ABSTRACT
Jung was in a transitional phase in his life when he started to write The Red Book and he needed to reformulate his vision of the world. He had just broken with Freud, a decision that had cost him many of his friendships and the protection of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, which in 1913 had already gained significant notoriety across the whole of Europe. Jung's experiences can be understood to be part of the process that the Swiss historian Henri Ellenberger defines as the 'creative illness' (1974). The dream about the ithyphallic god and Jung's other childhood dreams had a notable influence on the theoretic construct of analytical psychology. Abraxas is part of the Gnostic tradition in which gods contain elements of both good and bad, and this was a problem that concerned Jung from an early age.
