Christiana Morgan - the lost imponderable super anima

It is Spring 1916, and a teenage Christiana Morgan is in a close hold with her dance partner. She feels his body close to hers and the fire that is sparking between them. She moves with him, understanding the power of the life force energized in their dance—a dance that breaks her free from a desperate, dead place where her intellect and soul suffocate, a dance where she envisions true union with another human and even more—so much more.

In Claire Douglas’ 1993 biography, Translate this Darkness, Christiana is quoted writing in her diary, “Oh God, I want to feel, to really find myself in feeling” (57). This is the beginning of her ecstatic and tragic journey toward self. Born in Boston in 1897, Christiana was as much an icon of her time as she was a victim of the patriarchy that ruled it. Now just beginning to be understood as an important analyst, researcher, and contributor to the creation and development of the thematic apperception test (TAT) at the Harvard Psychological Clinic, which she helped establish, Christiana’s real contribution to feminist history was her personal vision quest and the cost she paid to live it. Christiana’s work and life set the groundwork for women in the field of psychology and influenced the birth of American psychology itself. Her story exposes the agonizing origins of feminism as well as the deepest expression of feminine magnificence.

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