ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the element of boundary-breaking spontaneity in The Red Book in the context of Randy Fertel's superb study of the surprisingly literary lineage of improvisation. C. G. Jung's Red Book is a focused example of active imagination as Dionysian discipline: the sacrifice to the god that gives him life, or blood. In turn, the god/image in active imagination enters into a dialogue with the sacrificed ego, and allows his divinity to be manifested. In the end, the divine god/image will also be sacrificed, or dismembered, in the processes of active imagination, as the soul or whole psyche is re-membered. Dionysus is both sacrificed to, and sacrificed for, renewed life, for he is the god of rebirth. In a statement reminiscent of Bakhtin, Jung's Psychology and Alchemy gives an astute diagnosis of the connection between hell and the kind of dialogical, dismembering/remembering writing that is The Red Book.
