Sonu Shamdasani

Currently (2016) Shamdasani serves as a professor in the School of European Languages, Culture, and Society (SELCS) at University College London, and is also Director of the UCL Centre for the History of Psychological Disciplines.

Shamdasani edited the first publication of Jung's major work: Liber Novus, The Red Book. Although its title had been well known for years, it was not until 2009 that its contents were revealed to the public and practicing psychotherapists.

In a 2009 interview with the Times of India, Shamdasani gave this brief biographical note:

In 2003 Shamdasani founded, along with Stephen Martin, the Philemon Foundation, which sought to publish all of Jung's works. Although Jung's Collected Works had been published in twenty volumes, there were manuscripts and other works by Jung that remained unpublished. Shamdasani commenced and continues now his labors at Philemon as the foundation’s General Editor.

By 2000 Shamdasani had arranged to begin work editing Jung's The Red Book. In 2003 he stepped in as Editor of the Philemon Foundation's successful project to publish, in 2009, this much awaited volume. Although Jung had worked on the writing and the designs for it between 1914 and 1930, he did not then have it published. In 1959 Jung added a short Epilogue to his Red Book, commenting on his 'confrontation with the unconscious' that started prior to World War I: "It could have developed into [madness] had I not been able to hold the overpowering force of the original experiences. ... I knew of nothing better than to write them down... and to paint the images that appeared when reliving it all--as well as I could."

Jung's heirs had for many decades held the original manuscript of the Red Book in a bank vault for safe-keeping. They withheld its publication and declined offers to do so. During the 1990s Shamdasani's research, however, had uncovered the existence of text from the Book outside the family's control. Another transcription was found by Marie-Louise von Franz. It was demonstrated that Jung had sent a copy of his manuscript to a publisher. Shamdasani entered into delicate negotiations with Jung's descendants in Zürich and, in May 2000, obtained their agreement "to release the work for publication". His editing tasks then began.

He gained his BA from Bristol University in 1984, followed by an MSc in the History of Science and Medicine at University College London/Imperial College London. Later Shamdasani was awarded a Ph.D. in the History of Medicine from University College London's Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. He then became a professor at the Institute.

Sonu Shamdasani (born 1962) is a London-based author, editor, and professor at University College London. His research and writings focus on Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), and cover the history of psychiatry and psychology from the mid-nineteenth century to current times.

"If one does not place Jung's confrontation with the unconscious in a proper perspective, or understand the significance of the Red Book, one is in no place to understand fully Jung's intellectual development from 1913 onwards, and not only that, but his life as well: it was his inner life which dictated his movements in the world. ... For Jung's work on his fantasies in Black Books and the Red Book formed the core of his later work, as he himself contended. The Red Book is at the center of Jung's life and work. [Understanding Jung] without an accurate account of it would be like writing the life of Dante without the Commedia, or Goethe without Faust.