Free Again: The Carl Jung Collection

Our acclaimed series of Jungian analyses of video games is back from the vault! But hurry—it'll only be free for a limited time!

Oct 15, 2022

"Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."

~ Carl Gustav Jung

[UPDATE [10/29/22]: The Jung collection is back in the vault 🙁 — but don’t worry, you can still access it if you upgrade to a paid subscription:

As a bonus, you’ll also be keeping this newsletter running, and putting food on my family’s table!]

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:

Greetings, everyone!

I’m sending you this before our main issue goes out tomorrow, because I’ve got some bad news and good news.

First, the bad news: our Monkey Island analyses are back in the vault. 🙁 Though you can still read them (and all our articles) to your heart’s content with a paid subscription:

But don’t despair! The good news is: what’s next is arguably even better! 🤩

So, what is it? Here you go:

For a limited time only, Game & Word has removed the paywall from our multi-part series on video games through the lens of the one-and-only Carl Gustav Jung!

But why Jung, and why now, specifically? Well, I got inspired to do this while reading The Red Book, Jung’s most personal, intimate, and profound work. Yet despite its significance, the book was only first published in 2009, half a century after his death. This, combined with its deeply symbolic, highly abstract (even by Jungian standards), and often poetic writing, lends it an air of mystery and even hallowedness.

This book instilled in me an even greater, more profound respect and reverence for Carl Jung, his exceptionally brilliant mind, and his luminously wise soul. I already knew1 that he was a brilliant scholar and meticulous scientist, who happened to have a lifelong interest in spirituality. But since Jung was so good about keeping that last part mostly to himself (well, not that it was a secret—but he never let it overshadow his scientific work), I could never figure out whether his interest in spirituality and mysticism was purely academic, or if it was something much more personal.

Well, after reading this book, there is no longer any doubt in my mind. Jung was indeed a true mystic, at least as much as he was a scientist—if not even more so.

The Red Book (official title: Liber Novus) chronicles Jung’s visions of and dialogues with his personal unconscious (and the collective unconscious) as he was in the throes of a nervous breakdown. Jung’s public, bitter, and acrimonious falling out with his until-then friend, mentor, and fellow father of psychology Sigmund Freud thrust him into the throes of intense psychotic episodes and overwhelming existential terror.

But instead of resisting or running away from these terrifying altered states, he leaned into them, diving headfirst into the abyss and recording his observations in vivid and exacting (if highly symbolic and abstract) detail.

Jung decided to engage his turbulent unconscious head-on. And by doing so, Jung brought back a priceless trove of knowledge that’s healed scores of wounded minds and continues to make countless shattered souls whole again. He is a modern-day saint—a prophet for the divine sparks within our minds—and his Liber Novus is a special form of scripture—familiar and novel, sublime and practical (even if highly symbolic), that’s made for this secular era.

In commemoration of Jung’s gifts to humanity and the fact that he even existed at all in this world, I’m making the following Jung + Gaming articles FREE and available to all for a limited time (of ~2 weeks).

And if you’ve got even the tiniest mystical bent in you, then you owe it to yourself to study The Red Book. It’s one of those books whose significance you feel from the moment you start reading, and which profoundly and permanently enriches the way you look at and experience the world.

You can purchase it by clicking below:*

Click to Have Your Mind Blown

(NOTE: This button contains an affiliate link, which gives me a tiny cut of the sale if you purchase the book through the link. In doing so, you’ll help keep Game & Word* running while also broadening your perception, perspective, and potential!)

Thank you, as always, for reading. I hope you find these articles and the book to be entertaining, edifying, and enlightening reads. But most of all, I hope they give you a whole new appreciation for St. Carl Gustav Jung (Z”L) and his legacy. May his memory be a blessing.