The Society for Critical Exchange
Jung’s Red Book: Confronting the Unconscious through Word and Image
In 1913, at a moment of personal and professional crisis, Jung began recording a series of visions and fantasies in what would become an extended “confrontation with the unconscious.”  The Red Book, newly published last year after decades kept under a shroud of family secrecy, is rife with all the chaos and horror one might expect an honest accounting of the unplumbed depths of the human psyche to contain.  The book has another striking feature as well, however: it is visually stunning.  Comprised of flowing calligraphic text illuminated by richly colored and densely symbolic images, it is on its own terms an aesthetic object of great precision and beauty. 

This panel welcomes papers that explore the visual dimension of Jung’s text in any aspect.  Possible topics might include (but are not limited to) the relations between textual/visual aesthetics and the unconscious; the use of an essentially medieval literary form to delineate a profoundly modern search for self; the practical importance of creativity and design in charting the hidden landscapes of human experience, such as those designated by the terms “unconscious,” “psyche,” and “soul”; the role of aesthetic expression in the development of the human psyche; and the dynamic interplay between word and image, including their interchangeability (i.e., text that functions visually as image, and images that function narratively or informationally as text).

By June 15, 2010, please submit (e-mail preferred), one-page proposals and abstracts, along with any requests for audio-visual support, to Nicholas Miller, Loyola University Maryland, nmiller@loyola.edu.