Obituary Notice

Elie Humbert died on 15 September 1990, leaving us to our grief at the loss of a friend, one who had occupied a most important place in our Jungian activities, both in our French Society and as editor of our journal, Cahiers Jungien de Psychanalyse.

He was a founder member of the Société Française de Psychologie Analytique in 1969, a project very close to his heart, since he had the privilege of knowing Jung and of having been in analysis with him, before he analysed with Maria Louise von Franz, and he was anxious to pass on to the new generation of analysts the ideas of Jung, which remained so alive and valued inside him, and which were central in all his reflections and to his continuing and fruitful quest. Refusing himself the comfort of established certitude, he gave a chance to everything that was a living source of renewal.

Through his writings and lectures everybody was able to appreciate the fruits of his work and to follow him on his journeys; and, because his researches were rooted in his daily lived experience, they were felt as testifying to the kind of man that he was.

Shortly before his death, continuing his long meditation on life, he was able to say ‘Tout cela doit avoir un sens’ (‘There must be a meaning in all this’), thus expressing how the experience of the self continued to make its way in him throughout his awareness of the deepening pain of his body. For Elie, as for Jung, meaning was seen to reside in the experience one dares to live.

But we shall also remember Elie as the man who loved life intensely in all its forms, and who was always enthusiastically open to new encounters and new discoveries.

Geneviève Guy-Gillet

Elie G. Humbert died 15 September 1990. I first met Elie at a conference in Quebec City in 1984. At the time, I had seen, but not yet read, his book Jung which had just appeared in France. At the conference, he spoke quite movingly of desire, relating that Lacanian concept to Jung's ideas on the anima/animus. It was at this time that