Born February 21, 1930, in Texas, Clift received a B.A. and J.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. She practiced law at Baker, Botts, Andrews and Parish in Houston, Texas, and in 1954 married another attorney at the firm, Wallace Clift. After her husband went to seminary, Jean Clift became involved in prayer ministry. In 1964 Jean and Wallace Clift were awarded a joint grant by the Farish Foundation to study the psychology of Carl Jung. At the C. G. Jung Institute in Zürich, Switzerland, she studied for two years with analyst Marie-Louise von Franz, to whom she dedicated one of her books.
Academic career
Clift applied her psychological training to the study of literature, earning a Ph.D. from the University of Denver in 1978 with the dissertation Little Nell and the lost feminine: An archetypal analysis of some projections in Victorian culture. She co-founded the C. G. Jung Society of Colorado in 1976, and remains a trustee. From 1975 to 1980, Clift was the first non-Catholic to hold the position of Director of the Center for Religious Meaning at Loretto Heights College. She also served as a faculty advisor for Loretto Heights' University Without Walls program for re-entry students, and taught short courses in religious studies and the humanities. In 1980, she was elected president of the American Academy of Religion, Rocky Mountain-Great Plains Region. After Clift left Loretto Heights in 1980, she continued her involvement with teaching as an adjunct professor of Anglican studies until 2002, first at St. Thomas Seminary and then at the Iliff School of Theology. In 2000, the Wallace B. and Jean Dalby Clift Scholarship Fund, to provide funds for students enrolled in Iliff's Anglican Studies Program, was endowed by Bette Lanning in recognition of the contributions made by Clift and her husband.
Clift left Loretto Heights in 1980 to establish a private counseling practice. She joined the American Association of Pastoral Counselors in 1982, and served as its president from 1994 to 1996. She was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado in 1988. Since 1989 she has been a member of the Pastoral Intervention Team for the same diocese, where she is also chair of the Pastoral Counseling Guidelines for Clerical Ethics. She has given numerous workshops on pastoral counseling, dream interpretation, journaling, spiritual growth, and pilgrimage. She is Canon Pastor Emeritus of the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado and an associate priest at the Cathedral of St. John in the Wilderness.
Clift, Jean Dalby; Clift, Wallace. "Symbols of Transformation in Dreams" in Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. 2nd ed. Berlin Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag
