Michael Horne (1944 - 2016)

Michael Horne died on April 11, 2016, of Alzheimer's Disease, surrounded by his family in Berkeley where he was in residential care. He was 71 years old. Michael was a valued member of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco and a founding member of the New School for Analytical Psychology in Seattle. He was a popular teacher, clinical supervisor and analyst, and was deeply respected for his vigorous and creative scholarship. Between 2003 and 2009 he was an assistant editor, and then the US editor of the Journal of Analytical Psychology.

Michael grew up in Sydney, Australia. His father taught history at a boys' boarding school and his mother was the headmistress of a girls' school, so his upbringing was filled with academic expectations. At the military boarding school he attended he became a star Australian rules football player. He was so renowned for his ability that many expected he would make a career of the sport. On the other hand, he suffered several concussions and he told me that he was unconscious for at least 45 minutes on one occasion. It is possible those injuries contributed to his later brain disorder. In any case, athletic activities were very important to him throughout his life, and he continued to be an active biker and swimmer until near the end.

He was a fully-fledged counter-culture person during the late sixties and had a ‘hippie house’ in Paddington. Some of his friends were surprised when he made the decision to go into medicine after completing his undergraduate education at the University of Sydney. In the senior yearbook he was described as ‘“Horny old Michael” [who] came to University with a book under one arm and a football under the other … [whose] latest achievement has been to prove to the grey-flannelled suit enclave that “flower power” is not incompatible with success in medicine’.

This description rang true for me because I personally experienced Michael as a fascinating combination of an almost innocent openness, a very discipline