Jean Shinoda Bolen, M. D, is a psychiatrist, Jungian analyst, and an internationally known author and speaker. She is the author of “The Tao of Psychology,” “Goddesses in Everywoman,” “Gods in Everyman, Ring of Power,” “Crossing to Avalon,” “Close to the Bone,” “The Millionth Circle,” “Goddesses in Older Women,” “Crones Don’t Whine,” “Urgent Message from Mother,” and “Like a Tree” with over eighty foreign translations. She is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a former clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco, a past board member of the Ms. Foundation for Women and the International Transpersonal Association.
Jean Shinoda Bolen is an Analyst-member of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco and the International Association for Analytical Psychology. She is a past member of the Board of Governors of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, and past Chairperson of the Joint Certifying Board of the Northern and Southern California Societies of Jungian Analysts. She has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Ms. Foundation for Women. She founded and co-chaired Psychiatrists for ERA, which was a major influence within psychiatry in the early 1980’s, that evolved into the Association for Women in Psychiatry.
Dr. Bolen attended UCLA and Pomona College prior to graduating from the University of California at Berkeley in 1958. She then entered the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco, receiving her M.D. in 1962, followed by a rotating internship at Los Angeles County General Hospital and a residency in psychiatry at the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, University of California Medical Center, San Francisco. Her analytic training was done at the C.G. Jung Institute in San Francisco.
She brings an emphasis on the question for meaning and the need for a spiritual dimension in life to all aspects of her work, while also taking into account the powerful effects of archetypes within us and family and culture upon us. Her books are used as college and university texts in gender studies, women’s psychology, mythology, spirituality, east-west philosophy, and psychology courses. She has been an advocate for women, women’s issues, and ethics in psychiatry. With her former husband, she co-founded Psychic and New Realities magazines, publications about parapsychological, and mind-body-spiritual subjects. She is in the widely acclaimed documentary, “Goddess Remembered,” the first of the Canadian Film Board’s trilogy.