Hester Mcfarland Solomon 1943 - 2021

Hester McFarland Solomon, who died on 5 October 2021 aged 78, was an American émigré who made a felicitous choice of life partner and adopted the UK as her home. It also proved to be the locus where her early dreams about travel, philosophy and Carl Jung became realized. Albeit a French graduate, her transition from home-maker and mother to sought-after analyst, teacher, administrator and writer was not obvious in the late 1960s. Two pivotal factors appear to have set her free on her journey. One was meeting Rowena Phillips, herself analysed by Emma Jung in Zurich. The other was doing secretarial work for Jack Kahn, a psychoanalyst, on his forthcoming book. In the event, Job's Illness: Loss, Grief and Integration was published in 1975 with an acknowledgment of Hester Solomon on the title page.

Hester Madeleine McFarland was a war baby who started life in a New Haven garage in Connecticut, later upgraded to a log cabin on a hillside, with space to roam. She was the elder of two children in the family of Emily Tutak, of Polish origin, and of Orrin McFarland, descended from a line of Scottish doctors. Despite being a top student and winning a place at university, her family could not afford to finance her, so she became a secretary in New York City. She won a scholarship to study French at Tufts. Her capacity to fill a chartered plane with fellow students bound for Paris enabled her to attend study programmes at the Sorbonne. On a hop over to London, she was introduced to a friend's brother, Jonathan, and a marriage ensued on her graduation in 1966. They had a son, Gabriel.

She was supported in her endeavours by her husband Jonathan Solomon, the brilliant Whitehall mandarin behind the highly successful privatization of British Telecom. Hester qualified as a Jungian analyst with the British Association of Psychotherapists in 1979, and as a couple therapist with the Institute of Marital Studies. She swiftly rose within the BAP Jungian stream, becoming a training analyst an