Adelaide Johnson 1905-1960

It was my pleasure to spend some afternoon moments with Adelaide Johnson and her husband Victor a few weeks before her death from metastatic carcinoma on November 20, 1960. Adelaide was seated quietly in her living room, alert and beautifully groomed as I had known her in the past. Only her slightly drawn features and a few remarks about her periodically swelling ankles betrayed her ebbing strength. She had been seriously and critically ill for many months; she had returned home from a long hospital stay some six months earlier; yet Adelaide spoke only of the limitations imposed upon her by her illness, her hopes for her work about which she had been corresponding actively with her colleagues in the recent months, of our mutual friends and their families, and, finally, eagerly urged an opinion of the many new changes she recently had made in her always attractive and warm home. The manner in which she confronted her illness before her friends, as on this day, epitomized her great courage, zest for life, and thoughtfulness for others. These moments revivified many previous hours spent with her as an admired and loved clinical colleague, friend, and analytic teacher. Adelaide will be remembered by her many other students who will recall her quick insight into the unconscious world of their patients, her sensitive perception of the students' quandaries, and her gentle helpfulness to them, as well as her stimulating supervision and capacity to evoke enthusiastic collaboration in their mutual work which launched many of them into independent careers of their own. Her psychiatric colleagues will recall as well the respect she commanded from them in her broad knowledge of the general field, her provocative suggestions and discussions, her helpful suggestions for their clinical problems, as well as her uncompromising search for truth which epitomized both her scientific drives and her therapeutic creativity. She will be remembered too by her patients for her devotio