September 28, 2023

There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you… and if you were in the seminar on Christiana Morgan back in February, I’ve really been meaning to tell you: I’m visiting Christiana Morgan’s Tower next week!

If you’re not familiar with Christiana Morgan or the Tower, let me take a quick step back.

Christiana Morgan is the subject of Jung’s Vision Seminars (1930-1934) in which he lectured over a period of four years about the active imaginations of an American woman who had come to Zurich for analysis at the age of twenty-eight. Jung called Christiana “a pioneer woman” because he recognized immediately that she was exploring new terrain in the landscape of psyche. By doing so, she illuminated Jung’s understanding of the woman’s path of individuation (as he saw it), as well as what was possible at her age—she had, what he called, “benevolent fate” to be encountering the unconscious so early in life.

Christiana had the effect of challenging Jung’s understanding of age and sex in regard to the path of individuation through her visions and devotion to inner work. She also, after returning to the States, was a pioneer in the field of psychology. She was deeply involved in establishing the field in America through the Harvard Psychological Clinic and was the co-author of one of the most widely used psychological tests to this day, the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), which uses storytelling and projection to provide a window into the psyche of the patient. Infuriatingly, her name has been removed from the TAT; if she’s referenced at all, it’s usually as the “lover” of the male co-author. As women at the time were not able to formally study psychology, let alone teach it and receive academic titles, everything she did at Harvard and elsewhere was relegated to the shadows. Her extraordinary expertise and influence are widely recognized informally, yet she herself is barely known. We’ve lost a great deal as a result.

Christiana Morgan’s Tower in Massachusetts was her place of refuge, art, and creation, a place inspired by Jung’s Bollingen Tower and meant as a temple for the psychic work in which she was immersed. Though the Tower has fallen into disrepair (an unfortunate story for another time), it remains filled with her artwork, from stained glass windows to wood carvings to drawings. I feel tremendously honored to be able to visit and step inside its walls.

And I have Carol Ferris, Ann Carroll, and Hilary Morgan to thank for this trip.

My dear friend, noted astrologer, and co-host for The Red Book podcast, Carol Ferris said that she was thinking of planning a trip to visit our co-co-host and translator for The Red Book gatherings, Ann Carroll (“Ann of Maine”). I jumped at the chance to join a trip to visit Ann! And as Ann lives near Christiana Morgan’s Tower, we connected with her granddaughter, Hilary Morgan, about making a pilgrimage.

I feel incredibly grateful for this sweet community and the opportunity to travel together, visit, and walk the halls of Christiana’s Tower.

I regret not having shared this with many of you earlier—I know there are a lot of folks who are deeply invested in Christiana’s story. I have to admit that this journey snuck up on me. But I’ll report back, of course, and share some photos from our travels.

If you’re interested to learn more about Christiana and the Tower, here are a few resources:

• Claire Douglas’s book, “Translate this Darkness: The Life of Christiana Morgan”

• Hilary Morgan’s website + short film about the Tower.

• My blog post from March on Christiana and my grandmother.

XO, Satya

P.S. If you were in the Christiana Morgan Seminar, I’ll post more about this on our seminar message board.

Satya Doyle Byock, Director of The Salome Institute of Jungian Studies