The Red Book, which is being published in the UK for the first time, was written by Carl Jung, the founder of analytic psychology, as he journeyed into the depths of his own unconscious.
He wrote and illustrated the massive leather-bound work between 1914 and 1930 to document the characters he met and talked to in his own imagination - a process which set the framework for his later theories.
But unable to complete the work to his satisfaction, or worried about the effect of the mystical tale on his reputation, he kept the work private in his lifetime.
This picture illustrates a representation of the wise old man, one of Jung's "archetypal motifs" which he asked, in his waking fantasies, to instruct him.
Jung believed that these archetypes existed in a shared, or collective, unconscious, a common human inheritance which everyone had access to.
"There are a whole menagerie of snakes in the book," explains Red Book editor Sonu Shamdasani. "And they all represent different things."
Illustrations known as mandalas also feature throughout the book. "He views these as representations of the total personality both conscious and unconscious," says Professor Shamdasani.
Before the Jung family allowed the Red Book to be published, it was believed no-one alive had seen inside it. Now it is hoped to rejuvenate the study of Jung's work.
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