Christiana Drummond Morgan (born Christiana Drummond Councilman; October 6, 1897 – March 14, 1967) was an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

artist, writer and lay psychoanalyst at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

best known for her work co-authoring the

Thematic Apperception Test Thematic apperception test (TAT) is a projective psychological test developed during the 1930s by Henry A. Murray and Christiana D. Morgan at Harvard University. Proponents of the technique assert that subjects' responses, in the narratives they ...

, one of the most widely used projective psychological tests. She was the lover of American psychologist

Henry Murray Henry Alexander Murray (May 13, 1893 – June 23, 1988) was an American psychologist at Harvard University, where from 1959 to 1962 he conducted a series of psychologically damaging and purposefully abusive experiments on minors and underg ...

, who commissioned Gaston Lachaise to make a nude portrait statue of her. Morgan was an alcoholic and died under unclear circumstances age 69.

Early life and education

Christiana was born Drummond Councilman in Boston, Massachusetts on October 6, 1897. She attended Miss Winsor's school for girls in Boston from 1908 to 1914 and later a boarding school in Farmington, Connecticut.Weber, Michel,
Christiana Morgan (1897–1967)
" in

Michel Weber Michel Weber (born 1963) is a Belgian philosopher. He is best known as an interpreter and advocate of the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, and has come to prominence as the architect and organizer of an overlapping array of international sc ...

and William Desmond, Jr. (eds.),
Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought
', Frankfurt / Lancaster, Ontos Verlag, 2008, v. II, pp. 465–468. In 1917, as a 20 year old in Boston society she met William Otho Potwin Morgan (1895–1934). He enlisted to fight in World War I and went abroad. Morgan trained as nurse aid at the YWCA in New York City and served as a nurse during the

1918 flu pandemic The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was ...

.Staf
Test Developer Profiles: Christiana Morgan
Copyright 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies. Upon his return in 1919 they married and moved into 985 Memorial Drive in Cambridge -the same building, in which a few years later, the British mathematician philosopher

Alfred North Whitehead Alfred North Whitehead (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He is best known as the defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which today has found applicat ...

and his wife would live as well. From 1921 to 1924 Morgan studied art at the

Art Students League of New York The Art Students League of New York is an art school at 215 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City, New York. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may stu ...

with

Frank DuMond Frank Vincent DuMond (August 20, 1865 – February 6, 1951) was one of the most influential teacher-painters in 20th-century America. He was an illustrator and American Impressionist painter of portraits and landscapes, and a prominent teac ...

Guy Pène du Bois Guy Pène du Bois (January 4, 1884 – July 18, 1958) was a 20th-century American painter, art critic, and educator. Born in the U.S. to a French family, his work depicted the culture and society around him: cafes, theatres, and in the twenties, f ...

, and Leo Lentelli.

Professional career

Morgan was an artist, writer, and lay psychoanalyst fascinated by depth psychology. Part of the Introvert/Extrovert Club in New York City in the 1920s, she traveled to Zurich to consult

Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philo ...

. When Jung met Morgan, he considered her the manifestation of the perfect feminine, ''une femme inspiratrice'' whose role was to act as a muse to great men. Jung conducted a seminar, called the "Visions Seminar", analyzing Morgan's many drawings and dreams chronicling her archetypal encounters in her quest for psychological integration. In a new Hebrew-language biography of

Chaim Weizmann Chaim Azriel Weizmann ( he, חיים עזריאל ויצמן ', russian: Хаим Евзорович Вейцман, ''Khaim Evzorovich Veytsman''; 27 November 1874 – 9 November 1952) was a Russian-born biochemist, Zionist leader and Israel ...

, Motti Golani and Jehuda Reinharz cite documents showing that in 1921 Christiana Morgan had a liaison with Weizmann. In 1923, she met and fell in love with

, then biochemist at Rockefeller University NY, later psychology professor at Harvard University. He was married 7 years, and did not want to leave his wife. As Murray experienced a serious conflict, Morgan advised him to visit Jung. In 1927, they visited Jung in Zürich, and upon his advice became lovers "to unlock their unconscious and their creativity". In 1934, Morgan co-developed the

with Murray, a projective psychological test to elicit fantasy still used today. It consists of a series of pictures shown to a person who is asked to make up a story about each picture; in its early development, many of Morgan's own drawings were included. She was first author with Henry Murray in the first publication of the test, and as late as 1941 the test was known as the "Morgan-Murray Thematic Apperception Test" . When the current version of the test was published by the Harvard University Press in 1943, authorship was attributed to "Henry A. Murray, M.D., and the Staff of the Harvard Psychological Clinic." As it was further developed, Morgan's pictures were taken out as well as her co-authorship. Murray stated 1985, "Morgan asked to have her name removed as senior author of the 1943/1971 TAT because she disliked the obligation of making the academic responses". Morgan administered one of the earliest versions of the test to one of the first diagnosed anorexic patients in Boston.

Death

After a radical

sympathectomy A sympathectomy is an irreversible procedure during which at least one sympathetic ganglion is removed. One example is the lumbar sympathectomy, which is advised for occlusive arterial disease in which L2 and L3 ganglia along with intervening sym ...

surgery for high blood pressure and years of excessive drinking, Morgan died at the age of 69 at Denis Bay,

Saint John, U.S. Virgin Islands Saint John ( da, Sankt Jan) is one of the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea and a constituent district of the United States Virgin Islands (USVI), an unincorporated territory of the United States. Saint John () is the smallest of the thre ...

on March 14, 1967. Murray found her body near the beach, drowned in less than two feet of water. There is controversy over her death related to Murray's conflicting accounts, and suspicions that Morgan may have died of suicide.

Legacy

The

is one of the most widely used projective psychological tests to date. Murray had commissioned Gaston Lachaise to create a nude portrait statue of Morgan. It is now owned by the Governor's Academy, in

Byfield, Massachusetts Byfield is a village (also referred to as a "parish") in the town of Newbury, in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. It borders West Newbury, Georgetown, and Rowley. It is located about 30 miles north-northeast of Boston, along Int ...

as is Morgan Tower, formerly her residence on the Parker River adjacent to the Governor's campus.Budny, V. (Fall 2009) "A 'New Eve': Gaston Lachaise's Portrait of Christiana Morgan," The Archon (The Governor's Academy, Byfield, Mass.), pp. 10–13.

References

* Douglas, C. (1993) ''Translate This Darkness: The Life of Christiana Morgan the Veiled Woman in Jung's Circle'' Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. * Robinson, F. G. (1992) ''Love's Story Told: A Life of Henry A. Murray,'' Harvard University Press.

External links

Christiana Morgan papers, 1925-1974. H MS c70. Harvard Medical Library, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Boston, Mass.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Morgan, Christiana 20th-century American psychologists American women psychologists American psychotherapists Harvard University people People from Boston Suicides in the United States Virgin Islands 1897 births 1967 suicides Suicides by drowning in the United States 20th-century American women 1967 deaths 20th-century American people