Shamdasani is fine; he probably did his best. However, he so often distorts, misinterprets, or simply misses Jung’s archetypal references and overarching meanings, that his direction and guidance into Jung’s portion of the Red Book is too much of a misdirection and misguidance. The result is a tainted perception that is given the reader, especially the reader who does not know Jung, that is then brought into the reading of the actual Red Book as written by C. G. Jung. I give Shamdasani credit for what he attempts to accomplish, and do not necessarily suggest that he be simply ignored and not read, however, I do strongly recommend that Jung’s portion of The Red Book be read first, to be then followed by Shamdasani’s portion, which is best taken as a commentary and no more than that. Let Jung explain Jung, and let the reader find meaning in Jung rather than having another rather “in the box Jungian,” exactly the kind that Jung warned us about, explain and interpret such meaning for us.
From the beginning, with my own background in the writings of Jung, I found Shamdasani’s explanations and interpretations of Jung to be too concise, too simplistic at best, and sometimes just plain inaccurate at worst. And so I suggested the radical notion of not reading Shamdasani at all and to go directly to Jung. However, no one else has undertaken the unforgiving job that Shamdasani has, and, for this reason alone, earns him a reading—but only after reading Jung and only as commentary.
I’ll give one case in point, which, in my estimation, is a quite important one, and reveals a rather profound misunderstanding and misinterpretation of Jung, as well as a case of seeing the trees but missing the forest. On page 215 of his Introduction, Shamdasani writes: “This explains why he commented in his afterword to Liber Novus that to the superficial observer, the work would seem like madness, and could have become so, if he had failed to contain and comprehend [my emphasis] the experiences.” When I read this, I thought, “Jung simply would not believe he would necessarily “comprehend” the experiences of The Red Book, though he would focus on containing them.” So I then read the Epilogue (and wondered why Shamdasani referred to it as the “afterword”), in which Jung writes: “To the superficial observer, it will appear like madness. It would also have developed into one, had I not been able to absorb the overpowering force of the original experiences. With the help of alchemy, I could finally arrange them into a whole. … I knew how frightfully inadequate this undertaking was, but despite much work and many distractions, I remained true to it, even if another possibility never…” (and Jung stops abruptly right here never to continue).
It seems to me that Jung is clearly talking about the notion of the all-inclusive transcendent function here, though, to my knowledge, he only later in his career defines it as such. In this all-inclusiveness of the unconscious and the conscious in all its differential and oppositional tension, “comprehension” is probably not possible; rather, “containment” defines the transcendent function. It refers to the ability to hold the tensions of all the archetypal forces without having to react or act them out. To be able to “be with” all of it as proactively and as consciously as possible appears to lead to and achieve a state of “wholeness.” Some comprehension or understanding may occur in the process, but Jung would recognize that such understanding is not vital to attaining “unity” or “wholeness.” And so, Jung accordingly speaks of being “able to absorb the overpowering force of the original experiences,” and being able to “finally arrange them into a whole,” while recognizing “how frightfully inadequate this undertaking was.” To “absorb” is a kind of “containment,” with which I agree, however, there is not necessarily “comprehension” of what is happening.
Once we read Jung’s Red Book, we see that it is not about comprehending the experiences, but about experiencing the experiences deeply, accepting the experience as it is, and re-membering them, which is the “finally arrang[ing] them into a whole.” I do not believe that it serves our understanding of Jung and our trusting of our own experience to allow Shamdasani to explain and interpret Jung’s Red Book experiences for us. It’s as simple as that.
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