Hester McFarland Solomon
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11 February 1943
Hester McFarland Solomon | |
|---|---|
| Born | Hester Madeleine McFarland 11 February 1943 |
| Died | 5 October 2021 (aged 78) London |
| Burial place | London |
| Alma mater | Tufts University, Massachusetts |
| Occupation | Analytical psychologist |
| Years active | 1977–2021 |
| Known for | The as if personality, the ethical attitude |
Hester McFarland Solomon (11 February 1943 – 5 October 2021) was an American and British analytical psychologist, researcher, teacher and administrator. She sought to bridge the century-old divide between Analytical psychology and the schools of Psychoanalysis.[1][2][3]
Hester McFarland, the elder of two children, was born a war baby in New Haven, Connecticut into modest circumstances. Her mother, a nurse, was of recent Polish descent, while her father, Orrin, a small building contractor, came from a Scottish family, mainly of physicians, long settled in the United States. During her early childhood, the family moved from a converted garage into a timber house in the forest, which her father had constructed. She excelled at school and French literature became her chosen subject. The family's budget did not stretch to college fees and she set off to New York City to work as a secretary to finance her desire for further studies. She succeeded in gaining a scholarship to Tufts University, where she majored in French.[4] While there, the Junior Year Abroad Program enabled her to travel to Europe and take courses at the Sorbonne in Paris. It also presented an opportunity to visit London where she met the man who would later become her husband, Jonathan Solomon.[5] Solomon, a Cambridge graduate, would go on to have a distinguished career as a top ranking civil servant during the privatisation of British telecommunications.[4][6] Having graduated in the early 1960s, Hester McFarland moved to the United Kingdom and marriage. She continued her French studies and obtained a master's degree at King's College London. This was followed by the birth of a son. However her abiding interest in philosophy and in the writings of Carl Jung propelled her into abandoning her French studies and forging instead a career in the application of Analytical psychology.[5]
