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...