Pauline E. Thompson Papers, 1858-2000

Pauline E. Thompson was one of two children born to Edward H. and Ida (Paul) Thompson. Born 7 March 1905 in Spokane, Washington, Pauline Thompson's first years were spent in eastern and northeastern Washington in Spokane and Colville. Her parents were both educators, founding a business college in Spokane in about 1915. E.H. Thompson left the family shortly after founding the school, and Ida S. Paul Thompson then assumed total responsibility for raising young Pauline and her older brother Herbert Melville (also known as Rex). Thompson graduated cum laude from Spokane's North Central High School in 1921. During her high school years she became the first female page in the Spokane Public Library System. After graduation, Thompson worked at the Spokane Public Library for another two years before entering college as a pre-med student in 1923. Thompson changed her major to Teaching while at Washington State College in Pullman, and then continued her education as the Cheney Normal School, from which she received a Normal diploma in 1924. Three years later (1927), she graduated cum laude from Washington State College, with a five year Normal School diploma and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Education.

During the 1930s and 1940s, Thompson attended Teachers College at Columbia University in New York; she wrote, and had published, "Uncle Sam and Unemployment;" she took nurse's training at Bellevue Hospital; she taught school in Ohio and New York and worked as a nurse in migrant farm labor camps; and, she joined the Army Nurse Corps, and was billeted in France from 1944 to 1946. By 1950 she had completed her Doctorate of Education at Columbia University and became the first school psychologist in the Berkeley, California, public school system.

In 1949, Pauline Thompson began seventeen years of Jungian analysis with Dr. Renee Brand. This relationship, perhaps the most important in her life, introduced her to the Jungian Institute in San Francisco, where she was an active member for nearly four decades.

Before retiring in 1966, Thompson had held several teaching positions in California over a period of sixteen years, including Dean of Girls at the California State School for the Blind. She also taught individuals with developmental disabilities in Daly City, California. Early in her career she briefly worked as a counseling psychologist in private practice. Following her retirement, Thompson returned to school in Bellingham, Washington, and taught a course in the Women's Studies department at Washington State University. She also became politically active. Her first arrest for civil disobedience occurred when she was seventy-seven. Pauline Thompson continued her political activism throughout the rest of her life. In her last years became a prolific writer on subjects ranging across religion, politics, philosophy, history, human relationships, and psychology. Pauline E. Thompson died in San Francisco in 2000.