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About Kristine
Mann
August 29, 1873- 1945
Introduction: Michele McKee Marguerite Block Beth Darlington M. Esther Harding Grace H. Childs Marguerite Block Dr. Kristine Mann, the namesake of our library and one of the first women psychoanalysts in the United States, was also one of the founders of the Analytical Psychology Club of New York in 1936. Dr. Mann gave much encouragement and support to the APC library, which was established in 1941 at midtown Manhattan’s Architectural League, where the APC held its monthly meetings. Books owned and shared by club members were kept in a locked cupboard in the basement, along with Club publications and donations, and books and papers sent from Zurich to ensure their access during the uncertain war years. Shortly after Dr. Mann’s death in 1945, the library, now bursting the cupboard and including her bequest of 200 books, moved to a charming basement room in the front of a brownstone on East 36th St. In 1946, the club library was dedicated to Kristine Mann, and it has been known as the KML ever since. Kristine Mann is said to be the subject of C.G. Jung’s A Study in the Process of Individuation, in which he interprets a series of 24 paintings of a Miss X2Jung’s description of “Miss X” closely matches what is known about Kristine Mann. Author James Webb makes this connection in his book The Occult Establishment: “‘Miss X’ was academic, educated in psychology, and in 1928 came to Europe to study under Jung. She was fifty-five at the time of the analysis, the ‘daughter of an exceptional father,’ and some sixteen years after the analysis had been carried through she became fatally ill with cancer. Thus, if we can find an unmarried American lady who fits the description and the dates of 1873-1944/5, we are on the way to discovering one source of Jung’s interest in alchemy. The odds are that she formed part of the group of American analysts who came over to Zurich between the two World Wars for training analyses. One of these fits the details so well that there is no possibility of doubt. This is Kristine Mann…” Webb singles out the third of the 24 paintings, the one that ‘Miss X” describes in terms that Jung says “brings in a motif that points unmistakenly to alchemy and actually gave me the definite incentive to make a thorough study of the world of the old adepts.” A case can be made that Kristine Mann was as great an influence on Jung’s connection of alchemy and individuation as was The Secret of the Golden Flower. MM. Marguerite Block. Memorial meeting of the APC of NY, January 6, 1946. APC of NY, 1946 “Kristine Mann was born on August 29th, 1873, in Orange, N.J., where her father, Charles Holbrook Mann, was a New Church minister. He had discovered the writings of Swedenborg during his Civil War experiences and had become a convert. Her mother, Clausine Borschenius, who had come to America from Denmark at the age of fourteen, had become interested in Swedenborg while working her way through Northwestern University. Thus it was a distinctly New Church environment in which Kristine Mann grew up — a home in which the two realities, spiritual, and physical, were accepted as the basis of life. But Charles Mann was no orthodox Swedenborgian; he was a follower of that brilliant though eccentric thinker, Henry James, Sr., from whom he derived the anti-ecclesiastical tendencies which brought him into conflict with his church. The family consisted of six children: two older brothers, Horace and Riborg; an elder sister, Clausine; a younger sister, Anna; and a younger brother, Holbrook, who died at the age of eighteen as a result of a diving accident on Bailey Island. It was when Kristine Mann was eleven that they began to spend their summers on Bailey, and there the clear, sharp air of Maine, the bright blue of sea and sky, and the strong, revealing sunlight -- so like her mother’s native Denmark-- brought out the Scandinavian pattern in the fabric of her personality. There she grew, like a sturdy daughter of the Vikings, ever ready to set forth into unknown seas, with clear eyes fixed on distant and still invisible goals. Her education began at the age of four, at the Dearborn Morgan School in Orange, from which she which she graduated at eighteen. She entered Smith College in 1891 and received her A.B. there. She then returned home to assist her father in his work as Editor of the New Church Messenger, the official organ of the Swedenborgian General Convention. The storm clouds were already to gather over Charles Mann’s head; in 1897 he threw down his gauntlet in an editorial attacking ecclesiasticism, declaring that the only excuse for a church lies in the “doctrine of use.” For five years the fur flew, until, at last, he was removed from the Messenger, and later resigned from his pastorate and moved to Elkhart, Indiana. There he founded a new society, based on the tenet that “Divine worship should never be conducted in a church, but in the home, the workshop, or the business office.” His new periodical, The Secular Church, was dedicated to Swedenborg’s teaching that “the life of religion is to do good.” All official ties with the New Church were now broken, but what Vachel Lindsay calls “the exquisite sharp-edged Swedenborgian culture” remained a precious family heritage.Kristine Mann was not working with her father through the heat of the fray; in 1899, after substituting for her sister Clausine for a year as teacher of science in the Dearborn Morgan School, she had gone to Berlin to teach English and ancient history in the Willard School for American girls. There she became proficient in the German language, attending classes in literature and science at the University. On her return home in 1900, she went to the University of Michigan as assistant in the English department, and there she received the degree of Master of Arts. From there she went to Vassar College to teach English for four years, after which she spent several years in New York, teaching at the Brearley School and pursuing graduate studies in education, philosophy, and psychology at Columbia University. The first important turning point in her career was now approaching. From her contacts with girls of school and college age, she had become convinced of the necessity for better health education of women. She had always been fond of athletics, and had been captain of the first basketball team at Smith. She had improved her own physical condition by systematic exercise, and she now felt a strong desire to work for the improvement of women’s health. She therefore began the study of anatomy at the Women’s Medical School in 1907, and two years later, at the age of thirty-six, she entered Cornell Medical School. She received her M.D. in 1913, and went to Wellesley College as a member of the faculty of the Physical Education Training School, having charge of corrective exercises and freshman hygiene. In 1911. Dr. Mann returned to New York to begin a two-year investigation of the health conditions of saleswomen for the New York Department Store Education Association, and, after our entrance into World War I, she served under the Ordnance Department, supervising the health of women in munition plants. But after the Armistice there came an opportunity for even wider service. The War Work Council of the Y.W.C.A., finding itself at the sudden conclusion of the war with a large amount of war work money, undertook a nation-wide experiment in health education for women. An able corps of women physicians was engaged to lecture and put on health demonstrations in educational institutions all over the country, and Dr. Mann was one of the lecturers on social hygiene. Another important project founded at this time under the auspices of the Y.W.C.A. was a Health Center for Business and Industrial Women in New York, of which Dr. Mann became Director in 1920. But it was another Y.W.C.A. project, an international convention of women physicians held in New York in 1919, which brought Dr. Mann to her second great turning point. One of the major emphases of this convention was on the psychological aspects of individual and social health, and here Dr. Mann came face to face with her true life work. She was greatly attracted to the Jungian system, so ably expounded by Dr. Constance Long, of London, and resolved to enter this new field. She began her preparation under Dr. Beatrice H. Hinkle, and, in 1921, she went to Zurich to work with Dr. Jung himself. In accepting this, her new vocation, Dr. Mann was, consciously or unconsciously, fulfilling one of her father’s dearest dreams, for Charles Mann was one of a number of New Church thinkers who were groping toward a system of psychological healing. Swedenborg himself had stated clearly that the causes of disease are spiritual, though the physical reality, and as early as the 1830’s his followers were attempting to formulate a system of healing based on his doctrines. An article in a New Church periodical of 1833 states that “disease always implies a conflict between the internal and external,” and Charles Mann, in his remarkable little book Psychiasasis writes : “I believe in the healing of the body through the soul. Every disease corresponds to its own evil...lusts and passions of the mind, hatreds, jealousies, etc. -- The removal of spiritual causes is the true means of healing -- but a kind of therapeutic method is needed - - the clearing of the mind of all obstructions.” It is not surprising that Dr. Mann, in her paper, “The Self-Analysis of Emanuel Swedenborg,” speaks of him as “a forerunner of Jung.” This paper is revealing, not only of Swedenborg as interpreted in Jungian terms, but also of Swedenborgianism itself as a matrix for the shaping of a great Jungian analyst.” Beth Darlington, "Vassar's Jung Folks," (excerpted) Vassar Quarterly, 1958 The story of the Vassar Jungians begins with the daughter of a radical Swedenborgian clergyman, Kristine Mann, who graduated from Smith College in 1895 and taught as an associate professor in Vassar’s department of English between 1901 an1905. She left to study philosophy and psychology at Columbia and medicine at Cornell, from which she received her M.D. in 1913. Mann developed lasting friendships with three of her Vassar students who themselves went on to earn medical degrees in an era when women were still pioneers in the study and practice of medicine; Gary Fink (later de Angulo and then Baynes) ‘06 (M.D., Johns Hopkins 1911), Elizabeth Goodrich (later Whitney) ‘07 (M.D., Stanford 1914), and Eleanor Bertine ‘08 (summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa; M.D., Cornell 1913). Like Mann, all three women played major roles in the early history of analytical psychology. During World War 1, Kristine Mann worked on women’s health issues in industry and war plants. When the war ended, she began analysis with Dr. - Beatrice Hinkle, Jung’s first American disciple and, translator, the first woman to practice as a psychiatrist and analyst in the United States, and perhaps the first woman—or indeed the first person—to treat a president of this country as a psychological patient. (A 1953 obituary asserts that she treated at least one president of the United States, but records were confidential.) Eleanor Bertine, meanwhile, set up a medical practice and numbered many business and professional women among her patients. She also served as consulting physician to the New York Reformatory for Women, but resigned in protest when her objections to the inmates’ appalling living conditions met with no response. At the war’s end, the War Work Council of the YWCA appointed Bertine to direct a radical educational program supported by its leftover war-work funds. It sponsored lectures on sex education (decorously referred to as mental hygiene) by women physicians for women in colleges and universities in forty stares; Bertine herself, Mann, and Dr. Margaret Doolittle Nordfeldt, Vassar 1893 (M.D., Boston University 1898), were among the speakers. All three had read Jung and were eager to follow Hinkle’s footsteps and study with him. Bertine traveled first to London, in 1920, to begin analysis with Dr. Constance Long, the first English woman to follow Jung’s methods. In 1921- 1922, Mann and Bertine both analyzed with Jung in Zurich, after which they established their own practices in New York as the second and third Jungians to treat analytic patients in the United States. Becoming friends and staunch allies of Jung, both regularly crossed the Atlantic to continue analysis and attend his seminars.... In New York the fledgling Jungian band gathered around Bertine and Mann, and when Esther Harding, a British medical doctor and early and distinguished disciple of Jung, emigrated from England in 1924 to join them, the three doctors composed a powerful trio. In 1936 they created the Analytical Psychology Club of New York and were active leaders in its educational programs. At her death in 1945, Mann left her personal library to the APC. (Today, after years of building its collections, the Kristine Mann Library boasts the most extensive holdings in analytical psychology of any library in the world.) Bertine and Harding went on to spearhead the establishment of New York’s Jung Foundation and training institute in 1962…. M. Esther Harding: APC of NY Bulletin, Dec. 1945 “ What I want to say concerns the more personal side of her life, when she doffed her professional manner with her city clothes, and set off so gaily for Farm or Island home. There the natural zest for life which was so characteristic of her had free play, whether in discussing the latest book she had been reading, or in playing with Baba, who gave her a particular doggie devotion, or going birding an the woods with her field glasses. In each and all she lived fully, with youthful enjoyment of whatever life presented. Even into her sixties she could pull an oar with the best , discounting any praise by saying’ “What you have done all your life, you do easily;” or she would sit by the hour at her window looking out over the ocean she had known from childhood. It was there that much of her thinking and reading were done, and something of the sea's own blue was reflected in her eyes. But it was as a friend that she was at her best. For she gave herself freely to her friends. To her, conversation - talk - was an art, deserving of the best one had to give. Discussion of world affairs, about which she was always well informed (she was reading the latest books on the European situation right up to the end of her life), was interspersed with the exchange of news and gossip about the smaller human interests of a very human woman. She never grudged the long hours spent translating articles, and indeed whole books, so that her friends, who did not read German, could share the latest treasures from Zurich without having to wait for the official translations. She lived, truly and humbly, the truth she had found through her own inner search, which, indeed, she taught, perhaps most effectively, by the reality of her own spiritual achievement. Her place will long be empty, though her memory and her sweet spirit will surely remain with all who knew her.” Grace H. Childs Memorial meeting of the APC of NY, January 6, 1946. APC of NY, 1946 “At the very beginning of the Club, the Advisory Board, which consisted then of Dr. Mann, Dr. Hinkle, Dr. Harding and Dr. Bertine, helped with our first steps in publications. Dr. Mann was on the small Planning Committee which established our Publications Board, and then served on the Board itself which included also membership in the Jungiana Committee. Her ability to translate from the German was of great value, but what was far more important was her profound grasp of Dr. Jung's writings and her breadth of understanding in their interpretation. She brought to such work a clear mind and. her own deep experience in analytical psychology. Furthermore, she translated for our use papers of Dr. Jung’s which had only been published in German, and which may not be officially translated into English for some time to come. I will read a list of Dr. Mann’s translations of works by Dr. Jung: Introduction to “The Tibetan Book of the Dead” Introduction to “The Great Freeing” by Suzuki Paracelsus The Psychology of the Idea of the Trinity The Transformation Symbol in the Mass Introduction to “The Way to the Self” by Henry B. Zimmer Dr. Mann's original papers which she wrote for the Club : The Shadow of Death Good and Evil in the World Situation The Process of Analysis as illustrated by the Dream Book of Swedenborg Individuation and the Family Problem There were besides, three Bulletin articles: A paper which she read at Dr. Zimmer’s Memorial. An article entitled “Self-Analysis” which was about The Little Locksmith by Katherine B. Hathaway. Her last article, “Modern Dreams and Ancient Symbols”, contained the suggestion that the Club might care to interest itself in studying symbols. The Religion and Philosophy Group adopted the idea at once, and, as you know, it bore fruit in two papers which were presented to the Club this Fall. Also last winter the Publications Board formed a subcommittee on symbols which is functioning actively. I was not one of those fortunate persons who knew Dr. Mann well, but I remember the deep impression her face made upon me the first time I saw her. I was sure I had seen her before-- her face haunted me. Sometime later I realized suddenly her face resembled strikingly one of the Sybils in the ceiling frescoes of “The Creation” in the Vatican, by Michelangelo -- frescoes I had studied long ago. The night she read her paper on “The Shadow of Death” a new vista opened for me. I realized for the first time what a creative old age might mean.” Marguerite Block: “Among her own inspiring papers presented at meetings of the Analytical Psychology Club the one which, at this time, is uppermost in all our minds is the unforgettable address on “The Shadow of Death,” with its final message to us concerning the “complete unfolding of that four-petalled flower of eternal life which Jung has called the Self.” END NOTES: James Webb, The Occult Establishment1976. Inner Court, La Salle, Illinois 2 CW 9-I, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, p. 290-354). |
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| (C)2008 Emily Vorce Last updated 10/15/2008 Emily Vorce |