“Translate this Darkness: The Life of Christiana Morgan”
three sessions
with Satya Doyle Byock
Fridays, February 3rd, 10th & 17th, 2023
9 - 10:30am PST | 12 - 1:30pm EST
All seminars are hosted online. Recordings are provided to all registrants.
“My dear, dear Christina Morgan, you are just a bit of a marvel to me.” - C.G. Jung
“Morgan betrayed herself. Her visions had combined the masculine and feminine sides of her personality to point to a new way of being a woman, but she failed to claim those visions for herself. Instead ... she joined the male ranks against herself by choosing the male idea of love and putting that before her own needs.”
When she was just twenty-eight years old, Christiana Morgan, an American, began analysis with C.G. Jung in Zurich. Through analysis, Morgan began an inner journey with profound parallels to Jung’s own confrontation with the unconscious, though her age defied Jung’s notion of individuation in the second half of life. Because of her relatively young age, Jung spoke of her as having a “benevolent fate”—an opportunity to round out her personality at a younger age. Much like the visions and art that fill Jung’s Red Book, Morgan engaged in robust active imagination, producing a prolific body of artwork. That work, and what unfolded after her analysis with Jung, then also became the basis of Jung’s four-year series of lectures, now known as The Vision Seminars, an exploration of a female journey of individuation. (Morgan did not originally know that her material was being used in this way.)
When she began analysis, Morgan was a new mother, married, and with a long-term lover. Both her husband and lover were also in analysis in Zurich. Jung, in a complex love triangle of his own, experienced complex countertransference in regard to Morgan’s situation, though it went relatively unexamined and was bound up with his perception of gender at the time. The consequences to all parties concerned were arguably devastating—consequences that may have radiated out into the larger world.
“As Jung supported and encouraged her visions, his countertransference to his patient grew. He had known that she was going through a process similar to his own, but now realized that she was doing it in a passionate feminine way. It was as if he were seeing an alternative world full of dynamic images that simultaneously excited and repelled him; they caught him between erotic attraction for their discoverer and a need to dismiss her power.”
In this three-part seminar exploring the life and work of Christiana Morgan, we’ll read through the remarkable biography Translate This Darkness: The Life of Christiana Morgan by Jungian analyst, Claire Douglas (also the editor of The Vision Seminars) and discuss the many unfolding questions about analysis, individuation, gender, and countertransference that the book provokes.
In addition to our reading and discussion of this engrossing biography, Satya will also introduce additional context for Christina’s life, and explore how her story is connected to other figures and tragedies, including that of the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski.
Oh, there is so much in this material to unpack. Translate This Darkness is a remarkable work of scholarship and a riveting story. The whole journey of this book, and Claire Douglas’s incredible work, is impactful, illuminating, and at times, devastating.
About Satya Doyle Byock, MA, LPC
Satya Doyle Byock is a psychotherapist in private practice in Portland, Oregon, the author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (Random House, 2022), and the founding director of The Salome Institute. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Times of London, and NPR, and her writing has been published in Literary Hub, Psychological Perspectives, The Utne Reader, Goop, Oregon Humanities Magazine, and elsewhere. Satya has lectured at Jung groups in the US and UK, and has been interviewed for her work on many podcasts. She is the co-host of Carl Jung’s Red Book Podcast and has twenty years of practice with The I Ching and dreamwork.
Register:
Online Attendance: a link for Zoom will be sent to all registrants via email in advance of this salon.
Recordings: All sessions will be recorded, and videos will be made available to registered participants following the live gatherings.
Scholarships & Discounts: Please send us an email if you are unable to pay the full price. We don’t require an explanation, just an email.
Reading: All students are strongly encouraged to purchase a copy of Translate This Darkness: The Life of Christiana Morgan. Weekly chapters will be shared in advance with those who are registered.