Dr.
Joseph Henderson, the dean of American Jungian analysts for the past
half century, died at the age of 104 on November 17th after a brief
illness.
Dr. Joseph
Henderson, the dean of
American Jungian analysts for the past half century, died at the age of
104 on November 17th after a brief illness.
Henderson was the
last living link to a generation who sought analysis with CG Jung in
Zurich between 1920 and the beginning of World War II in 1939 and who
later became analysts themselves.
His writings include the following books: The Wisdom of the Serpent,
co-written
with Maude Oakes in 1963, a chapter entitled Ancient Myths and Modern
Man in Man and His Symbols edited by Jung, 1964, Thresholds of
Initiation, 1967, reprinted in 2005, Cultural Attitudes in
Psychological Perspective, 1983, a compilation of essays entitled
Shadow and Self, 1990, and Transformation of the Psyche 2003,
coauthored with Dyane Sherwood. He has written numerous papers on such
diverse subjects as anthropology with special reference to the American
Indian, relations between East and West, clinical issues related to
transference/counter transference, aspects of dream interpretation, the
use of art in psychotherapy, and alchemical symbolism in analysis.
Dr.
Henderson developed the concept of the "cultural unconscious", which he
introduced in an address at the 2nd International Jungian Congress in
Zurich in 1962.
This idea has evolved in to the hypothesis of
the "cultural complex" which has received much attention lately in the
Jungian world.
In addition he has written numerous movie and book reviews.
Joseph
Lewis Henderson was born in Elko, Nevada on August 31, 1903 of a
prominent Nevada family which was active in politics and business in
the late 19th and early 20th century.
His uncle, Charles
Henderson, was Under Secretary of the Navy under FDR during World War I
and later became a US Senator from the state of Nevada.
Henderson went east to Lawrenceville School in New Jersey where his
tutor was Thornton Wilder.
He graduated from Princeton University in 1927 with a Bachelor of Arts
in French literature.
Following graduation he returned to San Francisco where he became a
drama critic and book reviewer for two small magazines.
In
1929 he traveled to Zurich for a year of analysis with CG Jung, and he
was a participant in Jung's "Dream Seminar" published by Princeton
University press in 1984.
He entered medical school at St. Bartholomew's in London, graduating in
1938.
During breaks in his studies he returned for further analysis with Jung.
In
1938 he returned to New York to open a practice of Jungian analysis. In
1940, eager to return to the West Coast, he and his wife, Helena Darwin
Cornford, and their daughter Elizabeth, moved to San Francisco where he
was a co-founder of the first professional Jungian group in the West.
During
World War II, he worked at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco along
with fellow co-founder Jo Wheelwright evaluating returning military
personnel from the South Pacific.
He taught at the old
Presbyterian Medical Center, the former home of Stanford Medical School
, as a regular faculty member until the medical school moved to its new
home on the Stanford campus in 1959.
As cofounder of the Jung
Institute in San Francisco, he is twice its past president, and he has
been influential in the professional development of many subsequent
Jungian analysts in their various endeavors.
He also was
instrumental in the San Francisco Institute acquiring a large
collection of images with their psychological commentary, which became
the Archive for Research and Archetypal Symbolism, otherwise known as
ARAS.
When ARAS evolved into a national organization he served
on the board for many years, and at the time of his death he was a
lifetime honorary member.
He traveled frequently to both England and Switzerland where, after
World War II, he continued to see Jung and other colleagues.
He
was elected Vice President of the International Association for
Analytical Psychology in 1962 and served only one term, finding that he
preferred writing to political activity.
He practiced and taught Jungian analysis and analytical psychology from
1938 until his retirement in 2005.
He
has been a source of inspiration and professional wisdom for many
generations of Jungian analysts, and his practice has included
significant individuals from many other fields of endeavor.
His wife, Helena, died in 1994, and his daughter, Elizabeth, died in
2001.
He
is survived by two grandchildren Julia Eisenman, a film producer, and
her husband Andy Behrman, a writer, and Nicholas H. Eisenman, an
attorney, and his wife Elizabeth Wolff, a psychiatrist, as well as two
great-grandchildren, Kate Elizabeth Behrman and Emma Rebecca Behrman.
In lieu of flowers donations can be made in his memory to the CG Jung
Institute in San Francisco, 2040 Gough Street, San Francisco,
California 94109.