First showing for Jung's Red Book

Visitors to New York's Rubin Museum pore over the volume

Psychologist Carl Jung's Red Book, regarded as the science's most important unpublished work, has gone on public display for the first time.

The mammoth volume, illustrated by Jung, is being shown at the Rubin Museum in New York until 25 January.

The Swiss social scientist spent 16 years making entries in the book, which is an exploration of his unconscious.

The exhibition coincides with the book's publication, which remained in his Zurich home when he died in 1961.

His family resisted having it published, while Jung was concerned during his lifetime that he would be perceived as mad and his scientific reputation would be called into question.

A London historian was eventually granted permission to translate the book from German into English, which has now been published.

The Red Book - officially entitled Liber Novus - is richly illustrated and includes brightly-coloured Buddhist symbols of wholeness and mythological figures.

Jung was a student of Sigmund Freud and went on to develop his own theory of the human experience.

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