The imaginal and the pathological: Jung’s Red Book and its Nietzschean and Hildergardian antecedents

Abstract

ABSTRACT The contents of his Red Book document experiences that C.G. Jung had during his confrontation with his unconscious. Jung’s great imaginal work was possibly composed while he was in the midst of a pathological process. This paper identifies two works that foreshadowed The Red Book: Nietzsche’s Thus spoke Zarathustra, and Hildegard’s Scivias. Of interest is the fact that these two precursors of the red book were also great works of imaginal literature that were composed when their respective authors were in the throes of illness. The second part of this paper discusses the relationship between the imaginal and the pathological.