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It is my privilege to say a few words about Dr. Phyllis Greenacre, the speaker of this plenary session, and to give expression to the esteem and the affection which psychoanalysts feel toward her.
Why is Dr. Greenacre important to us? Why have we honored her in the past and are honoring her today? The answer seems easy: it is, of course, predominantly out of respect for her as a creative contributor to our science, out of gratitude for her work. And surely, it is not difficult to justify our admiration by even the briefest review of her writings.
She has indeed given us a great deal. There are her papers on clinical topics, containing what may well be the outstanding examples of the use of case material in modern psychoanalytic literature; technical papers concerning specific problems posed by the clinical transference; more theoretically oriented contributions to our understanding of personality functioning and of the influence of early environment; and characterological studies, distinguished by a judicious appreciation of the inextricable amalgamation of deficits and assets in the structure of personality. Then there are the promising and original observations and reflections on the nature of creativity and on some specific determinants of the creative personality (such as the essay on "The Childhood of the Artist, " which, I believe, Dr. Greenacre herself would consider among the favorite products of her own creativeness); and there are the enchanting treatises on the ordinary weaknesses of extraordinary men (the studies on Swift and Carroll, for example) in