In Memoriam
James Marshall Barnett, 1923 - 2005
Jungian analyst and West Texas native, Jim was described as a cowboy with Ivy League credentials, winning a scholarship to Yale, where he majored in religion and graduated Magna Cum Laude. He subsequently received advanced degrees at Harvard and the University of California-Santa Clara before earning his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Dallas. Jim was known for his warmth, gentles, and ability to inspire others. We appreciated him deeply for his wry sense of humor and his dedication to training candidates in understanding the unconscious.
Mary Eileen Dobson, 1916 - 2006
Trained as an analyst in the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, Mary Eileen was a warm and wise woman who was known for her wit and for a heart that “knew no strangers.” Mary Eileen loved life and lived it fully, participating and traveling with a delegation of women for world peace. In the last 23 years of her life, she took seriously her work as a Jungian analyst. Her graduate thesis topic for the I-RSJA addressed Demeter and Persephone’s journey to the underworld. Mary Eileen remained active in the Texas Seminar of the I-RSJA until just a few years before her death and never lost interest in what was taking place in the wider Jungian world with her colleagues and good friends.
June Marie Gallessich, 1923 - 2008
A distinguished psychologist descended from early Scottish settlers in the northern Hill Country, June graduated Summa Cum Laude from Texas Christian University and went on to pursue her Masters and Doctorate in Counseling and School Psychology from the University of Texas. She joined the faculty and taught there for the next twenty years, serving as Director of Counseling Psychology Training for four of those years. Professor Gallessich was the author of many published articles and of the book "The Profession and Practice of Consultation." In 1982 she led work with the Texas Legislature to develop state guidelines for licensing psychologists. She began a second career in 1987 as a Jungian Analyst and for the next decade she maintained an analytic practice in Austin. Throughout her professional life, she was highly admired for her wisdom and valued as a mentor by many, and she was particularly a champion and role model for women.
Karen Magee, 2018
Karen Magee was a graduate of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts and served as a senior training analyst in the Texas Seminar. She was Chair of both the Inter-Regional's Ethics Committee and Membership Committee and taught ethics for Saybrook University's graduate program in Jungian Studies. Karen lectured and presented workshops locally in Houston and nationally on a variety of Jungian themes and for over 20 years, she was an instructor at the Houston Jung Center. In June 2018 the Jung Center honored Karen for her continuous teachings on ethics by naming part of the Haman Professional Series The Magee Ethics workshops, which are open to a wide variety of licensed mental health professionals. Karen's dedication to teaching ethic from an astute psychological perspective was rooted in her recognition that we are to deepen our relationship to our psychological lives.
Julia Kate Morgan, 1929 - 2008
Wordsworth's comment harkens the image and personage of Julia: "The exterior semblance doth belie the soul/s immensity." The first candidate to complete training in the Texas Seminar of the IRSJA, Julia opened many students to a deep respect for the value of fairy tales, which offered her hours of fascination in her early life. Her passion for the depth material throughout the Collected Works is paid testimony by the words engraved in her headstone: "Dreams are the facts from which we must proceed."
Priscilla Murr 1942 - 2015
With Priscilla's death the Jungian world lost an analyst possessed of a remarkable and deep understanding of the symbolic world. Priscilla earned her PhD at the University of Zurich and studied at the C.G. Jung Institute of Zurich, where she received her diploma in 1985. During her time in Central Texas she devoted much time to studying the rock art of Native American peoples in the Southwest. She was president of Austin Friends of Folk Art for many years and a mainstay with the Jung Society of Austin. Her interest in Rock art arose from her deep commitment to the reality of the unconscious anad her interest in whatever form it might appear in the human psyche. Retirement from her analytic practice did not lessen her devotion to the exploration of dreams; Priscilla always maintained an abiding appreciation of the unconscious. The theories of C.G. Jung, and her personal relation to the unconscious, remained the center of her life.
Harry A. Wilmer II 1917 – 2005
As a Captain in the U.S. Navy, Harry introduced the practice of group therapy to North America, at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. The 1961 Emmy-nominated TV docudrama, “People Need People”, starring Lee Marvin, was based on Wilmer’s book detailing this pioneering experiment, Social Psychiatry in Action. In the late 1960’s, Wilmer moved away from his Freudian training roots, to become a Jungian analyst and subsequently became professor of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio, TX, where he created one of the first wards for the training of AIDS patient caregivers, as well as studied the effects of PTSD on Vietnam Veterans, assisting their recovery by listening to, and analyzing, the dreams and nightmares that haunted them. Upon retiring from the University of Texas, Wilmer founded the Institute for the Humanities at Salado, Texas, where he brought together many of the nation’s brightest educators, artists and scholars, including many Nobel Laureates, to lecture and conduct workshops. Harry published hundreds of papers and articles, and more than 15 books, many illustrated with his original drawings. We remember Harry for many things, not the least of which was his wisdom.