It follows, records and comments in fair copy on the author's psychological observations and experiments on himself between 1913 and 1916, and draws on working drafts contained in a series of notebooks or journals, now known as the Black Books.

[2][3] Despite being considered as the origin of Jung's main oeuvre,[4] it was probably never intended for conventional publication and the material was not published nor made otherwise accessible for study until 2009.

In October 2009, with the cooperation of Jung's estate, The Red Book was published by W. W. Norton in a facsimile edition, complete with an English translation, three appendices, and over 1,500 editorial notes.

His manuscript is now increasingly cited as Liber Novus, and under this title implicitly includes draft material intended for but never finally transcribed into the red leather folio proper.

Over those years, their relationship produced many fruitful exchanges, but also cemented and highlighted each man's attachment to his convictions as to the nature and dynamics of the human psyche.

[7] Anthony Storr, reflecting on Jung's own judgment that he was "menaced by a psychosis" during this time, concluded that the period represented a psychotic episode.

[8] During the years Jung engaged with his "nocturnal work" on Liber Novus, he continued to function in his daytime activities without apparent impairment.

[15][16] In his introduction to Liber Novus, Shamdasani explains: From December 1913 onward, he carried on in the same procedure: deliberately evoking a fantasy in a waking state, and then entering into it as into a drama.

"[20] After the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Jung perceived that his visionary experiences were not only of personal relevance, but were entwined with a nodal historical moment.

[22] Although Jung laboured on the decorated transcription of the corpus of manuscript material into the calligraphic folio of the Red Book for sixteen years, he never completed the task.

Only approximately two-thirds of Jung's manuscript text was transcribed into the Red Book by 1930, when he abandoned further work on the detailed transcriptions.

[25]In 1959, after having left the book more or less untouched for about 30 years, Jung wrote a short epilogue: "To the superficial observer, it will appear like madness.

However, as Jung proceeded with work on the parchment sheets, it became apparent that their surface was not holding his paint properly and that his ink was bleeding through.

These first seven leaves (fourteen pages, recto and verso) now show heavy chipping of paint, as will be noted on close examination of the facsimile edition reproductions.

The decision to publish was apparently aided by representations made by London-based scholar Sonu Shamdasani, who had already discovered substantial private transcriptions of portions of The Red Book in archival repositories.