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.
James Brandenburg, 1943 - 2023
Jim trained in Zurich, Switzerland at the Research & Training Center in Depth Psychology (According to Carl Gustav Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz). In collaboration with John Fox from the Institute for Poetic Medicine he facilitated a poetry circle dealing with the
archetype of exile.
Jim believed in the wisdom of the unconscious mind and in the healing power of archetype and poetry. As a certified Poetry Therapist, he ran poetry therapy groups at San Antonio College and local venues for many years. A professional poet, he published In Pursuit of the Butterfly and co-authored a book of poetry with the German poet Hejo Muller, Somewhere Everywhere, Irgendwo Uberall. His third book, Eyes in the Dark, brought together poetry and dreams analysis.
Jim was a gifted professional and a gifted man, a valued colleague and teacher. He loved teaching and his students and those he mentored appreciated his knowledge, his support and his encouragement.
We simply did not have him with us long enough. We will miss his comforting presence and his considerable wisdom, his intelligence, insight and integrity.
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 IRSJA 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.
Laura Sue Dodson, 1936 - 2022
Throughout her career, Laura worked with individuals, couples and families, and offered both individual and group case consultation. From 1988 to 2012, following her interests in Jungian cultural analysis, cultural trauma and recovery, Laura worked each summer in various countries of the former Soviet Union, addressing recovery from cultural oppression and war trauma. From 2008 to 2019 she worked in Thailand, focusing on cultural issues related to Muslim/Buddhist conflicts and children's recovery from witnessing extreme trauma. Her Jungian dissertation, Toward an Analysis of Culture, with Zimbabwe Africa as an Example, readied her to work with racial issues in groups in the United States. She assisted in the formation of Jungian training Institutes both in Moscow and in
Vilnius, Lithuania.
Laura was a valued colleague, sharing with us – both faculty and students – her passion for understanding the nuanced ways in which to explore the human psyche. We will miss her stalwart spirit, her sense of humor, her wisdom.
Obituary | Laura Sue Dodson of Plummer, Minnesota | Johnson Funeral Service
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.
Michelle Halsall, 2023
Hailing from Mississippi, Michelle began her academic life with a BA in Anthropology and Art History from Rice University, soon thereafter obtaining her master’s degree in psychology and later her Master’s of Divinity at the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest and, ever the student of the human mind and psyche, entered Jungian training with the IRSJA in 1995.
Michelle was an early member and active advocate of the Isis Institute of Women’s Studies, a central Texas group dedicated to studying the history and accomplishments of women throughout the world and across time. She often visited early worship sites and examine artifacts significant to feminine god figures, including tours to Rome, the Amalfi Coast, Egypt, Greece and Crete. Her fellow travelers remember her as energetic, intelligent, inquisitive, and an eager learner, and she brought that learning to her teaching in the Texas Seminar for the years that her health allowed her to be active there.
In her final years Michelle served in leadership and on the staff at Calvary Episcopal Church in Bastrop, Texas. She maintained her clinical practice until her death, with her beloved and trusted Wolfhound, Maddie Lou, serving as her co-therapist.
Alex Steve Hill, III, 2021
A graduate of Hendrix College, Steve received his medical degree from the University of Arkansas and after following the Beatnik urge to move to San Francisco where he served as a pathologist in the Air Force and went on to train as an analyst at the C. G. Jung Institute. In his 40 years of analytic practice he would earn the gratitude and dedication of many an analysand with his ability to tease out complexes, integrating both developmental and archetypal perspectives in his work. He recognized the vital need for training analysts to be aware of the complexes at work in their own countertransference and was dedicated to psychological mindedness. Ever interested in the nature of what it means to be a man in the modern world, his honesty, intellect, warmth, humor and accessibility made him a fatherly figure for many, a Trickster for some.
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 and 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.