Marianne Horney Eckardt, M.D. February 12, 1913-August 31, 2018

There are some people who have such an amazing life force that you think—and hope—that they will live forever. If truth be told, you can't imagine life without them. And when they die, it is as if there is a massive hole in the universe.

Marianne Horney Eckardt was such a person. Born in Berlin in 1913, Dr. Eckardt, the middle daughter of psychoanalyst Karen Horney, studied medicine at the universities of Freiburg, Berlin, and Chicago (see Eckardt, 2005; Patterson, 2006; Tait, 2010), and possessed great knowledge of psychoanalytic history. She said that psychoanalysis was part of her blood (Eckardt, 1974). When she was born, her mother was a resident in psychiatry, just completed her analysis with Karl Abraham, became an early member of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society, and later its secretary from 1915. Marianne often recalled that many of the most prominent members of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute were frequent visitors of their home (see Rubins, 1978).

She completed her psychoanalytic training at the American Institute for Psychoanalysis, NYC, in 1944. She was in personal analysis with Erich Fromm and was influenced by Clara Thomson and Harry Stack Sullivan, and others who were still part of the American Institute of Psychoanalysis at that time (Eckardt, 2009). In 1956 she was one of the Charter Fellows of the newly established American Academy of Psychoanalysis, and later was elected its President (see Eckardt, 2006; Slipp, 1999).

An esteemed psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and artist, Marianne cherished the individuality and creative potential of each person. She loved psychoanalysis and was a prolific writer. Paris describes her “phenomenological approach that sees people's mode of coping as responses that make sense in light of their life situations” (Paris, 1994, p. 246, ft.56; Eckardt, 2015). In the 1960s Dr. Eckardt wrote several papers (for example 1960, 1961, 1968) in which she discussed some of the therapeutic