Some Reflections on the Life of Lyn Cowan
Peggy Hanson, Minnesota Seminar In Jungian Studies 4 February 2022
Lyn Cowan was a teacher, mentor, supervisor, colleague and friend to many of us for decades: a pillar in the Jungian community. She was an inspiring influence to me since I first dipped my toes in Jungian thought. In fact, she provided the warm bath (an introductory course in Jungian Psychology that I took as a graduate student in the early 1990s) in which I got my big toe wet. And I am not alone. Just yesterday, as the word spread that Lyn had died, I heard from a fellow graduate student from all those years ago. She shared with me that her favorite class, in the endless line-up of clinical courses we were required to take, was an elective: “Dreams from a Jungian Perspective” taught by Lyn Cowan. In addition to her role as mentor and teacher to so many of us, she was a valued colleague and friend to many Jungian analysts, as well as a sizable cadre of horse racing enthusiasts.
A few years ago the Minnesota Jung Association (MJA) held an event to honor Lyn, and to kick off the “Lyn Cowan Analyst Training Fund”. This fund was established to financially assist local candidates-in-training who, like Lyn, were in need of financial assistance to help defray training costs. It was started by the generous donations of the Minnesota Jung Association, offering loans to candidates in need, as Lyn had once been many decades ago while training first in Zurich and then through IRSJA. During the kick-off event for this fund, MJA honored Lyn and her lifelong work in the field of Depth Psychology. I had the privilege of telling a bit of the story of her amazing life.
Here are some nuggets of that story, as told to me by Lyn, and then shared during this event.
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Lyn was born on November 18th, 1942, in Brooklyn, NY. She died in St. Paul, MN January 28, 2022, the year she would have turned 80. Her mother told the story of Lyn being born during WW II when the Allies were losing major battles. One week after her birth they won their first major battle. She was a war hero!
Lyn has a younger sister by six years, Nancy. When Lyn was eight and Nancy, two, the family moved to Flatbush, Long Island, the “first American suburb”. Her father was a comic book artist, who first drew Captain America for Marvel Comics. His work was honored on a postage stamp: Syd Shores – look him up!
While studio manager for Marvel Comics her father was fired, along with many other Jews. This was during the McCarthy Hearings. The House UnAmerican Activities Committee determined that comics were a subversive attempt by the communists to corrupt American youth. In 1960, Lyn was the only graduating senior of her high school class of around 150 students to refuse to sign the Loyalty Oath stating that she was not a member of the Communist Party. This nearly prevented her from graduating until the requirement to sign was deemed unconstitutional. She has always been an iconoclast, questioning and challenging those things that don’t make sense to her – especially those things that diminish the rights and identities of others. Lyn decided, after high school, that she wanted to go to college in the Wild West – somewhere across the Mississippi. This brought her to the University of Minnesota where she got her bachelors and masters degrees in Medieval History.
At twenty-two, with her marriage in trouble, she was referred by a friend of a friend, (who happened to be an Episcopal priest who had studied dreams and felt Lyn’s were significant) to Mary Ann Mattoon for analysis. Mary Ann herself was a fresh graduate from her training in Zurich, and Lyn was her third patient. This was in 1965. Lyn was drawn to analytic studies and ended up starting her training at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich, as it was the only accredited training institute (which she needed to defer her graduate school student loans). While a student in Zurich, she was very poor, barely able to pay for food, much less heating oil. She got a residency permit to stay in Switzerland, but not a work permit, and so she earned some money – under the table – working for James Hillman, who had started up a small publishing company in Zurich called Spring. He was committed to helping poor students like Lyn get through training by offering them these odd jobs, for a bit of money. Sometimes Jim and his then-wife Pat Berry would invite “Lyn-Myn” (his nickname for her) over to their place for dinner. Thus began Lyn’s lifelong friendship with them both.
Lyn graduated from IRSJA and started practicing as a Jungian analyst in 1980. She was Director of Training for IRSJA for six years; she also served as President of the Society. She held a professorship for ten years in the doctoral program in Clinical Psychology at the Minnesota School of Professional Psychology, served for five years as professor of Jungian Studies at Saybrook University (San Francisco), and was named Pacifica Graduate Institute Department of Mythological Studies 2009 Distinguished Scholar. Along with seven other women, she was honored in 2011 by the Institute for Cultural Change at a conference in Santa Barbara, California, for her contributions to the field of depth psychology. She wrote three books: Portrait of the Blue Lady: The Character of Melancholy (2004), Tracking the White Rabbit: A Subversive View of Modern Culture (2002), and Masochism: A Jungian View (1982), as well as a monograph, Dismantling the Animus (1994). She was President and faculty member of the Minnesota Seminar in Jungian Studies until the time of her death.
Stephen Witty, Jungian analyst and filmmaker, produced a second documentary on the lives of Jungian analysts, featuring Lyn: Claiming a Life: Lyn Cowan, Desire, and the Courageous Heart. The official description of the film states that its theme, as told through a series of interviews with Lyn, is “breaking through our own limiting notions of ourselves, allowing Eros, the god of desire, to be part of our lives, and summoning the courage to follow his lead.” The film further shows how the threads of desire and courage were woven in the fabric of Lyn’s life.
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During that evening, a few years ago, when Lyn was honored by the Minnesota Jung Association, MJA member Karen Seay read a poem she had written for Lyn in 2015, following a delightful lunch she and a friend had with her, in which Lyn regaled them with horse stories. Some of you may know this story of Lyn’s, beautifully captured in this poem.
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Dropping the Reins
A Poem for Lyn Cowan By Karen Seay
When she was a young girl,
her favorite uncle taught her to ride on a horse she fell in love with
at first sight.
Every summer for twelve years the horse carried her, with her sister and her cousins,
through deep, wild, tangled country.
Through trees and dense brush they made their own trails and rode for hours on end.
It would have been easy in such a place
to stray from her companions, to become lost,
to lose all sense of direction, but her uncle taught her, she says,
the most important thing she ever learned,
for riding or for life:
If you are ever lost
and don’t know which way to go, drop the reins.
The horse will take you home; he knows the way.
