W. Ladson Hinton

Dr. Ladson Hinton passed away peacefully on September 4, 2025, surrounded by his loving family. As an actively engaged psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Ladson lived, practiced and taught in Seattle, WA. He was preceded in death by his beloved wife of 59 years, Darlene Hinton, who passed away in 2016. An interview of Ladson, conducted by Hessel Willemsen and published in the Journal of Analytical Psychology in 2021, attests to the many dimensions of Ladson’s expansive mind, his intellectual influences, his sense of humor and most of all, his humanity.

Born in the South, Ladson completed an MA degree in philosophy at the University of Arkansas and went on to complete a medical degree at Washington University in St. Louis. He trained as a psychiatrist at Stanford University Medical Center and served as a military staff psychiatrist in Germany. He completed his analytic training at the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco in 1975 and maintained a clinical practice in Palo Alto for many years. During that time, he served on the faculty of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Franscisco, was a founder of the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology (now Palo Alto University) and was on the clinical faculty of the Stanford Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry.

After moving to Seattle in 1991, he became the first president of the North Pacific Institute for Analytical Psychology in Seattle. He was also a founding member of the New School for Analytical Psychology. In 2009, he received an Award for the Distinguished Contributions to Psychoanalytic Education and was nominated for a Gradiva award in 2016 for his article, “Temporality and the Torment of Time.”

Among other publications, he is the co-editor of Temporality and Shame: Perspectives from Psychoanalysis and Philosophy, which was the winner of the American Board & Academy of Psychology and Psychoanalysis Book Prize for best edited book. In 2021, Ladson co-edited another collection of essays entitled, Shame, Temporality and Social Change: Ominous Transitions, which received the International Association for Jungian Studies (IAJS) best edited book, 2021. Ladson’s last work was a collection of his essays, Selected Essays of Ladson Hinton: Existentialism on the Psychoanalytic Realm, will be published posthumously by Routledge Press in 2026.

Ladson is survived by his loving sister Elinore. He will be deeply missed by her as well as by his three sons and three daughters-in-law, Ladson and Carolee, Devon and Susan, and Alex and Nicole. He will be forever cherished and remembered for his love and boundless creativity by his six grandchildren, Kendra and Devon, Jr., Carina and Mikaela, Meridian and Arcadia, as well as his four great grandchildren. A celebration of life will be announced at a later time. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Parkinson Association of Northern California (https://www.panctoday.org/donate) in the memory of Ladson Hinton.