Obituary: Merton M. Gill, M.D.

Many opinions have been offered regarding the essential attributes of a psychoanalyst. I would contend that anyone who has never heard of Merton Gill or knows nothing of his work cannot plausibly claim to be a psychoanalyst. The second of three sons, Merton M. Gill was born in Chicago in 1914 and given the name Max. The family moved to Milwaukee in pursuit of business opportunities. His parents decided to change his first name legally to Merton while he was still quite young, a decision their son good-humoredly regretted ever after. He graduated first in his high school class; those who have ever heard him speak would not be surprised to learn that he belonged to the oratory club. That fall, when Merton was sixteen, his father drove him to the University of Chicago. It was to that same Illinois city that Merton would return forty years later for his most productive period. At Chicago he majored in psychology and took his bachelor's degree in 1934, his M.D. in 1938. He then did a two-year internship at Michael Reese Hospital and went on to do his residency at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka. He stayed on as a staff member there and graduated from the Topeka Psychoanalytic Institute in 1947. The same year, he was certified by The American, by which time he had already written or cowritten a dozen papers and three monographs.

Two of Merton's exemplary characteristics were a capacity to generate ideas that served others heuristically and the skill to elaborate and extend the ideas of others beyond where they had been able to take them. It was at Topeka that Merton began a number of important collaborations, of a sort not often found among psychoanalysts. The Menninger years contained the first period of a sixteen-year collaboration with Margaret Brenman on the study of hypnosis and psychotherapy. It was at Topeka also that Gill began his work with David Rapaport, his teacher, closest collaborator, and best friend, who was to die in 1960 at the age of forty-nine. Given the