Christiana Morgan

Christiana Drummond Morgan (born Christiana Drummond Councilman; 1897–1967) was an artist, writer and lay psychoanalyst at Harvard University best known for her work co-authoring the Thematic Apperception Test, one of the most widely used projective psychological tests. She was the lover of American psychologist Henry Murray, who commissioned Gaston Lachaise to make a nude portrait statue of her. Morgan was an alcoholic and died under unclear circumstances age 69.

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.

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. 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 and his wife would live as well. From 1921 to 1924 Morgan studied art at the Art Students League of New York with Frank DuMond, Guy Pène du Bois, and Leo Lentelli.

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. 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 "Vision Seminars", analyzing Morgan's many drawings and dreams. She created mythic visions chronicling "her struggle with the feminine and masculine forces in her world".

In 1923, she met and fell in love with Henry Murray, 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".

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