Christiana Morgan: no longer a "footnote of history"

The house of Christiana Morgan is a landmark that reminds its viewer and inhabitor to look for a deeper artistry and meaning to many things in life. Seeing her house, every component has its own purpose and meaning, reminding us to be introspective and look at details in our daily lives. Morgan’s story is one of breaking away from social expectations and forging a new life with its own hardships, but ultimately of your own choice. While she participated in many things considered commonplace for women at the time, like marrying and creating a family, Morgan chose to break away from this stereotype and explored new ways of engaging with the world. 

However, through much of her own pursuits, Morgan was used by others for their own gain. When Christiana came to him, Carl Jung was fascinated with her and thought she was the perfect feminine inspiration whose role was to act as a muse for “great men” to work from, apparently not work with. She learned methods from Jung to enter semi-meditative states and translated her visions into artwork. Carl Jung then used much of her artwork on the collective unconscious in talks about his research in Switzerland - without giving Morgan credit for her role in the discoveries. Many say Jung's analysis and discussion of her work depicted women and feminine energy in less of a powerful and ahead-of-the-times light than Morgan’s artwork did. Her artwork became less interesting to Jung over time, but her knowledge and psychiatric ideas from this work prompted the creation of the Morgan-Murray Thematic Apperception Test. This is a test where the patient is shown a variety of photos of people engaging in interpersonal problems and must create stories to accompany them, from which a psychologist determines dynamics of someone's personality that wouldn't otherwise be consciously communicated. While both were published as authors in 1935, Morgan’s partner Murray was later given main credit along with the “staff of the Harvard Psychological Clinic.” 

As I look at Christiana's story in admiration for the unique life she created, I also noticed how the way men treat her funneled into supporting the sexist society that Morgan ultimately found herself trapped in - after escaping the idea of common societal constraints so many years before. Even though it was Carl Jung who promoted Morgan’s affair with psychiatrist Murray to prompt a deeper dive into the collective unconscious, along with great successes came suffering, as through time, her consistent confinement to the shadows of someone else’s success manipulated her self-worth, deteriorating it throughout her life as she had grown somewhat intertwined with the men around her, and when they werent satisfied, she internalized this and felt she wasn't good enough. Morgan’s work was critical in the progression of psychology and psychoanalysis, and I believe her passionate life deserves to be remembered as such, her attributes existing for herself and not to serve men, who consistently downplayed her importance and engagement in research and medical fields.