Black books: 1.2.3.4

In "The Red Book," Jung wrote: "I have achieved everything I wished for myself. I achieved honor, power, wealth, knowledge, and all human happiness. Then my desire to increase these adornments stopped, and it gradually receded, leaving room for horror." This transformation occurred through Jung's exploration of the visionary imagination he depicted in "The Black Books." These books are not personal diaries, but records of a unique inner experience that Jung called "his confrontation with his soul" and "his confrontation with the unconscious." They do not record daily events or external happenings, but rather his active imaginations, his perceptions of his mental state, and his reflections on it. From these imaginations, he composed a draft of "The Red Book," which he then copied by hand and filled with illustrations. The illustrations in The Red Book are connected to Jung's subsequent ongoing explorations in the Black Books. Therefore, "The Red Book" and "The Black Books" are closely intertwined. The Red Book was born from the Black Books. From Jung's perspective: his motivation for this initiative was not solely driven by his interest in himself, but also by others' share in it. He began to see his imaginations and visions as the product of a universal mythic layer of the self, called the "collective unconscious." From his self-experimentation notebooks, he composed a psychological work in a literary and religious form.