The Black Books occupy a foundational position in the depth-psychological corpus as the primary documentary record of Jung’s ‘confrontation with the unconscious’ — the six private journals in which he first transcribed the fantasies, dialogues with inner figures, and visionary material that were later elaborated and illuminated in the Red Book (Liber Novus). Sonu Shamdasani’s editorial apparatus to the 2009 edition of Liber Novus establishes the Black Books as the originary stratum of the entire Liber Novus project: raw, diaristic, and markedly different in attribution and characterisation from the calligraphic reworkings. What the corpus reveals is a layered relationship between the two archives — the Black Books as living laboratory, Liber Novus as the artfully interpreted monument — with the former continuously consulted for variant readings, textual variants in character attribution, and cosmological elaborations that never made it into the final manuscript. The scholarly tension concentrated around the Black Books concerns the degree to which their private, sequentially datable entries permit a genetic reconstruction of Jung’s psychological and theoretical development that the more composed Liber Novus obscures. Their restricted circulation during Jung’s lifetime — read by Aniela Jaffé, by Tina Keller in sections, and consulted editorially by Shamdasani — only heightens their status as a primary document whose full significance the depth-psychology field is still assimilating.
He first recorded these fantasies in his Black Books. He then revised these texts, added reflections on them, and copied them in a calligraphic script into a book entitled Liber Novus
This passage defines the Black Books as the originary compositional stratum — the unrevised first-recording of active-imagination fantasies — from which Liber Novus was derived through deliberate interpretive elaboration.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009thesis
One would do best to regard Liber Novus and the Black Books as representing a private opus that ran parallel to and alongside his public scholarly opus; whilst the latter was nourished by and drew from the former, they remained distinct.
Shamdasani argues that the Black Books, together with Liber Novus, constitute a private mythopoetic opus wholly distinct from Jung’s theoretical writings, even as the former continuously fed the latter.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009thesis
The material in the Black Books commences in November 1913. Liber Secundus closes with material from April 19, 1914, and Scrutinies commences with material from the same day.
The editorial rationale here establishes the Black Books as providing the continuous chronological backbone against which the several manuscript strata of Liber Novus are dated and sequenced.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009thesis
After writing the Septem Sermones in the Black Books, Jung recopied it in a calligraphic script into a separate book, slightly rearranging the sequence.
This passage documents the compositional movement from the Black Books to the calligraphic manuscript, showing the Black Books as the site of first composition for even the most formally significant texts within the Liber Novus project.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009thesis
In Black Book 4, this is spoken by his soul. In this chapter and in Scrutinies, we find a shift in the attribution of some statements in the Black Books from the soul to the other characters.
Shamdasani’s annotation reveals that the Black Books preserve an earlier, less differentiated stage of characterisation, providing textual evidence for the psychological process of individuation that the revised Liber Novus represents.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting
Aniela Jaffé read the Black Books, and Tina Keller was also allowed to read sections of the Black Books.
This passage documents the highly restricted readership of the Black Books during Jung’s lifetime, distinguishing their private circulation from the slightly wider, still controlled distribution of Liber Novus itself.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting
His concluding letter to Schmid of November 6 indicates a shift that signals a return to the elaboration of his fantasies in the Black Books.
The passage traces how external intellectual correspondence (with Hans Schmid on psychological types) marks a temporal boundary that correlates with resumption of fantasy-recording in the Black Books, linking theoretical development to the private journal practice.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting
The fantasies in the Black Books became more intermittent. He portrayed his realization of the significance of the self, which took place in the autumn of 1917, in Scrutinies.
Shamdasani identifies a qualitative shift in the Black Books from sustained fantasy-production to increasing intermittency, correlating this with Jung’s conceptual consolidation of the self as a theoretical construct.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting
In September 1916, Jung had conversations with his soul that provided further elaboration and clarification of the cosmology of the Sermones.
This footnote draws on the Black Books to reconstruct the post-Sermones cosmological dialogues with the soul, demonstrating how the Black Books supply textual content not incorporated into the final Liber Novus manuscript.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting
With its publication, one is now in a position to study what took place there on the basis of primary documentation as opposed to the fantasy, gossip, and speculation that makes up too much of what is written on Jung.
Shamdasani positions the publication of Liber Novus — and implicitly the archival access to the Black Books that underpins its apparatus — as a corrective to the speculative secondary literature on Jung’s inner development.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009aside