Lay Analyst Elida Evans in the 1920s United States A Story Never Told

ABSTRACT

This is the first biography of Elida Evans, a New York Jungian-trained analyst who published four writings between 1916 and 1926. Two of them are psychosomatic articles, written together with Smith Ely Jelliffe. She also wrote two books, one on child psychology in 1920 and another on the psychology of cancer in 1926. Since Evans did not have a medical degree, she fought the American question of lay analysis even before Theodor Reik. Despite this, her book A Psychological Study of Cancer was the first monography about the psychology of cancer patients and the foundation of psycho-oncology.

KEY WORDS:

• Elida Evans
• Smith Ely Jelliffe, C. G. Jung
• Jungian psychosomatics
• lay analysis
• Adolf Meyer
• Maria Moltzer
• psycho-oncology
• Lightner Witmer
• Zürich school

NOTE

References to The Collected Works of C. G. Jung are cited in the text as CW, volume number, and paragraph number. The Collected Works are published in English by Routledge (UK) and Princeton University Press (USA).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to the organization and professionalism of the staff of the Library of Congress, in Washington, DC. In particular, many thanks to Candice Buchanan, Reference Librarian – Local History and Genealogy Section, for her assistance in finding Elida Evans’s biographical details and providing the records indicated in the Endnotes. I also thank Cheryl Adams, Reference Specialist – Religion, Philosophy and Psychology, for her kind interest. I wish to thank Marjorie Kehoe, Reference Archivist, Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland, for providing the correspondence file of Mrs. Elida Evans in the Adolf Meyer Collection. Thanks to FamilySearch.org for their precious biographical service.

Notes

^1. FamilySearch, accessed April 11, 2020, https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/LHTD-XPD.

^2. “United States Census, 1870.” New York, Suffolk, Riverhead, image 57 of 108; NARA microfilm publication M593 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration). Database with images, FamilySearch, accessed January 3, 2021, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M8KL-M2Y. Elida Woodhull in entry for Joseph M. Woodhull, 1870, accessed April 11, 2021.

^3. FamilySearch, accessed April 11, 2021, https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/timeline/KLY7-PJQ.

^4. FamilySearch, accessed April 11, 2021, https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/sources/L771-DC1.

^5. “United States Census, 1900,” database with images, FamilySearch, accessed April 12, 2021, https://familysearch.org.ark:/61903/1:1:MSLR-964. Elida W. Evans in household of Thomas Evans, Borough of Richmond, New York City, Ward 1, Richmond, New York, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 578, sheet 12B, family 244, NARA microfilm publication T623 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1972). FHL microfilm 1,241,153.

^6. “Passport Applications, January 2, 1906–March 31, 1925,” digital image, Ancestry.com, accessed April 9, 2021, www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1174. Elida Evans application, issued May 28, 1921, certificate # 43557, National Archives microfilm publication M1490, roll 1632; General Records Department of State, Record Group 59, National Archives, Washington, DC. Courtesy of Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

“United States Passport Applications, 1795–1925,” database with images, FamilySearch, accessed March 16, 2018, https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVJG-PNRK. Elida Evans, 1923; citing Passport Application, New York, United States, source certificate #250592, Passport Applications, January 2, 1906–March 31, 1925, Roll 2184, NARA microfilm publications M1490 and M1372, accessed April 11, 2021 (Washington DC: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d).

“United States Passport Applications, 1795–1925,” database with images, FamilySearch, accessed March 16, 2018, https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QV5Y-CW6K. Elida Evans, 1925; citing Passport Application, New York, United States, source certificate #515842, Passport Applications, January 2, 1906–March 31, 1925, 2712, NARA microfilm publications M1490 and M1372, accessed April 12, 2001 (Washington DC: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).

^7. See, for example, The Kingston Daily Freeman from September 1, 1934, page 3, and May 26, 1939, page 6. Accessed May 5, 2021, Newpapers.com.

^8. The Adolf Meyer Archive–Individual Correspondence, I/1088/1: Evans, Elida. Courtesy of The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.

^9. Knight Dunlap was a professor of experimental psychology at Johns Hopkins University. A president of the American Psychological Association, he founded the Journal of Psychology.

^10. John Broadus Watson established behaviorism as a psychological school and was an editor of the Psychological Review.

^11. See endnote 6.

^12. The Adolf Meyer Archive–Individual Correspondence, I/1088/1: Evans, Elida. Courtesy of The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.

^13. Unlike the mainstream dualism introduced by René Descartes, monism considers mind and body as different aspects of a unitary reality.

^14. Anna Freud (1930/1974) would deal with this topic from her experience as both teacher and psychoanalyst.

^15. The Adolf Meyer Archive–Individual Correspondence, I/1088/1: Evans, Elida. Courtesy of The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.

^16. Ibid.

^17. About Jelliffe, see Burnham and McGuire (1983, 122, note 92).

^18. “1920 US census,” Manhattan, New York City, New York, population schedule, Assembly District 7, enumeration district (ED) 559, page 217B (stamped)/4 (written), dwelling 12, family 128 (Address: 27 West 74th Street), Elida Evans household; digital images, FamilySearch, accessed April 9, 2021, www.familysearch.org/search/collection/1488411; National Archives microfilm publication T625, roll 1197. Courtesy of Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

^19. The term paleopsychology was used in Jelliffe and Evans’s (1916) article to describe a geological stratification in the unconscious and to study “thought fossils”—archaic memories in the deepest part of the psyche. Jelliffe developed this evolutionary approach by bringing together psychology, biology, anthropology, and sociology to discover the causes of diseases. As a result, Jelliffe dealt with “The Ecological Principle in Medicine” and these ideas were the starting point of ecopsychology (1939, 131–152).

^20. See endnote 6.

^21. See endnote 6.

^22. Ship Minnetonka arriving at port of New York on July 27, 1925. “New York, New York Passenger and Crew Lists, 1909, 1925–1957,” database with images, FamilySearch, accessed March 2, 2021, https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KX9S-Z1J. Elida Evans, 1925; citing Immigration, New York, New York, United States, NARA microfilm publication T715, accessed June 10, 2021 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).

^23. Ship Belgenland sailing from port of Cherboug, France, on October 8, 1927. “New York, New York Passenger and Crew Lists, 1909, 1925–1957,” database with images, FamilySearch, accessed March 2, 2021, https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KXGS-Z8L. Elida Evans, 1927; citing Immigration, New York, New York, United States, NARA microfilm publication T715, accessed June 10, 2021 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).

^24. The Kingston Daily Freeman, September 1, 1934, p. 3; May 26, 1939, p. 6.

^25. “Pennsylvania, Death Certificates, 1906–1963,” no. 60667, Elida Woodhull Evans, 1950; digital images, Ancestry.com, April 9, 2021, www.ancestry.com/search/collections/5164. “Pennsylvania Death certificates, 1906–1963” (Series 11.90), Records of the Pennsylvania Department of Health (Record Group 11), Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Courtesy of Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

^26. Stroudsburg Daily Record, Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, August 24, 1950, page 12, https://newspaperarchive.com/obituary-clipping-aug-24-1950-2372108/. Courtesy of Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

^27. Find a Grave, accessed April 11, 2021, https://it.findagrave.com/memorial/165289046/elida-evans.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marco Balenci

MARCO BALENCI, PhD, is a Jungian analyst (AIPA-IAAP) who has taught and researched at the Universities of Pisa and Rome. He wrote the chapter on “The Self” for the Italian Treatise of Analytical Psychology edited by Aldo Carotenuto, co-edited five academic books, and edited the Italian version of Anna Freud’s biography by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl. He has published several articles in Italian and English. His latest paper discusses the relevance of Carl Gustav Carus’s theory of the unconscious on Jung’s and Groddeck’s therapeutic approaches (International Journal of Jungian Studies, 2021). He has a private practice in Florence, Italy. Correspondence: [email protected].