James Wyly died October 15, 2023, in Oaxaca, Mexico. He was born November 15, 1937, in Kansas City, Missouri, and was educated in public schools. He graduated in 1959 from Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, where he majored in English and studied organ at nearby Smith College with Henry Mishkin. He then enrolled in the new Doctor of Musical Arts degree program at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, earning his degree in 1964. From 1961 through 1963 he was supported by the Fulbright Commission for his research and dissertation on historic pipe organs of Spain, living in Madrid.
Wyly taught on the music faculty of Elmhurst College, Elmhurst, Illinois, from 1964 to 1968. Then he served on the music faculty of Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa, from 1968 to 1976. In Chicago he met and married librarian Mary Gae Porter, who served as a librarian at Grinnell and later at Chicago’s Newberry Library. From 1977 through 1985 James Wyly devoted himself to the study of clinical psychology and the analytical psychology of Carl Jung. He earned his PsyD degree from the Illinois School of Professional Psychology in 1981 and his diploma in analytical psychology from Chicago’s Jung Institute. He maintained a private practice in Chicago from 1981 until 2003, also serving on the staff of Fourth Presbyterian Church’s Replogle Counseling Center. He was an active teacher in the training programs of the Jung Institute until 1997. In the 1990s Wyly worked with several groups of psychologists in Mexico City, people who wanted to study Jungian psychology and become analysts. He taught classes and provided clinical supervision for candidates.
James and Mary Wyly moved to Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2003. The Wylys hosted two or three concerts a year until 2023. In 2010 James Wyly was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Treatment provided by two young physicians using alternative medicine delayed symptoms until the summer of 2023 when they cured the leukemia but could not reverse the anemia that followed.
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