Claire Douglas' 1993 Biography of Christiana Morgan, and Walter J. Ong's Thought

Abstract

In my 4,500-word review essay "Claire Douglas' 1993 Biography of Christiana Morgan, and Walter J. Ong's Thought," I discuss Dr. Douglas' book Translate This Darkness: The Life of Christiana Morgan. Christiana Morgan (1897-1967) and Dr. Henry A. Murray, Jr. (1893-1988) carried on an long extramarital love affair as they both worked together at the Harvard Psychological Clinic (he as the director). They were both impressed with Herman Melville (1819-1891), especially with his 1851 novel Moby-Dick and his 1852 novel Pierre, or, The Ambiguities -- and more generally with Romanticism and the Byronic hero. In addition each of them was analyzed by C. G. Jung in Switzerland. Christiana Morgan, who had some training in art, proved to be adept at consciously inducing images to arise in her psyche from her unconscious and then painting pictures of those visions. I use the larger conceptual framework of the thought of the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian Walter J. Ong, Jr. (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955) to discuss Romanticism and certain other points that Dr. Douglas mentions in her book.