10.13125/CH/4662
application/pdf
2533-1825
4662
2
en
urn:nbn:it:unica-26989
Sanja Ivic
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Critical Hermeneutics
The Significance of Paul Ricoeur’s Narrative Theory and Hermeneutics for Understanding  Carl Jung’s Red Book
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch
4
Articles
2021-05-24
2021-05-24
2021-05-24
2021-05-24
163-182
1
Sanja Ivic
2020
10.13125/CH/4662
163
2533-1825
2
182
urn:nbn:it:unica-26989
The Significance of Paul Ricoeur’s Narrative Theory and Hermeneutics for Understanding  Carl Jung’s Red Book
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/article/download/4662/4726
4
Critical Hermeneutics, 4 (2020)                      Received: 28/02/2021
Biannual International Journal of Philosophy         Accepted: 20/04/2021
http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/index             Published: 24/05/2021
ISSN 2533-1825 (on line); DOI 13125/CH/4662




  The Significance of Paul Ricoeur’s Narrative Theory
               and Hermeneutics for Understanding
                             Carl Jung’s Red Book


                                        Sanja Ivic




Abstract
Hermeneutics is a significant dimension of C.G. Jung’s analytical
psychology, although Jung did not develop a consistent hermeneutic
method, and this aspect of his work has not yet been sufficiently
explored. This paper examines the relevance of Paul Ricoeur’s
hermeneutics and narrative theory for the interpretation of Carl Jung’s
Red Book, which can be perceived as a narrative experiment. Ricoeur
focuses on the narrative character of human experience. Paul Ricoeur’s
ideas of narrative and plot are significant for exploring Jung’s inner
experience described in his Red Book as well as the narrative structure
of The Red Book.
Keywords: Jung, The Red Book, Ricoeur, hermeneutics, narrative


1. Introduction
This paper explores the hermeneutic dimension of Carl Jung’s
analytical psychology. According to Paul Ricoeur, “by hermeneutics we
shall always understand the theory of the rules that preside over an
exegesis – that is, over the interpretation of a particular text, or of a
group of signs that may be viewed as a text” (Ricoeur 1970: 8).
Hermeneutics is not limited to an objective structural analysis of texts
Ivic, The Significance of Paul Ricoeur’s Narrative Theory




or to a subjective existential analysis of the authors of texts – it
primarily deals with the worlds that these authors and texts open up
(Becanovic-Nikolic 1998). According to Ricoeur, we do not understand
the world directly, but through the text. Ricoeur argues that to under-
stand oneself means to understand oneself in encounter with the text
(Ricoeur 1984). Paul Ricoeur’s overall philosophical anthropology could
be understood as anthropology of a man capable of self-interpretation
on a long journey of reading both texts and the world (Volk 2014).
      Hermeneutics sheds new light on many concepts of analytical psy-
chology. The question of personal identity and the process of individu-
ation find their expression in the narrative structure and self-
interpretation, which is the realm of hermeneutics. The aim of investi-
gating the hermeneutic nature of C.G. Jung’s analytical psychology is
to point out the aspects of analytical psychology that are neglected and
overlooked, and which make it closer to postmodern philosophy
(Vuletic 2017).
      In his essay “The Structure of the Unconscious” 1,“Jung affirmed
the importance of understanding psychological phenomena such as
dreams and fantasies hermeneutically as ‘authentic symbols’ rather
than merely semiotically as symptoms” (Smythe and Baydala 2012:
60). But Jung never developed his hermeneutic method, nor did he rely
on hermeneutic philosophers such as Schleiermacher, Dilthey, and
Heidegger in his work (61). According to Smythe and Baydala, Jung’s
“rich, interpretive approach to symbolic meaning in practice did not
culminate in a consistent, theoretically articulated hermeneutic meth-
odology” (57).




1
  This essay “was based on a lecture Jung presented at the Zurich School for Analyt-
ical Psychology in 1916 that was first published, in French translation, in Archives de
Psychologie later that year; it appears as an appendix to Volume 7 of the Collected
Works” (Smythe and Baydala 2012: 60).



164
                                                  Critical Hermeneutics, 4 (2020)




       The nature of Jung’s analytical psychology is hermeneutic, since it
is based on interpretation. “It is only through the interpretation of the
symbols manifested by the archetypes that one can gain an under-
standing of the archetypal pattern of the human mind” (Academy of
Ideas 2017). Hermeneutics is a significant dimension of Carl Jung’s
analytical psychology, although Jung has not developed a consistent
hermeneutic method and this aspect of his work has not yet been
sufficiently explored. “Hermeneutics is a perennial current in Jung’s
psychology, insofar as his inquiries were from the outset directed to
issues of meaning and its interpretation” (Smythe and Baydala 2012:
57).
       This paper will explore the relevance of Paul Ricoeur’s narrative
theory and hermeneutics for understanding C.G. Jung’s Red Book
(Liber Novus). Sonu Shamdasani described The Red Book as a “her-
meneutic experiment” (Shamdasani 2009: 203). However, The Red
Book can also be perceived as a narrative experiment. A closer account
of Ricoeur’s narrative theory and hermeneutics is helpful in under-
standing and interpreting Jung’s Red Book.
       In addition to being a significant contribution to the study of lit-
erature, mythology and philosophy, The Red Book can also be consid-
ered the material from which Jung derived his most significant later
works (Shamdasani 2009). In fact, Jung himself mentioned in his au-
tobiography that the material that emerged from the images and vi-
sions he collected in The Red Book is material that he elaborated in all
his later works (Jung 1989). Jung’s reflections on archetypes and the
collectively unconscious, active imagination, personality types, ego in-
flation, projection, compensation, rationalization and individuation can
be found in The Red Book (Shamdasani 2009).
       Jung believed that dreams, visions and fantasies have similar
symbolism and narrative structure as myths, fairy tales, and legends,
and it is therefore important to analyze them under similar conditions.



                                                                             165
Ivic, The Significance of Paul Ricoeur’s Narrative Theory




Jungian psychology in psychotherapeutic work includes the patient’s
visual expression which, through analysis, becomes a narrative that
leads to the healing process.
      Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutic emphasizes the role of the text in illu-
minating human existence. Ricoeur argues about the narrative charac-
ter of human experience. Jung emphasizes the importance of narration
in psychotherapy:


      In many cases in psychiatry, the patient who comes to us has
      a story that is not told, and which as a rule no one knows of.
      To my mind, therapy only really begins after the investigation
      of that wholly personal story. It is the patient’s secret, the
      rock against which he is shattered. If I know his secret story,
      I have a key to the treatment. The doctor’s task is to find out
      how to gain that knowledge (Jung 1989: 147).


      Both Paul Ricoeur and Carl G. Jung emphasize the hermeneutic
character of the narrative. Jung points out that the doctor should ap-
proach the patient’s life story as a hermeneutician. According to Jung,
“the crucial thing is the story. For it alone shows the human back-
ground and the human suffering, and only at that point can the doctor’s
therapy begin to operate” (155).


2. Carl Jung’s Red Book as a Narrative Experiment
According to Marlan, “in spite of Ricoeur’s marginalizing of Jung and
his preference for Freud work, his own formulations resonate more with
Jung’s ideas than with Freud’s” (Marlan 2002: 57). According to
Ricoeur:


       A meditation on Freud’s work has the advantage of revealing
      that work’s broadest aim: not only the renovation of



166
                                                Critical Hermeneutics, 4 (2020)




    psychiatry, but a reinterpretation of all psychical productions
    pertaining to culture, from dreams, through art and morality,
    to religion. This is how psychoanalysis belongs to modern
    culture. By interpreting culture it modifies it; by giving it an
    instrument of reflection it stamps it with a lasting mark
    (Ricoeur 1970: 4).


    However, Jung’s analytical psychology and his discovery of the
collective unconscious is much closer to Ricoeur’s hermeneutic goals.
The scientific analysis of dreams began with Sigmund Freud’s The In-
terpretation of Dreams (1900). In insisting on dreams as ‘the royal
road to the unconscious’ (Freud 1900), Freud gave an elaborate ac-
count of why dreams arise and how they work, which was significant
for developing dream analysis. However, Freud based his interpreta-
tion of dreams only on the personal unconscious which consists of emo-
tions, memories and other things that have been repressed from the
consciousness of the individual. C.G. Jung made a significant
contribution to the analysis of dreams (as well as psychical productions
pertaining to culture) because his discovery of the collective
unconscious, whose content are archetypes, showed that there are
dreams that can not be interpreted based on the personal associations
of the dreamer, since they have no origin in his/her own personal
experience. Jung distinguished two layers of the unconscious: personal
unconscious, reflecting personal complexes, memories and suppressed
content, and collective unconscious, whose basic structure is equally
possessed by all people and is reflected in thoughts, feelings, emotions,
and fantasies. Archetypical dreams can be interpreted by the method
of amplification introduced by Jung. An amplification method that
specializes in the interpretation of archetypal dreams, searches for
parallels in myths, fairy tales, legends, and in that way attempts to




                                                                           167
Ivic, The Significance of Paul Ricoeur’s Narrative Theory




illuminate the meaning of dreams. The nature of amplification is
hermeneutic, and it can be perceived as a hermeneutic method.
      Ricoeur’s study of symbols is also closer to Jungian thought than
to Freudian theory. According to Nastovic, Sigmund Freud does not
make a sharp distinction between a sign and a symbol (Nastovic 2008).
This is especially evident in Freud’s interpretation of dreams. Freud
argues that most dream symbols are sex symbols (Freud 1900). Freud
gave the symbols in the dream a fixed meaning, thus reducing them
to the level of an ordinary sign (Nastovic 2008: 44). Rand and Torok
emphasize “a fundamental methodological discrepancy as Freud seems
to be moving in two contrary directions at the same time. He attempts
to understand dreams based on the dreamer’s free associations, and
concurrently he provides a catalog of stable and universally applicable
meanings or symbolic equations, rendering the dreamer’s personal as-
sociations entirely superfluous” (Rand and Torok 1993: 570). On the
other hand, Jung’s work points to the hermeneutics of the symbol, both
as “an approach to therapy” and “a means of inquiry” (Smythe and
Baydala 2012: 57). Jung approaches symbols as a hermeneutician. “No
two dreams use the symbols of the unconscious in the same way. So
every Jungian analysis is unique” (Freeman 1964: 10).
      Ricoeur’s interest in hermeneutics was sparked by his studies of
symbols and myths. According to Ricoeur, our self-understanding and
understanding of reality are mediated by symbols (Ricoeur 1991b).
Paul Ricoeur emphasizes that “symbolic systems make and remake the
world” (Ricoeur 1979: 123).
      Scholars influenced by Carl Jung neglected the significance of both
hermeneutics         and      phenomenology.           Ricoeur’s   hermeneutics   is
important for understanding and further developing Jung’s interpretive
method. Moreover, it is important for the identification and further
development of Jung’s hermeneutic thought.




168
                                                 Critical Hermeneutics, 4 (2020)




    Jung’s Red Book represents a narrative and “hermeneutic experi-
ment” (Shamdasani 2009: 203). According to Slattery:


    The Red Book has made even more palpable not only the re-
    ality of the psyche but also the reality of Jung’s stature as
    epic pilgrim and poet in his courage to embark on a path
    taken by no one else and then to give it mythopoetic expres-
    sion in the sixteen years it demanded of him. No wonder he
    turned to Goethe, Dante, Ovid, Nietzsche, Melville, and
    Thomas à Kempis, among others, for some of his visionary
    sustenance (Slattery 2011: 128–129).


    During the collective crisis that engulfed Europe before the First
World War, and during his personal and professional crisis, Jung began
to experience “a flood of apocalyptic visions”, which appeared even
during the day, during his routine activities (Eynon 2019). Jung, as
much as he could, kept to everyday life, trying not to drown in the
visions and images that overwhelmed him. “Maintaining his private
practice as well as his familial duties, he was determined to gain control
of the images that afflicted him – a feat which he accomplished by
recording his visions, giving shape to them in words and images in the
Black Books” (Eynon 2019).
    The Red Book is multilayered. The text, drawings and paintings
reflect the contents from the personal and collective unconscious: com-
plexes, archetypes; the process of individuation and so forth (Princevac
de Villablanca 2019). This book reflects the concepts that were de-
scribed in Jung’s later works. In order for these works to be created, it
was necessary for Jung to go through a deep personal experience,
through active imagination, but also through interpretations of the con-
tent he came across (Ib.).




                                                                            169
Ivic, The Significance of Paul Ricoeur’s Narrative Theory




      The Red Book is largely the result of records derived from Jung’s
sessions of active imagination (Jung 2009). Jung relies on the tech-
nique of active imagination, which is a psychological process of “inte-
grating the elements of the unconscious” in order to develop the ne-
glected parts of the psyche and lead a fuller and more conscious life
(Cassar 2020: 58). “The first few decades of the twentieth century saw
a great deal of experimentation in literature, psychology and the visual
arts. Writers tried to throw off the limitations of representational con-
ventions to explore and depict the full range of inner experience –
dreams, visions, and fantasies” (Shamdasani 2009: 194). According to
Slattery, The Red Book includes two intertwined narratives.


      Leaving aside the paintings as magnificent aesthetic render-
      ings of characters and psychological forces of the narrative’s
      specifically plotted movement, the major text is Jung’s own
      writing as he enters through a rich and sustained quest and
      a questioning of his own soul within the historical background
      of one of the most dramatic moments in modernity: World
      War I. The war’s imminence and then presence evokes the
      epic enterprise of a search for the Grail of the Self. The sec-
      ond narrative resides in the ongoing episodic plot of the notes
      that appear at the bottom of practically every page, com-
      menting on, correcting, amplifying, and furthering the main
      plot. These two narratives are in constant dialogue, with us
      as readers in between, stitching the two stories together
      within our own imagination as our own personal myths are
      activated through the dual drama of discovery (Slattery
      2011: 130).


      In 1957, Jung spoke to Aniela Jaffé about The Red Book and the
process which yielded it. In that interview he stated:



170
                                                        Critical Hermeneutics, 4 (2020)




     The years (…) when I pursued the inner images, were the
     most important time of my life. Everything else is to be de-
     rived from this. It began at that time, and the later details
     hardly matter anymore. My entire life consisted in elaborating
     what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me
     like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me. That
     was the stuff and material for more than only one life. Every-
     thing later was merely the outer classification, scientific elab-
     oration, and the integration into life. But the numinous be-
     ginning, which contained everything, was then2.


     Jung’s “hermeneutic experiment” (Shamdasani 2009) in the Red
Book is based on “a voluntary confrontation with the unconscious”
(Eynon 2019). According to Shamdasani:


     From December 1913 onward, he carried on in the same pro-
     cedure: deliberately evoking a fantasy in a waking state, and
     then entering into it as into a drama. These fantasies may be
     understood as a type of dramatized thinking in pictorial form.
     In reading his fantasies, the impact of Jung’s mythological
     studies is clear. Some of the figures and conceptions derive
     directly from his readings, and the form and style bear wit-
     ness to his fascination with the world of myth and epic
     (Shamdasani 2009: 200).


     Paul Ricoeur’s ideas of narrative and plot3 are significant for ex-
ploring Jung’s inner experience described in his Red Book, and


2
  Carl Jung, Interview with Aniela Jaffé, 1957, cited in: Carl Jung: The Red Book,
Freely Receive, https://www.freelyreceive.net/carl-jung-the-red-book/.
3
  Ricoeur emphasizes: “For my part, I have retained from Aristotle’s Poetics the cen-
tral concept of emplotment, which in Greek is muthos and which signifies both fable
(in the sense of an imaginary story) and plot (in the sense of a well constructed



                                                                                   171
Ivic, The Significance of Paul Ricoeur’s Narrative Theory




identifying and understanding its hermeneutic dimension. Ricoeur em-
ploys the term narrative in a generic sense (Ricoeur 1984). He distin-
guishes between the diegetic and dramatic modes (Ib.). In Time and
Narrative (1984-1988) and The Law of Metaphor (1977), Ricoeur de-
velops his narrative theory. He explores Aristotle’s Poetics as a capacity
for emplotment creation (la mise en intrigue). Ricoeur develops his
poetics by extending Aristotle’s concept of mythos (plot) and introduc-
ing his concept of threefold mimesis. When Ricoeur (1984) uses Aris-
totle’s term mythos, he uses the expression la mise en intrigue (em-
plotment, the building of the plot) instead of intrigue (plot), because
he emphasizes that the process of the genesis of the narrative is dy-
namic (Becanovic-Nikolic 1998). Ricoeur defines plot as an intelligible
structure that holds together initiatives, circumstances, ends and
means, and unwanted consequences (See Ivic 2018).
      Ricoeur’s conception of narrative is of a hermeneutic character.
Ricoeur aims at broadening the idea of plot (mythos) as an imitation
of action (Ricoeur 1985: 10). Relying on Aristotle’s definition of my-
thos4, Ricoeur argues that “plot was first defined, on the most formal
level as an integrating dynamism that draws a unified and complete
story from a variety of incidents” (8). According to Ricoeur, old
definitions of narrative and plot are outdated, as literature evolves and
new genres and literary forms emerge. “Its adventure seems to have
brought it to blur the limits between genres and to contest the very
principle of order” (7). This point of view can be applied to Jung’s Red
Book, which represents a narrative structure that blurs boundaries

story). It is this second aspect of Aristotle’s muthos that I am taking as my guide;
and it is out of this concept of plot that I hope to draw all of the elements capable of
helping me later to reformulate the relation between life and narrative” (Ricoeur
1991: 21). “And an action is whole and complete if it has a beginning, a middle, and
an end; that is, if the beginning introduces the middle, if the middle with its reversals
and recognition scenes leads to the end, and if the end concludes the middle”
(Ricoeur 1985: 20).
4
  According to Aristotle, mythos is “an imitation of an action that is whole and com-
plete in itself” (Poetics 50b23-25).



172
                                                    Critical Hermeneutics, 4 (2020)




between the story and image; the personal and the collective; the con-
scious and the unconscious. In order to interpret and understand The
Red Book, the capacity of the plot needs to be transformed. The tradi-
tional notion of the plot needs to be broaden. Denis Pattrick Slattery
states:


    I understand The Red Book to be an occasion for furthering a
    discussion of Jung as a poet, as an artificer and crafter of
    mythic movements of the soul in literary form, and to view
    him as an epic poet. Furthermore, I can easily see the possi-
    bilities of teaching The Red Book in literature courses on epic
    and, most specifically, in conjunction with Dante’s Commedia.
    The former is as much a literary text in the tradition of epic
    poetry as it is a complex and demanding exploration of Jung’s
    own descensus ad inferos that spirals out to include the larger
    historical psyche (Slattery 2011: 130).


    In the framework of Aristotle’s conception of plot, “plot could only
be conceived of as an easily readable form, closed in on itself, sym-
metrically arranged in terms of an ending, and based on an easily iden-
tifiable causal connection” (Ricoeur 1985: 8–9). In the twentieth
century, with the advent of the stream-of-consciousness novel, the
notion of plot seemed to be troubled (9–10). For this reason Ricoeur
broadens    the   idea   of   representation   of     reality    and     truthful
representation.
     The nineteenth century realistic novels were based on the quest
for verisimilitude. They aimed to be true “in the sense of being faithful
to reality” (11). Yet, paradoxically, they produced an artificial reality.
According to Ricoeur, that is because “the call for verisimilitude could
not long hide the fact that verisimilitude is not just resemblance to
truth but also a semblance of truth” (13). Ricoeur argues:



                                                                               173
Ivic, The Significance of Paul Ricoeur’s Narrative Theory




      If indeed, resemblance is only a semblance of truth, what
      then is fiction under the rule of this semblance but the ability
      to create the belief that this artifice stands for genuine testi-
      mony about reality and life? The art of fiction then turns out
      to be the art of illusion. From here on, awareness of the arti-
      fice involved undermines from within the realist motivation,
      finally turning against and destroying it (Ib.).


      Paul Ricoeur points out that, from a modern point of view, only a
novel without a plot reflects reality. Only a fragmentary plot can
present a complex and dynamic human experience5.
      Ricoeur’s broadens Aristotle’s concept of mythos and perceives it
as “the synthesis of heterogeneous” in the broadest sense (156).
Ricoeur’s conception of plot is “a plea for the precedence of narrative
understanding over narratological rationality” (158). Relying on the
notion of narrative understanding, Ricoeur achieves his hermeneutic
goal – that the examination of narrative is not limited to the text, but
to include what precedes the text, as a reality of the world and as a
sediment of tradition, and then the reception of the narrative text
which is based on narrative competence and narrative understanding
(Becanovic-Nikolic          1998:       77).     Ricoeur’s   notion   of   narrative
understanding transcends sharp distinctions between the conscious
and the unconscious, the personal and the collective, the temporal and
the atemporal, the real and the fictional. Therefore, it can be applied
to Jung’s Red Book.
      Narrative identity is the outcome of a hermeneutic encounter with
a text in which interpretation is realized in self-interpretation


5
 However, this plea for fragmented fiction can be perceived as a mere paradigm shift
that is not justified any differently than was the plea for realist literature (Ricoeur
1985: 14).



174
                                                 Critical Hermeneutics, 4 (2020)




(Becanovic-Nikolic 1998). By understanding the text, readers actually
understand themselves, the world and themselves in the world (Ib.).
The concept of interpreting the text as self-interpretation is one of the
basic ideas of Ricoeur’s hermeneutics.
    Narrative identity is the result of the appropriation of meaning in
the encounter with the narrative text. The author transforms the world
and himself, and that transformed world can be concretized only in the
imagination of the reader who meets the text, whereby the reader
transforms himself (Ib.).
    Carl Jung’s Liber Novus is in accordance with Ricoeur’s belief “that
new narrative forms, which we do not yet know how to name, are al-
ready being born, which will bear witness to the fact that the narrative
function can still be metamorphosed, but not so as to die” (Ricoeur
1985: 28). Jung’s fantasies and visionary experience may be perceived
as an emplotment in the broadest sense. Ricoeur argues about the
metamorphosis of the plot in “which we can no longer recognize the
formal principle of temporal configuration that makes a story a whole
and complete story” (Ib.).


3. The Relevance of Ricoeur’s Idea of Literary Tradition for the
Interpretation of The Red Book
After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Jung realized that
his visionary experience was not only of a personal nature, and did not
spring only from the personal unconscious, but that its nature was
collective, that is, to originate from the collective unconscious.


    In 1913, Jung had introduced a distinction between interpre-
    tation on the objective level, in which dream objects were
    treated as representations of real objects, and interpretation
    on the subjective level in which every element concerns the
    dreamers themselves. As well as interpreting his fantasies on



                                                                            175
Ivic, The Significance of Paul Ricoeur’s Narrative Theory




      the subjective level, one could characterize his procedure
      here as an effort to interpret his fantasies on the “collective’
      level” (Shamdasani 2009: 202).


      In his essay “The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious”
(1928/1966), Jung describes inner drama as an integral part of the
process of personality transformation which is a part of the process of
individuation. Jung notes that after dealing with fantasies from the
realm of the personal, we encounter fantasies that do not belong to
the domain of the personal.
      Jung compared his experience (described in The Red Book) with
Nietzsche’s, who experienced a similar flood of visions while working
on his work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Dante’s influence is also present
in this book, with the narrative of descending into the underworld in
search of the redemption of the soul. However, Jung adapted his nar-
rative to his own purposes, as Dante relied on traditional Judeo-Chris-
tian cosmology, while Jung created his own cosmology (Spano 2013:
202). According to Spano, the character of Salome in the Liber Novus
is the antithesis of Dante’s Beatrice (Spano 2013). On the other hand,
Jung’s character of Philemon can be compared to Dante’s Virgil (Ib.).


      Jung based Philemon on Ovid’s tale of the old couple Baucis
      and Philemon, chosen by the gods to survive the great flood
      for their hospitality, as well as on Goethe’s use of the same
      character in his Faust, Part Two, in which the old couple are
      murdered by Mephistopheles when they block Faust’s devel-
      opment project. Jung’s Philemon, however, has enormous
      kingfisher wings, is portrayed as a wise and canny old magi-
      cian, and appears without Baucis. Even Gilgamesh shows up
      as a character by the name of Izdubar (an older variant of
      Gilgamesh’s name), and Jung takes advantage of the mortal



176
                                               Critical Hermeneutics, 4 (2020)




    nature of this god-like being to stress the sacrifices that the
    modern West has made in developing their science and rea-
    son. And the images and visionary passages in the text also
    conjure the visionary works of William Blake who, along with
    that of Nietzsche, Goethe, Dante, Ovid and Gilgamesh, Jung
    had studied prior to the composition of The Red Book (Eynon
    2019).


    Jung’s book also features Gilgamesh, who is portrayed as a char-
acter named Izdubar (an older variant of Gilgamesh’s name), and Jung
uses the mortal nature of this divine being to emphasize the sacrifices
the modern Western civilization has made in the development of sci-
ence and technology (Eynon 2019). And the paintings and visionary
passages in The Red Book evoke the visionary works of William Blake,
who, like the works of Gilgamesh, Ovid, Dante, Goethe, Nietzsche,
Jung studied (Spano 2013). The cultural context of Jung’s visions and
the way in which his culture, the spirit of the time in which he lived,
his family and education shaped his interpretation of these images and
themes, must certainly be taken into account (Eynon 2019).
    In his Mysterium Coniunctionis, Jung offers a hermeneutic
understanding of the concept of tradition:


    The importance of hermeneutics should not be under-
    estimated: it has a beneficial effect on the psyche by
    consciously linking the distant past, the ancestral heritage
    which is still alive in the unconscious, with the present, thus
    establishing the vitally important connection between a
    consciousness oriented to the present moment only and the
    historical psyche which extends over infinitely long periods of
    time (Jung 1955/1970: § 474).




                                                                          177
Ivic, The Significance of Paul Ricoeur’s Narrative Theory




      This point of view is akin to Ricoeur’s understanding of tradition
as “the interplay of innovation and sedimentation” (Ricoeur 1984: 68).
      Ricoeur points to the deep permeation of the history of literature
and knowledge of literary tradition, which must precede the formation
of narrative understanding and narrative competence, on the one
hand, and literary theory, which cannot be based on a contingent set
of individual works, on the other (Becanovic-Nikolic 1998: 77).
According to Ricoeur, the concept of literary tradition cannot be
reduced to the contingency of the history of genres and individual
works (Ricoeur 1985). “In fact, a tradition is constituted by the inter-
play of innovation and sedimentation. To sedimentation must be re-
ferred the paradigms that constitute the typology of emplotment.
These paradigms have issued from a sedimented history whose genesis
has been covered over” (Ricoeur 1984: 68).
      According to Ricoeur, within the framework of tradition, one can
discern the logic of narrative that eludes any history. That logic is “nei-
ther historical nor ahistorical but rather transhistorical, in the sense
that it runs through this history in a cumulative rather than just an
additive manner” (Ricoeur 1985: 15). Ricoeur argues that:


      One aspect of the very idea of traditionality – that is, of the
      epistemological aspect of “making a tradition” – is that iden-
      tity and difference are inextricably mixed together in it. The
      identity of style is not the identity of an achronic logical struc-
      ture. Rather it characterizes the schematism of the narrative
      understanding, such as it becomes constituted through a cu-
      mulative and sedimented history. This is why this identity is
      transhistorical rather than atemporal (20).


      Elaborating the notion of tradition, Ricoeur states: “Let us under-
stand by this term not the inert transmission of some already dead



178
                                                Critical Hermeneutics, 4 (2020)




deposit of material but the living transmission of an innovation always
capable of being reactivated by a return to the most creative moments
of poetic activity. So understood, traditionality enriches the relation-
ship between plot and time with a new feature” (Ricoeur 1984: 68).


4. Conclusion
This paper explores Carl Jung’s Red Book from the perspective of Ric-
oeur’s narrative theory and hermeneutics. Jung’s Red Book is a narra-
tive experiment, which expands the idea of plot and narration to in-
clude visions, dreams and fantasies. Ricoeur broadens Aristotle’s con-
cept of mythos and argues about the metamorphosis of the plot that
can be perceived as the synthesis of heterogeneous in the broadest
sense (Ricoeur 1985: 28). Paul Ricoeur’s ideas of narrative and plot
are relevant for exploring the hermeneutic dimension of Jung’s experi-
ence described in his Red Book. Jung realized that the character of his
visionary experience, which he described in his Red Book was not only
personal but also collective. Ricoeur’s idea of literary tradition is
significant for a better understanding of the collective nature of Jung’s
experience presented in his Red Book as well as his idea of the
collective unconscious. Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics is significant for
comprehending and further developing Jung’s hermeneutic thought.




References
Academy of Ideas. (2017) Carl Jung – What are the Archetypes?. Carl
Jung,   Psychology;   https://academyofideas.com/2017/02/carl-jung-
what-are-archetypes/ (accessed 25 February 2021).
Becanovic-Nikolic, Z. (1998). Hermeneutika i poetika. Belgrade:
Geopoetika.
Brncic J. (2012). Svijet teksta. Zagreb: Naklada Breza.




                                                                           179
Ivic, The Significance of Paul Ricoeur’s Narrative Theory




Cassar, L. (2020). Jung’s Technique of Active Imagination and
Desoille’s Directed Waking Dream Method: Bridging the Divide. New
York: Routledge.
Eynon, S. (2019) The Red Book: Synopsis. Centre for Applied Jungian
Studies,      https://appliedjung.com/jungs-red-book-liber-novus/   (ac-
cessed 19 January 2021).
Freeman, J. (1964) Introduction. In C.G. Jung, Man and His Symbols.
New York: Anchor Press, 9–14.
Freud S. (1900). The Interpretation of Dreams. S. E. 4 & 5, London:
Hogarth.
Ivic, S. (2018) Paul Ricoeur’s Idea of Reference: The Truth as Non-
Reference. Boston, Leiden: Brill.
Jung, C. G. (2009). The Red Book: Liber Novus. Edited by Sonu
Shamdasani. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Jung, C. G. (1989). Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Recorded and ed-
ited by Aniela Jaffé. New York, NY: Vintage Books.
Jung, C. G. (1955/1977). Mysterium Coniunctionis. The Collected
Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 14. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Jung, C. G. (1928/1966). The Relations Between the Ego and the Un-
conscious (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In The Collected Works of C. G. Jung:
Vol. 7. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 121–241.
Marlan, S. (2002). The Mixed Texture of Symbolic Thought: A Re-
sponse to and Elaboration of Some Points in Alan Jones’s Paper “Tele-
ology and the Hermeneutics of Hope: Jungian Interpretation in Light of
the Work of Paul Ricoeur”. Journal of Jungian Theory and Practice,
4(2): 57–66.
Nastovic, I. (2008) 127 Protumacenih snova. Novi Sad: Prometej.
Princevac de Villablanca, Zanet. (2019). Preface. In Jung’s Red Book.
Belgrade: Lom, 11–14.




180
                                                 Critical Hermeneutics, 4 (2020)




Rand, N. and Torok, M. (1993). Questions to Freudian Psychoanalysis:
Dream Interpretation, Reality, Fantasy. Critical Inquiry 19(3): 567–
594.
Ricoeur, P. (1970) Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation.
Trans. by Denis Savage. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Ricoeur, P. (1979). The Function of Fiction in Shaping Reality. Man and
World 12(2): 123–141.
Ricoeur, P. (1984) Time and Narrative, Vol. 1. Trans. by Kathleen
McLaughlin and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ricoeur, P. (1985). Time and Narrative, Vol. 2. Trans. by Kathleen
McLaughlin and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ricoeur, P. (1991a) Life in Quest of Narrative. In D. Wood (ed.) On
Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation. London: Routledge, 20–33.
Ricoeur, P. (1991b) On Interpretation. In From Text to Action: Essays
in Hermeneutics II. Trans. by Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson.
London: Athlone Press, 1–22.
Shamdasani, S. (2009). Liber Novus: “The Red Book” of C.G. Jung. In
S. Shamdasani (ed.) C.G. Jung’s Red Book: Liber Novus. New York:
W.W. Norton & Company, 193–221.
Slattery, D. P. (2011). Thirteen Ways of Looking at The Red Book: C.
G. Jung’s divine comedy. Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche, 5(3): 128–
144.
Smythe, W. E. and Baydala, A. (2012). The Hermeneutic Background
of C.G. Jung. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 57(1): 57–75.
Spano, M V. (2013). The Red Book: Some Notes for the Beginner. The
Jung Page. https://www.cgjungpage.org/learn/articles/analytical-psy-
chology/928-the-red-book-some-notes-for-the-beginner (accessed 23
January 2021).
Volk, D. (2014). Jadranka Brnčić, Svijet teksta. Uvod u Ricoeurovu her-
meneutiku. Obnovljeni Život : časopis za filozofiju i religijske znanosti,
69(3): 414–415.



                                                                            181
Ivic, The Significance of Paul Ricoeur’s Narrative Theory




Vuletic, G. (2017). Analytical Psychology in the Light of Modern
Hermeneutics,         PhD      thesis.     Belgrade:        University   of   Belgrade.
https://nardus.mpn.gov.rs/bitstream/handle/123456789/10472/Diser
tacija.pdf?sequence=6&isAllowed=y (accessed 27 February 2021).




182
