Frances Wickes (born Frances Gillespy, Lansingburgh, New York, August 28, 1875 – Peterborough, New Hampshire, May 5, 1967) was a

psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how indi ...

and writer.

Biography

A graduate of Columbia University, Wickes was a teacher, writer and playwright for children and teenagers in New York but later became interested in becoming a

Jungian therapist Analytical psychology ( de , Analytische Psychologie, sometimes translated as analytic psychology and referred to as Jungian analysis) is a term coined by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, to describe research into his new "empirical science" ...

, especially for artists, and visited Zurich several times after meeting Carl Jung in 1920s, with whom Wickes maintained a correspondence. Wickes kept a

diary of dreams Diary of Dreams is a German darkwave band. The lead singer and founding member Adrian Hates has produced most of the albums by himself or with minimal help from others. He rarely uses a full band, except when on tour. History Adrian Hates is a ...

and made conferences, especially at the Analytical Psychology Club of New York. Wickes had a husband, Thomas Wickes (divorced in 1910 and died about 1947) and a son, Eliphalet Wickes (1906–1926). Wickes lived also in California and Alaska. Jung wrote the preface to her second book on the psychological world of children (1927), where Wickes supported the autonomous presence of the child in the

collective unconscious Collective unconscious (german: kollektives Unbewusstes) refers to the unconscious mind and shared mental concepts. It is generally associated with idealism and was coined by Carl Jung. According to Jung, the human collective unconscious is populat ...

, according to the idea of a

participation mystique ''Participation mystique'', or mystical participation, refers to the instinctive human tie to symbolic fantasy emanations. According to Carl Jung, this symbolic life precedes or accompanies all mental and intellectual differentiation. The concept i ...

, which Lucien Lévy-Bruhl in 1910 had theorized to exist within primitive societies, Wickes's comparing a child to an individual in training and giving more place to intuition and feeling than attention to the real or rational. The book was translated into German, French, Dutch, Italian and Greek. In coming decades Wickes helped found ''Spring'', which bills itself as the oldest Jungian journal, and lectured at various branches of the Jung Institutes. Among Wickes's correspondents are preserved letters to Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980),

Henry Murray Henry Alexander Murray (May 13, 1893 – June 23, 1988) was an American psychologist at Harvard University, where from 1959 to 1962 he conducted a series of psychologically damaging and purposefully abusive experiments on minors and underg ...

, Eudora Welty,

Mary Louise Peebles Mary Louise Peebles, née Parmelee (1833–1915), was an American author of children’s stories who wrote under the name Lynde Palmer.''New York Times'', April 26, 1915 Life Mary Louise Peebles was the daughter of Elias Ripley Parmelee and E ...

(1833–1915),

Martha Graham Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991) was an American modern dancer and choreographer. Her style, the Graham technique, reshaped American dance and is still taught worldwide. Graham danced and taught for over seventy years. She wa ...

, Lewis Mumford, Thomas Mann, May Sarton, Robert Edmond Jones (1887–1954) and William McGuire (1917–2009). At death without heirs $1–1/2 million of her $2-million estate was given to the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco and the rest to the Frances G. Wickes Foundation (1955–1974).

Works

Non-fiction

''The Inner World of Childhood: A Study in Analytical Psychology''
1927; (with a preface Carl Jung) New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1931
''The Inner World of Man, with Psychological Drawings and Paintings''
New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1938
''The Inner World of Choice''
New York: Harper and Row, 1963

Shorter pieces and fiction

Stories to Act
1915 * "The Christmas Jest,
''A Child's Book of Holiday Plays''
1916
''Child's Own Book of Verse'', Vol. 1and 2
1917 (anthology of children's poetry compiled with Ada Maria Skinner)
''Happy Holidays''
illustrated by Gertrude A. Kay, 1921
''Beyond the Rainbow Bridge''
1924
''A New Garden of Verses for Children''
1925 (ed. by Wickes) by Wilhelmina Seegmiller * "Mother Spider," i
''A Child's Book of Country Stories''
Ada M. Skinner and Eleanor L. Skinner (eds), 1925 * "A Question," in ''Spring'', 1941, pp. 107–109 * ''Receive the Gale. A Novel''. New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1946 * "The Creative Process," in ''Spring'', 1948, pp. 26–46
"The Conjure Wives"
(link to audio), ''Stories to Dramatize'', Winifred Ward (eds), Stories to Dramatize, 1952
''Arrow Book of Ghost Stories''
Nora Kramer (eds), 1960
"Wait Till Martin Comes In,"
Wilhelmina Harper (eds), ''Ghosts and Goblins: Halloween Stories for 1965''

References

Sources

Mary Esther Harding Mary Esther Harding (1888–1971) was a British-American Jungian analyst who was the first significant Jungian psychoanalyst in the United States. Personal life Mary Esther Harding was born in Shropshire, England the fourth of six daughters ...

, "Obituary – Wickes, F.G." ''Journal of Analytical Psychology'', XIII, 1, January 1968, pp. 67–69. *

Vincent Brome Vincent Brome (14 July 1910 – 16 October 2004) was an English writer, who gradually established himself as a man of letters. He is best known for a series of biographies of politicians, writers and followers of Sigmund Freud. He also wrote nu ...

, ''Jung: Man and Myth'', House of Stratus, 2001 *

Deirdre Bair Deirdre Bair (June 21, 1935 – April 17, 2020) was an American literary scholar and biographer. She won a National Book Award for her biography of Samuel Beckett in 1981. Early life and education Bair was born Deirdre Bartolotta on June 21, ...

''Jung. A Biography''
Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 2003.
"Frances G. Wickes Papers: A Finding Aid to the Collection in the Library of Congress", pg. 1Pg. 2
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wickes, Frances Gillespy 1875 births 1967 deaths American women psychologists Jungian psychologists 20th-century American women writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers American psychology writers Teachers College, Columbia University alumni People from Troy, New York American women non-fiction writers