Community with the Dead: Jung's Black Books Epiphany and the Role of Toni Wolff.

Abstract

During December 1915, C. G. Jung recorded a series of fantasy dialogues in The Black Books with a female shade who instructed him to seek "community with the dead" (2020, Vol. 5, p. 255). The female shade also taught Jung a prayer for the redemption of the dead and she indicated the defining tasks of the second half of Jung's life-namely, the creation of Liber Novus, or The Red Book, and the foundation of the community of analytical psychology. In this paper, the author explores the significance of these key passages in the context of Jung's emerging "theology of the dead", as documented in the initial volumes of The Black Books (Shamdasani, 2024, p. 118). She considers Jung's interrogation of his own dream history as part of this creative writing process, including several significant dreams about the dead, and she explores the extent to which Jung regarded one of these dreams as prompting him to start an extra-marital relationship with Toni Wolff.