Sidney Tarachow, M.D—1908-1965

On December 5, 1965 death came with cruel prematurity to Dr. Sidney Tarachow. He was fifty-seven years old and had shortly begun his term of office as Director of the Division of Psychoanalytic Education at the Downstate Medical Center of the State University of New York.

He was born in Russia and came to this country as a child with his family who settled in Milwaukee. He received his early education in the public schools and was awarded his medical degree by Marquette University in 1932. His first psychiatric appointment was at the Psychopathic Hospital in Iowa City from which he came to New York and continued his training in neurology and psychiatry at Mount Sinai Hospital and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. In 1937 he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Medical Science from Columbia University. He completed his training in psychoanalysis at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and was admitted to membership in the American Psychoanalytic Association in 1950.

His contributions to the literature were numerous, soundly based and ranged broadly in psychiatry and psychoanalysis. He was, not surprisingly, interested in the psychoanalytic implications of wit and humor and not only wrote on this but made extensive use of it in his teaching. The scholar in him was demonstrated by the careful work in his study of early Christianity. Two of his papers, "Judas the Beloved Executioner" and "St. Paul and Early Christianity," show his analytic understanding of the complex interrelationship between culture and instinctual drives.

It is very likely that most people will know him for what is fast becoming a standard text for psychiatric residents in training, his Introduction to Psychotherapy. This fairly unique book utilized tape recordings, with minimal editorial revisions, of seminars he conducted for the residents at Hillside and Kings County Hospital. Maintaining that a clear theoretical difference exists between psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, he concept