April 27, 2010 (REVISED June 2, 2010) Swiss Psychiatrist Carl Jung and the "Red Book" Subject of Library Symposium June 19

Press Contact: Audrey Fischer (202) 707-0022
Public Contact: Manuscript Division (202) 707-5383
Contact: Information on Exhibition

In conjunction with its new exhibition “The Red Book of Carl G. Jung: Its Origins and Influence,” the Library of Congress will sponsor a symposium to examine this seminal work and the Swiss psychiatrist who created it.

The symposium will be held from 9:15 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 19, in the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street S.E., Washington, D.C. While the event is free and open to the public, all seats have been taken for the event and registration is now closed.

Created between 1914 and 1930, the “Red Book” was the product of a technique developed by Jung, which he termed “active imagination.” The 205-page illustrated manuscript—in the author’s own hand—had been locked in a vault after Jung’s death. With permission from Jung’s heirs, W.W. Norton published a facsimile edition in October 2009. Edited by distinguished Jung scholar Sonu Shamdasani of the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College, London, the book has already been reprinted to meet the significant demand.

Shamdasani, along with Jungian scholar James Hillman and Jungian analyst Ann Ulanov, professor of psychiatry and religion at Union Theological Seminary will participate in the opening session (9:15 a.m. to noon) focused on “What The Red Book Reveals About Jung.” The panel will be chaired by Jungian analyst and author Beverley Zabriskie.

The first afternoon session (1:45 to 3 p.m.) on “Jung and Freud,” will be chaired by Jungian analyst Joseph Cambray, Center for Psychoanalytic Studies at Harvard Medical School. Speakers will include Ernst Falzeder, senior editor at the Philemon Foundation and Dr. George Makari, a professor of psychiatry at Weil Medical College of Cornell University and director of the DeWitt Wallace Institute for the History of Psychiatry.

The closing session (3:15 to 4:30 p.m.) on “The Nature of Jung’s Encounter with the Unconscious” will be chaired by Betty Sue Flowers, former director of the LBJ Library and Museum. Participants include Jungian analysts John Beebe, M.D., and Thomas Kirsch, M.D.

Attendees will have an opportunity to view the original “Red Book,” which is the centerpiece of the Library’s Jung exhibition on view June 17 through Sept. 25. The volume has been brought from the Foundation of the Works of C.G. Jung to the United States to be displayed in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., at the Library of Congress.

The exhibition will put the “Red Book” in context by displaying with it selected items from the Library’s rich collections that complement the work. They will reveal biographical information about Jung; the influences on him at the time of the book’s creation; and the influence on 20th-century culture of the theories Jung began to develop while writing the book.

The symposium is sponsored by the Library with support from the James Madison Council of the Library of Congress, the Oswald Family Foundation, the Hon. J. Richard Fredericks, the Embassy of Switzerland, the Jung Society of Washington, the Philemon Foundation, the Archives for Research in Archetypal Symbolism, the International Association for Analytical Psychology, the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco; and the Hon. Joseph B. Gildenhorn.

Drawn from a number of Library divisions, the items on display will include original letters between Jung and Freud; page proofs, annotated by Jung, of the English edition of his autobiography; first editions of many of Jung’s most important publications; photographs of Jung; rare alchemy books that influenced Jung; and items that demonstrate Jung’s influence on such artists as dancer and choreographer Martha Graham, filmmaker Federico Fellini and author Jorge Luis Borges and on popular-culture icons such as the film “Star Wars.”

Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution. Many of the Library’s rich resources can be accessed through its website at www.loc.gov and via interactive exhibitions on a personalized website at myLOC.gov.

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PR 10-094
2010-04-27
ISSN 0731-3527