JURY, PAUL (1878-1953)

Paul Jury, a French theologian and psychoanalyst, was born on September 20, 1878, in Bergerac (Dordogne) and died in Paris on March 24, 1953. The only son of a family of six children, Jury was a boarding student at the Lycée Michelet in Vanves; to attend school he traveled from Indochina, where his father was an engineer with the railroad. At the age of thirteen he converted to Catholicism and, after receiving his baccalaureate in Pau, joined the Jesuits on November 24, 1896, in Toulouse. Because the Jesuits were unable to work in France, Jury worked in Belgium, where he was ordained a priest in 1909; he became a doctor of theology in 1910.

A man with a penchant for literature, Jury wrote for newspapers and magazines, and in 1923 left the Jesuits, reproaching them for prohibiting research. He moved to Paris and, after undergoing a spiritual crisis, became interested in psychoanalysis. He began an analysis with Charles Odier on July 30, 1932, and contributed to the work of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society. He was active in the organization's meetings and published several articles of his own as well as translations of Freud in the recently established Revue française de psychanalyse.

Between 1940 and 1944 he lived in Grenoble, where a period of intense creative activity ensued. Here and in Paris he wrote several articles, which were collected into a single volume: Le Jardin de Candide (ou De Dieuà l'homme), and several volumes of rationalist exegesis of the New Testament, which he published after he had left the church. Beginning in 1946, he contributed several essays to the review Psyché. He continued working as a translator, publishing works by Karl Abraham in the Revue française de psychanalyse, and a translation of Freud's Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety (1926d).

He died at the age of seventy-five, nearly blind, having continued to exercise his priestly functions throughout his life. His books and manuscripts were conserved and published by his student André Michel.

AndrÉ Michel

See also: France.

Bibliography

Jury, Paul (1950). Descartes, psychanalyste avant la lettre, Psyché, 40. (Original work published 1935)

——. (1956), Journal d'un prêtre, Paris: Gallimard.

——. (1964), Les débuts de l'évangile ou les quatre légendes de Jean-Baptiste. Gentilly: Albin Michel.

Michel, André. (1987) Léon Bloy et Paul Jury. Bulletin Sté ét. bloyennes, 10-11, Oct. 1990, 12-13, April 1993.

——. (1992). Décroire, fondement d'un rationalisme psychanalytique (entretiens avec Paul Jury) . Gentilly: Albin Michel.