Joseph L. Henderson


Joseph Lewis Henderson was an American physician and a Jungian psychologist. Called by some the “'Dean' of American analytical psychologists", he was a co-founder of the C.G. Jung Institute in San Francisco and continued in private practice into his 102nd year. When he died at the age of 104 he was "the last of the first generation of Jungian analysts who had their primary analysis with Jung."

Life

Ancestors, family, early life and education

Henderson was born on August 31, 1903, in Elko, Nevada to one of the small town's leading families; his relatives were prominent ranchers, businessmen, professionals, and his ancestors were early settlers in the area. His great-grandfather, Lewis Rice Bradley, a self-made cattle baron, emigrated west from Missouri to become, among other disparate things, the second governor of Nevada, elected twice. Three decades later Henderson's uncle, Charles Henderson, was appointed, then elected Senator from Nevada he would become chairman of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and as a result of the developmental assistance provided by that agency to southern Nevada, the city of Henderson, Nevada, was named after him. In Elko itself, the five-story Henderson Bank Building is still the tallest building. It opened in 1929 to house the bank that Henderson's grandfather, Jefferson Henderson, founded in 1880. Jefferson, a pharmacist form Missouri, had become Bradley's son-in-law in California, having married Sarah Bradley before the two families moved to Elko in 1919, This first generation of Hendersons became so distinguished that, according to Joseph Henderson, William Jennings Bryan, in town on a lecture circuit, eulogized the recently deceased Sarah Henderson, wife of Jefferson, as "an important member of the Henderson and Bradley families, well known for having contributed so much to the founding and development of Elko County and the State of Nevada."
Although Henderson left Elko relatively early, the small town left a mark with him, possibly because of the eminence of his relatives; he once told a colleague, psychotherapist C. Jess Groesbeck, one time director of the Utah State Mental Hospital, that "his Elko heritage was so significant to him that it came up frequently in his dreams while in analysis with Jung." After achieving fame within the field WITH his work on myths of initiation, a colleague dubbed him "the shaman from Elko", and that later became the title of the festschrift in his honor edited by Gareth Hill in 1991.
Joseph was the middle of three children born to John Henderson and Maude Henley Henders. His sister Marjorie was eight years older than him and his brother John Jr. nine years younger. Maude Henley hailed from Red Bluff, California, where her father was a mining engineer, but he died when she was young, leaving her an orphan. Raised by her aunts, she studied to be a teacher, and moved to Elko in 1891 to begin her career. John Henderson was groomed to be a banker was an ophthomologist who treated Joseph for a serious eye infection when the infant was three months old. Dr. Henderson was able to save the sight in only one eye, and the infant permanently impaired his depth vision in the other. Years later, however, Jung explained that the disability "enhanced his innter visiona and his interest in dreams and symbols."
A significant part of Henderson's professional work would later deal with the symbols, rites and belief structure of the American Indian. When Henderson lived in Elko living Indians were "part of the landscape." Natives from a village just outside the town came into Elko to market, and as a boy, an "old Indian woman" looked after him.
Henderson spent the summers of his youth performing chores on the family ranch. His visual impairment, however, made doubtful the possibility that he would eventually manage this family business. Indeed, a colleague concluded that "in the ranching community in which he was raised, hampered typical male development." His father, therefore, groomed him to become his successor at the bank and early gave him jobs there to prepare him. While Joseph cooperated, privately he was "profoundly and benignly uninterested."
Henderson's aunt was instrumental in guiding him, from an early age, toward intellectual pursuits. As a result of her urging, Henderson was sent to Lawrenceville Academy in Mercer County, New Jersey. At Lawrenceville Henderson came into contact with the time with intellectuals who would have a significant contribution to modern culture. Thorton Wilder, for example, was Henderson's French tutor.
Henderson remained in New Jersey for college, attending Princeton University, graduating with a B.A. in French literature in 1925.
He took a medical degree at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, in 1938.

Career

Henderson practiced in San Francisco, where he founded the Jung Institute of San Francisco, of which he was the president.

Personal life and death

In 1934, he married Helena Cornford, a daughter of Francis Cornford and Frances, herself granddaughter of Charles Darwin. She was 10 years younger than he but predeceased him by 13 years.

Scholarship and writings

In 1963, The Wisdom of the Serpent, a book he co-authored with Maud Oakes, was published. The work, which canvasses mythologems throughout the world concerning death, finds a Jungian pattern in which the acceptance of the cyclical patterns of death and rebirth allows initiates to transcend the fear of mortality.
Henderson died in 2007 from complications from pneumonia.

Principal publications