With the door half closed, the shades drawn, and the massive tome in front of me, I kind of felt like that kid in The Neverending Story who locks himself in the basement of his elementary school and is literally transported to a fantastical world of mythical beings while reading an enormous book, also called The Neverending Story. (My apologies to anyone who wasn't eight years old in 1984 and has no idea what I'm talking about.)

Only, in my case, it didn't quite work. I wasn't transported to another world.

A little background: The Red Book is something like a diary, full of writing and drawings, all describing what Jung called, in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, a "confrontation with the unconscious." In that memoir, Jung describes going on vision journeys and talking to characters inside of his psyche, letting everything come out no matter how weird or twisted it was. He saw some rather disturbing things, in fact, and recorded it all. While doing this, he sometimes worried that he would go mad, but he felt it was his responsibility to go through this process considering it was what he was asking of his clients.

Jung's descendents withheld the book from publication for many decades after his death because he had never made it clear whether he intended for it to be published and, far from being opportunistic as many heirs of the dead and famous are, Jung's descendents have always been careful about following Jung's wishes and vigilantly maintaining his reputation. (Like Jung himself, they were concerned people would come to the conclusion that he was actually nuts). Before the release of The Red Book, a story about how the Jung heirs finally decided to allow it to be published ended up on the cover of The New York Times Magazine and the book received so much buzz that Norton put it through several printings almost immediately. Having read the article and references to the book in Jung's memoir, I was eager to see it.

Unfortunately, my moment with The Red Book coincided with a period of madness in my own life. Well, ‘madness' is a tad melodramatic, but so was I at that time. I'd finished writing my first book after five years of work, the completion of which had been a goal of mine since I was a kid and I was left with the writer's version of post-partum depression. My finger muscles were too exhausted to start up another project and, having fulfilled the entire purpose of my life for the previous 26 years, I was at loose ends. I'd wake each morning with a terrifying existential malaise about the day ahead. Should I go out to breakfast or eat cereal at home? And once I make that decision, what next? Should I go to the barber and have my head shaved? Or just trim my sideburns? And after that? Do I dare turn on my computer? And do I dare eat a peach? Anyways, this is a well-known condition amongst writers, but I can't blame the rest of the population for considering it a very nice excuse for laziness and suggesting I just get a job.

In addition to this existential purposelessness, I was also going through a break up on the heels of a divorce. (I would write my next book about this but Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love beat me to it).

And -- and! -- I had a hangover from drinking into the wee hours with friends in Brooklyn the night before. (Cue the symphony of tiny violins.)

All in all, it was a time in my life where I could barely concentrate on the sidewalk in front of me and there I was with The Red Book, Jung's extremely personal ravings -- um, I mean, vision quests -- written in the idiosyncratic mytho-poetic style of his unconscious that were possibly never even meant to be read by anyone. I remember the drawings. They're amazing!

To be fair, I recall thinking at the time that the writing was intriguing and Jung's unconscious seemed to me a special place. It's a seriously intense place, though, both emotionally and intellectually -- like if Oprah's unconscious and Nietsche's unconscious had a baby unconscious. The words were like raw lava spilling and splashing over me, hot but retaining no shape.

As I stumbled out of the office, my editor's assistant asked me what I thought. "Pretty intense stuff!" I said. "It's good... I think it deserves a second read."

A couple months later, I received my own copy of The Red Book in the mail. I set aside a day to begin reading it, but when that day came, I approached the kitchen table where the gigantic red thing awaited me and couldn't muster up the energy. I became extremely tired at the sight of it, and, like the death scene of Atreyu's horse Artax in The Neverending Story, felt like I was sinking into a swamp of darkness. I retreated to my bedroom and collapsed on my bed, exhausted.

A week later, The Red Book still unopened, I took off to Colorado to visit my parents for the holidays.

"So... what did you think of The Red Book?" I asked my father the first night home. I'd seen it sitting in his basement office. He'd pre-ordered the book over a year before it was published so I knew he'd been one of the first to receive it.

"I haven't read it," he told me.

My father, the Jungian, hadn't cracked The Red Book? Sacrilege!

"Why not?" I asked.

"I want to read it," he said, "but every time I think of going over there and picking it up, I remember that Jung always said you have to follow your own inner experiences. And so, at least right now, I feel more compelled to work with my own experience than read about Jung's."

Like Jung, my father has often used various forms of art to spelunk the recesses of his psyche. During this visit home he showed me his latest creations, which he called Dream Cards. Roughly the same shape as Tarot cards, he'd illustrate an image or a figure from a dream and make a picture with words out of it. He'd then laminate the card and add it to his growing deck. He had a couple dozen already.

On one card, he'd written "My neighbour points to the owl" next to a drawing of an arm pointing to, well, an owl. Another said "The evil shadow sets my head afire" and he'd drawn a sinister-looking Jack the Ripper next to a man with his head, well, on fire. Then I came to one that said "Four years to live," which, well, freaked me out. It showed a fortune teller behind a crystal ball with four fingers raised ominously into the air.

"Dad?" I held the card up with a concerned look on my face.