Meet Our Board Members

Theresa Yuschok, President, is a psychiatrist in Chapel Hill, NC.
     

I value the vibrant  fellowship of others who explore the psychological and spiritual depths.  We engage with outstanding speakers and authors to shed light on applying  Jung's ideas individually and collectively.

  A college theater class taught by a psychoanalyst, "Psychological and Archetypal Approaches to Literature"  introduced me to Jungian depth psychology and I have devoted decades to expanding my understanding psychologically, creatively and spiritually.
 

Psychologically, I  learned  to recognize compelling complexes with an archetypal theme from myths or fairytales which replay in my life or current events. When I embrace the rejected "shadow", I find some gold treasure. Wrestling with inner conflict or interpersonal disagreement, I have appreciated the alchemy that, if I am patient, holding the tension of opposites, a third possibility emerges.
 

Creatively, I use active imagination such as written dialogue, art, sound, movement and associations to amplify symbols that cross my path in waking life or  in dreams. The language of symbols enhances my creative writing.
 

Spiritually, Jung described a universal and  innate religious instinct to strive to connect with the Transcendent.I honor and celebrate numinous experiences, synchronicities, search for meaning, journey to wholeness in myself and others.
 

My favorite quote is from Marie-Louise von Franz, "The experience of Self brings the feeling of standing on solid ground, inside oneself, on a patch of eternity, which even physical death cannot touch."

 Ann Loomis found The C.G. Jung Society of the Triangle shortly after moving to Chapel Hill in 1992. Since then, she has twice served as President and has participated in many valuable Jung Society workshops and events. Ann likes to call Carl Jung her “spiritual grandfather,” especially since her maternal grandfather’s ancestors are from Zermatt in the Germanic section of Switzerland. Another part of Ann’s DNA hails from the Isle of Jura in Scotland, which may be one reason she is interested in Celtic spirituality. As a “cradle Presbyterian,” she has noticed the absence of the feminine principle in the Protestant faith, andCeltic spirituality has provided a balance for this. In fact, one  of the books Ann has authored is titled “Celtic Cycles: Guidance from the Soul on the Spiritual Journey,” which focuses on the seasonal cycles on the Celtic Wheel of the Year.

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 Another book that Ann has authored is titled “Write from the Start: Discover Your Writing Potential through the Power of Psychological Type.” Since it was psychological type that first brought her to Jung’s teachings, Ann credits her “spiritual grandfather” for being the Wise Old Man behind this book on type.

Ann is now happily and busily retired from many years as a language teacher:   Spanish, English Composition, and English as a Second Language. She and her husband, Bob, have two grown sons and six grandchildren.

 Melissa  has over forty years’ experience as an administrator.  She has been a secretary, a staff assistant, a long-range planner, an assistant provost, an associate dean and an instructor.  She has worked at Kelly Girls, AC Nielsen, Harvard University, and Duke University.  She has managed departmental, financial, organizational and information technology operations, as well as leading multiple long-range planning projects.      

As an administrator, Melissa has had the opportunity to serve on many boards.  She has been especially active in Rotary as a volunteer.  She also loves studying science, practicing religions and reconciling philosophies.

Melissa majored in History as an undergraduate at Connecticut College, and early in her career earned an MBA at Duke’s Fuqua School.  After an early retirement, she returned to the Duke Divinity School for a Master of Theological Studies.  After that, she took up research and teaching around the subject, “What does it mean to be human?” a subject that arises at the confluence of economics, evolution, and happiness.  She likes to think of herself as a practical philosopher and a pioneer.  The work of C. G. Jung provides guideposts and cairns along a path that is both practical and pioneering.

Melissa is a part-time CNA, an active Rotarian, a writer and consumate learner.  She  loves music and being active outdoors.  She has a grown daughter, one dog and one cat.

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“I come to the Jung Society of the Triangle from the specialty coffee industry, with over 15 years of experience in many roles, primarily focused on the art of roasting.  I studied literature and language at Appalachian State, and afterwards spent a year teaching ESL in Honduras."  

"As a newcomer to Jungian thought and practice, I have found immense value in the lectures and salons put on by the society.  Jung's work has provided a language that I didn't have prior access to- a set of orientation marks for interpreting the space around me, relationships, and ultimately the self.”  

Brett has been serving as a Member-at-Large and coordinator of salon logistics, and offered to expand our social media presence to improve publicity to our events.

Currently, a great deal of my time and energy is given to parenting three pre-school children with my partner.  They are everything and helping them navigate their individual universes teaches me more about my own universe than any other experience that I have encountered.  I love my little family, dearly.   Professionally, I am a licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT), with a private practice in Durham.  In many ways and for several reasons, in my vocational arena I feel like I am living my dream.   

I grew up in Lincoln County, NC, however, I spent most of my adult life in California.  I attended Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA and obtained a Master of Divinity before completing a M.S. in Marital and Family Therapy.  

I became interested in Jungian ideas through a series of synchronistic experiences and relationships; the most consequential being my personal work with a Jungian analyst, which began in 2019.  Through this, I began reading and listening to Jung and other Jungians like Marion Woodman, Edward Edinger, June Singer, James Hillman, Robert Moore, etc.  I began doing dream-work.  And, I also developed friendships with others who resonated with Jungian ideas.  Engaging with Jungian material (which is so very vast) has helped me to become a more whole being, gain awareness, and become more curious.  

The Jungian community has become dear to me, so when we moved to Durham in June of 2021, connecting with the Jung Society of the Triangle was on the top of my to-do list.  I am grateful to be on this journey of learning alongside of other kindred souls.

A native North Carolinian, Jane Cranford studied Jung as an undergraduate Psychology major and in graduate school. She worked as a school counselor for 20 years, then private practice, outpatient therapist at a community mental health center, and counselor in an Employee Assistance Program.  Both she and her daughter enjoy reading and discussing Jungian psychology.  Her favorite book is Jung’s autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections, and she savors the writings by Jungian analysts Marie-Louise von Franz and Robert Johnson.

Growing up in a small town southwest of New Orleans, Amilda was able to enjoy the French Quarter culture of festivals, music, food and creativity.  She brings the festive spirit to writing “jazz poetry”, playing flute, meditation, walking outdoors. “forest bathing” and cooking.  

Trained as a geriatric psychiatrist, she has worked with adults of all ages,  and particularly enjoys the wisdom and character of many older patients.  She has experience with rural populations through community mental health, private practice and the Durham VA Health Care System where she helped pioneer videoconference tele-mental health from 2007-2019.

She appreciates the interconnections of body-mind-spirit.   Having learned Mindfulness Meditation in 1989, yoga when in college, and having rediscovered her faith in 1973, all helped her pursue the work of welcoming light for her own journey and to offering light to others who might find themselves in dark places.

JungIan ideas of psychic energy, shadow and projection interest her.

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James Peacock followed his father around the country as the father trained to do D Day, which he survived, then moved the family to Georgia.

Jim’s first job was at age 13 working for his father’s electrical contracting business. Jim then survived his own foolishness after he jumped off a truck going down the highway. Was unhurt.

In 1958, while majoring in psychology at Duke, he was inspired by a talk by Alfred Kroeber, father of Ursula LaGuinn, at the annual anthropology meetings in Washington, D.C. in 1958 hence decided to go into anthropology.

Upon graduation from Duke he travelled to Germany and visited the Jung Institute in Zurich. Fall 1959 he travelled to Harvard for graduate school and in 1961 to Yale to study Indonesian language, where he met Florence Peacock who was at Yale Music School studying for a degree in Music. They got married then travelled to Indonesia where Jim did fieldwork and she was bitten by a rabid dog but survived.

Jim earned his Ph.D. and got a position at Princeton then at UNC, hence they live in Chapel Hill. They have 3 daughters. Jim attended the first meeting of the C. G. Jung Society for the Triangle Area and has attended sessions ever since.

In my 70th year I have found in the Jung Society of the Triangle a welcoming and supportive community which has offered me not only numerous opportunities to increase my knowledge of different paths to genuine self knowledge by virtue of the many different speakers and workshops the Society sponsors, but also the opportunity to make new friends with whom I share the common interest of using this profound gift of a human life to grow both emotionally and spiritually.

I come from a pathologically enmeshed nuclear family, and the real beginning of my quest towards some genuine self understanding and relief from my personal confusion began in my senior year in high school when my distress finally began to break through what, up until that moment, I had experienced as impregnable internalized barriers to personal authenticity. In the years since, I have engaged in many hours of psychotherapy, spent much time in recording and puzzling over the meanings of my dreams, travelled many miles, hitchhiking alone in Europe for months at a time, travel which I loved and which often offered me profound opportunities not only for adventure but also for personal insight.  I have read much, and that reading has proved to be very helpful, not only the writings of Jung, but also the works of the Scottish existentialist psychoanalyst R. D. Laing, the brilliant Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa, the American mythologist Joseph Campbell, the American anthropologist and communications theorist Gregory Bateson, and the great Russian novelist Dostoevsky, among others. I am happy at this moment in my life to have arrived at some awareness of the dynamics at play in my life.

All Board members.

All Board members .