Merton Gill: A Sketch of His Life and Some Reminiscences

When I first met Mert, in 1946, he was 32 years old—only 3 years older than I—but he seemed much more my senior than that. Only 8 years had passed since he had received his MD from the University of Chicago, where he also did his undergraduate work. After an internship at Michael Reese Hospital, he had gone to Topeka to take a residency at the Menninger Clinic, then a much smaller and less famous place than it has become since. He had first become a staff member and, by 1946, had for a year been Chief of the Outpatient Department and had newly become Assistant Director of the Research Department, David Rapaport's right-hand man. Moreover, he was almost through his psychoanalytic training; he graduated from the Topeka Institute the next year—a pretty rapid rise for someone so young, but no one spoke of Mert as a “boy wonder” or “whiz kid.” He was mature for his years, and clearly possessed not only intellectual brilliance but a charismatic personal quality that drew people to him from the beginning.

At first, I knew him only through his participation in the evening lectures, held almost weekly under the auspices of the newly founded Menninger School of Psychiatry. Outside speakers, often of considerable distinction, came through Topeka to speak about their specialties, each time followed by open discussion. One after another, the heavy hitters of the home team would come to bat with comments or critique, some—like Karl Menninger, David Rapaport, and Robert Knight—already with great reputations, others yet to receive renown but equally cogent and articulate, like Margaret Brenman, Sybille Escalona, Milton Wexler, and Lewis Robbins. None of these stars could upstage the young Gill, however. The substance of what he said was always thoughtful and insightful, but it took on added impressiveness from his gift of speaking in well-framed and fluent sentences delivered with flashes of cutting wit in the deep, orotund, mellifluous, bass voice we all recall so well.