Visions

For C. G. Jung, the beautiful and gifted 28-year-old Christiana Morgan was an inspirational and confirming force whose path in self-analysis paralleled his own quest for self-knowledge. By teaching Morgan the trance-like technique of active imagination, Jung launched her on a pilgrimage of archetypal encounters in a quest for psychological integration--encounters she recorded in the words and brilliant paintings that formed the basis of the seminar Jung would give to his circle in Zurich. Here the careful transcriptions of the seminar notes are combined with color reproductions of the visions paintings, offering an unprecedented view of Jung as a teacher and as a man. He speaks candidly and brilliantly in a dialogue with members of the seminar about the Morgan visions, even as he struggles with the feminine principle in his subject and in his own psyche. The theories of his years of intellectual research--the anima and animus, the process of individuation, the mythopoetic archetypes of the collective unconscious--all spring to life in the fiery imagery of the vision quest. Morgan paints an imaginal landscape where the feminine self crosses into the unconsciousness of night and death. In her visioning she links earth and sky, body and spirit, the infernal and the sublime. Recounting her journey, Jung employs his full range of scholarship and professional experience as he unravels the skein of archetypal parallels from western myth and eastern yoga.