Morgan, Christiana

Christiana Drummond Morgan (CDM), a lay psychoanalyst at the Harvard Psychological Unit, was born in Boston, Massachusetts on 6 October 1897, the daughter of Isabella Coolidge and William Thomas Councilman, a professor of pathology at the Harvard Medical School. She attended the Winsor School in Boston from 1908 to 1914, and then attended Farmington, a finishing school for girls, for one year. In the spring of 1917 she met William Morgan (WM), a Harvard University student and one of the first of the class of 1918 to enlist in the US armed forces. Before WM left for duty in September of 1917, the two were engaged to be married.

While WM served in the war, CDM enrolled in a nurse’s aid course in New York City. After finishing the course, CDM went home to care for her sick father and began volunteering at a hospital in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. During the influenza epidemic of 1918, the Red Cross drafted CDM for emergency duty. CDM was assigned to hospitals in Methuen, Massachusetts and worked for Colonel Brooks, the Head of the Medical Department of the Massachusetts State Guard.

In April 1919, WM returned from the war. On 9 May 1919 CDM and WM were married and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A son, Peter Councilman Morgan, was born in 1920. In 1924, WM enrolled at Cambridge University to pursue a graduate degree in biochemistry and CDM accompanied him to England. While there she began a forty-year romantic relationship with future psychoanalyst Henry Murray (HAM). CDM’s relationship with HAM has been written about extensively in two books: Translate this Darkness by Claire Douglas and Love’s Story Told: A Life of Henry A. Murray by Forrest G. Robinson.

In June 1926 CDM went to Zurich to be analyzed by Carl Jung and WM followed two months later. From June until October of 1926 CDM was a patient of Carl Jung. By the mid 1920s Carl Jung’s theories and techniques had become popular among artists and intellectuals who often traveled to Zurich to consult or train with him. During this time Jung used active imagination or trancing as a therapy tool. CDM responded strongly to this technique and her visions and drawings inspired Jung who later used her material for the Vision Seminars in Zurich during the 1930s.

In November of 1926 CDM returned to Boston and began working at the Harvard Psychological Unit. The clinic was established by Dr. Morton Prince, who endowed the clinic and served as its first director. From the beginning, the clinic lacked funds so Prince employed mainly part-time or self-supporting therapists. Prince also staffed the clinic with lay analysts with limited psychiatric training and he accepted both CDM and HAM because of their informal training with Jung. In addition to her work as a lay analyst, CDM was also a research associate at the clinic. When Morton Prince died in the summer of 1929, HAM took over as Head of the clinic.

After her husband died of tuberculosis in 1934, CDM continued working at the clinic and maintained a professional, personal and spiritual relationship with HAM. In 1937 CDM and HAM decided to add a tower to CDM’s single room summer house in Newburyport, Massachusetts she had purchased in 1927. CDM and HAM designed the tower, using Jung’s Tower in Bolligen as inspiration. Along with a three story tower, CDM and HAM added a kitchen, enclosed porch and woodshed and started calling the property “Tower on the Marsh.” CDM and HAM used the tower as a sanctuary or retreat and it became a frequent topic in CDM’s writings.

In the 1930s CDM and HAM co-authored the Thematic Apperception Test, one of the most widely used tools in clinical psychology. CDM’s name, however, was later removed from the test. In 1945 they published a small monograph on personality called A Clinical Study of Sentiments .

CDM maintained a presence at the Harvard Psychological Unit until the 1960s. By the 1960s, however, she had few patients and her lack of academic qualifications was no longer acceptable. Her health was deteriorating as she battled alcoholism and her relationship with HAM became increasingly tumultuous as well. CDM’s life tragically ended in 1967 when she committed suicide by drowning.

From the guide to the Papers, 1925-1974., (Francis A.Countway Library of Medicine. Center for the History of Medicine.)