we take Jung’s view of the uniqueness of each individual’s development seriously, there should be as many schools as there are post-Jungians. Jung himself...worked for many years – if not with great success - to try to find principles to which all schools of psychotherapy could adhere."

Yet, the "Jungian world does not have a basic body of knowledge (or principles) that form an agreed starting point for discussion."

So, in the world of Jungian ideas, is leadership relevant at all?

What happens, when in going one's own way, we discover we are not quite strong or experienced enough to truly go one's own way? Is chaos and anarchy a necessary step? Does anything go?

Janet Fortess > Ava Lindberg, Ph.D. January 21, 2013 at 11:05pm

Hi Ava,
I am struck that you are posting this question about going one's own way in the Discussion Forum of the community education section of the Depth Psychology Alliance. Many words/layers of connection--forum, community, alliance.
I truly hope that you and all members will engage with one another-- discovering and expressing from "I" in the context of "we".
To Everyone:
My emancipation from the father comes from removing one of the faces of Jung and inserting my own today.
Even though I'm a bit of a technophobe, I uploaded my photo albeit with help from my retired programmer husband. You all can do this with help from a friend (likely under 40 years old).
It would be great to have a face to go with the words each of you shares on the forum.
Janet
David Richardson > Janet Fortess January 23, 2013 at 4:53am

Janet - I would like to proudly announce that this 65 yr old uploaded his own photo! However, while searching for a photo to use I stumbled across this one. My wife & I were presented with our first grandchild on Dec. 10th! Meet Harvey! If you have listened to the whole series of lectures, you will recall the dream where Jung, "I," was traveling from west to east and a God (you professionals will have to fill in which God) was traveling from east to west. Well, here we are, Harvey and me, along the way on just such a journey. I have started a "Harvey File" to store the letters I have begun to write him. The idea is that one day when he is much older he might stumble across them and take this journey with me. Who knows? Or he might well find them and tell his children - "Your grandfather was a nut!" Anyway, I thought the photo spoke to our journey. And I like the mystery of you guys seeing only the back of my head. Don't worry, Harvey looks just like me! I am not sure what you guys took from the dream. I am not sure what Jung took from the dream. I took the lesson that absolutes were an exercise in vanity, futile. If I can pass that along to Harvey in my actions, not my words, it would be a nice gift from his grandfather. And so, much like one of Spinoza's lenses, much of this journey will be taken with an eye on Harvey.
Michael Harkins > David Richardson January 27, 2013 at 10:04pm

I like your post. I like that the picture is of you and Harvey. The child gives birth to the man... How apropos.
Robert Bosnak > Ava Lindberg, Ph.D. January 21, 2013 at 4:49pm

In honor of MLK I am reminded of Mahatma Ghandi who said that his Himalayan mistake was to urge people towards civil disobedience before they were fully intiated in Satyagraha, the soul force or truth force. He suggested that before you could set out on civil disobedience, meaning following your own spirit entirely, you would have to follow all the laws punctiliously and live in accordance with the collective in order to understand how you will deviate from it. I think the same is true here. It is the principle of emancipation, which means to be released from the power of the father. Emancipation must be earned.

Peter Scanlan January 21, 2013 at 2:39pm

Hello, I am Peter Scanlan and live in Nashville, Tennessee. I am a guide for the Animas Valley Institute. We call our work Soulcraft, after Bill Plotkin’s formulations of nature-based processes for accessing and dialoguing with our soul, defined as our deepest essence, who and what we are called to uniquely manifest in the world. The work borrows heavily from many Jungian principles.

I found myself very intrigued when I learned sometime in early 2009 that the Red Book was to be published. I knew nothing of it or its existence. I pre-ordered it and was quite surprised by its weightiness, physically and psychically. It sat on my floor taking up space in both of those dimensions. I read part of the introduction and began reading the text of Liber Novus though I shortly neglected it. Physically it is appropriately heavy to hold, difficult to manage, and closer to the earth than if it were on a bookshelf.

This past September I enacted a vision quest of my own, four days alone without food in the wilderness of southwest Utah. There were many dialogues with nature and images of the deep imagination. I had gone out asking a question about a life stage transition that has been stalking me for several years. There were a number of important and mysterious events, which I continue to be in dialogue with and which continue to work me.

In mid-October, after my last guiding trip and before I knew about this opportunity to dive into the Red Book with Robbie, I decided to take out a packet of images cut for magazines and calendars that a participant in a program had sent me during the summer, before my fast. I had not had time to look at them then. As I spread them out they began to speak to me and let me know how they wanted to be placed in relationship with each other. I have never done a collage, though I often suggest them to others as one way of feeding the dialogue with the numinous other. I was amazed at how absorbed I became with the process. I began to recognize the resonance of the images with those of my fast in the Utah desert. Among the pictures that the person sent me were two from the Red Book. They were very synchronous with a vision from my fast. It was within a week or so that someone told me about this Study Group.

Here is the collage

https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/9142787271?profile=original

Christopher Doggett > Peter Scanlan January 21, 2013 at 6:53pm

Welcome Peter.

Nice to have a soul guide in the Animas tradition among us. I spent New Years with Bill (Plotkin) and Geneen (Marie Haugen) from Animas Re-Wilding the Future at Esalen (Big Sur)

Just now I was preparing for a Poetry class starting this week reading HOWL by Ginsberg and looking for a poem to bring to class, I was looking over my notes from Esalen and found this poem that speaks to me about what is being talked about below concerning emancipation, not following and finding ones own direction through the voice within

Cutting Loose

Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason, you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose
from all else and electing a world
where you go where you want to.

Arbitrary, a sound comes, a reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that sound
will tell you where it is and you
can slide your way past trouble.

Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path -- but that's when
you get going best, glad to be lost,
learning how real it is
here on earth, again and again.

~ William Stafford ~

(Dancing With Joy, ed. by Roger Housden)

ARCHIVED-Red Book Study Group with Jungian Robert Bosnak

Lecture 1 for Special Study Group: Jung's Red Book with Robert Bosnak Jan 19, 2013

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