Archival Collage: An image of a woman holding a basket of fruit under one arm, while with the opposite arm she holds up a scientific globe, which she gazes upon.

Elinor Dickson weaves together the mythical, metaphysical and historical to shine new light on our journey as a species and planet.

Drawing from 35 years as a Jungian therapist, countless conversations with friend and co-author Marion Woodman, and nearly 20 years as a community builder and chief psychologist at a large inner city trauma hospital—she is a wise elder in our midst.

Today, Elinor Dickson is a critical voice on the immense transition in consciousness humanity is being called to make as we face the possibility of extinction at our own hand. Understanding this transition has been her life’s work, expressed in hundreds of workshops, seminars, lectures, and writing.

“I believe there is a golden thread that runs through our life and to live long enough to trace its course is a gift.”

— Elinor Dickson —

A World Too Small

The contemporary silhouette of a young girl standing and looking up to the sky, the wind blowing in her hair. Where she looks in the sky is the archival drawing of a woman riding a flying horse, her hair equally blowing in the wind.

Elinor Dickson lived most of her childhood and teenage years in a small General Motors town in Ontario, Canada.

Dickson:
Propelled by a deep curiosity, from my earliest days until my teens, art, poetry, opera, horses, and my all-knowing dog were the containers of my inner fire.

From the age of twelve, a line from Alfred Tennyson’s poem Ulysses shaped my life. ‘I am a part of all that I have met; yet all experience is an arc where thro’ gleams the untravell’d world whose margin fades forever and ever when I move.’

While I did the things teenagers do, including dating the boy next door, I felt the burden of ‘not fitting in.’ I was destined to be a seeker, and as soon as I was old enough found my way to San Diego and beyond.

A Mind Set Free

Archival Metaphorical Collage: An archival drawing of a brain, with its frontal lobe pointing upwards, and from the frontal lobe flowers are growing.

At eighteen years old, Elinor returned from humanitarian work in Mexico with a persistent infection. Having no health insurance, a friend advised her to go see Dr. Anita Figueredo.

Dickson:
While she gently probed my body, she equally probed my mind, asking many questions about my life. Her deep intuition grasped the qualities I was just beginning to uncover and had not yet fully owned. Looking back, I believe she saw the seeker in me, and an intelligence that was yearning to be challenged and set free to where curiosity would lead me. While diagnosing my infection, she was silently diagnosing my soul-sickness.

As I sat on the examining table, she wrote furiously on a large pad. Along with a prescription, she had written a letter of introduction to the President of the University of San Diego. With no money, a Grade 9 education, plus a three-year secretarial course, I was admitted as a resident to USD, a prestigious private university. Being an avid reader, I did pass the SAT tests! Unknown to me, Dr. Figueredo had set up a scholarship to pay for my considerable tuition. Much later I learned that she was a pioneering surgeon and considered, by many, to be a living icon. I remain grateful, as her generous intervention radically changed my life. My mind was set free to follow my heart.

Psychology & Community

After three years studying in the US, Elinor returned to Canada to finish training as a psychologist. She received her doctorate in clinical psychology in Ottawa and soon returned to Toronto, where, for 18 years, she served as Director of Psychological Services at a large inner city trauma hospital.

Dickson:
As mental health needs many footholds, I became deeply involved in the surrounding community as a consultant, advisor and advocate for affordable housing and programs for the vulnerable. At this time, the benefits of community were emerging within many organizations, and I gave workshops and seminars, for many groups in Canada and the Northern United States.

I also taught specialized courses at the University of Toronto on human relations, and, at the Center for Integral Healing, I led year-long courses on Jungian Psychology, teaching trainees how to work with client’s dreams. For 20 weekends spread over 10 years, Drs. Eldon and Marcella Shields and I led in-depth experiential workshops entitled Women and Men: The Journey Together. Sensing a hunger for this kind of experience in our clients, these workshops were always fully attended.

A Life Guided by Dreams

Archival image of clouds opening to a central source of light, and amid the clouds is the contemporary silhouette of a woman floating.

While entrenched in her work as a psychologist, Elinor Dickson experienced three life-defining visions which began her transition to a life guided by dreams.

Dickson:
If I ever had any thought of being in charge of my life, quite early on, I began to suspect there were forces unknown to me that had their own agenda. However, it was through my personal experience of life-changing dreams that I began to see them as far more than a lens into our individual psyches.

One dream that changed my life included Marie Louise von Franz, Carl Jung’s most insightful disciple, presenting herself as my new inner guide. My life took another turn, and it is still turning, since following her death, in one of my latest dreams, she emerged from a caravan by the side of the road and, folding my arm against her heart, proceeded to lead me away from all convention!

Meeting Marion Woodman

Archival drawing of two butterflies flying and facing one another.

Elinor Dickson’s voice as an author is intricately linked to her deep friendship with Marion Woodman. Their connection inspired them to co-write Dancing in the Flames, and continues to be a guide in Dickson’s life.

Dickson:
In 1984, I met and became a close friend of Marion Woodman. Once more an extraordinary woman stepped into my life, this time shaping the second half of my life and transforming my identity from ‘doing’ to ‘being.’

In exploring our life, dreams, and visions, we formed a friendship we both cherished. With laughter and intense discussion, we challenged each other pushing the limits of our understanding in exploring the landscape of the soul’s imaginal realm. In her later years, long after we wrote Dancing in the Flames, Marion appeared in a dream directing me to write a book about our friendship. This led to Dancing at the Still Point: Marion Woodman, SOPHIA, and Me: A Friendship Remembered (Chiron, 2019), published a year after Marion’s death.

So the Water Can Flow Again

Elinor Dickson’s writing continues to grow in power and insight—her ideas boldly evolving with the state of the Earth and the increasing urgency to transform our existence upon it.

Dickson:
In the final chapter of Dancing in the Flames, I inserted a chart that I outlined in 1980 to illustrate the magnitude of the transformation in consciousness we must face to fulfil our destiny as Homo Sapiens, the Wise Species. What has worked in me for so many years is finally finding its more outward, collective expression in this current work, In Pursuit of Wisdom.

In Marion’s final years and days, she entreated me to finish the manuscript. In many ways it is a bookend to Dancing in the Flames, and undoubtedly it is a message I want to leave behind as part of my own legacy.

Today, humanity is mired in a worldview from which there is no rational escape. We can build better solar panels, more environment friendly architecture, or more advanced technology to protect ourselves against the storms to come, but we cannot give birth to a new vision promising regeneration until we become life-bearers once more. We must reclaim our deep instinctual resonance with the world and our imagination, the birthplace of symbolic thinking. We must reclaim the attributes of our soul so the water can flow again.