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DEAR, DEAR COLLEAGUES; dear, dear friends—I am moved beyond words at this honor, and I am still puzzled, with a small inner voice that says, "Who, me?"
Whatever that just has been said that does apply to me, the White Institute has been providing the emotional and intellectual climate for my nurturance, beginning with the very first days of my reaching out, to the very present, with the sharing of efforts by Gerry Chrzanowski and Art Feiner in an extensive project of living history in psychoanalysis.
My first days of reaching out coincide with the very first days of the founding of the Institute. I am fortunate to have found Clara Thompson in the 1940's when I sought psychoanalysis for my private needs, for what I was then frozen in confronting my life. Out of the exploration in myself came my decision to change my vocational specialty to psychoanalysis
From the present perspective, the post-Depression and War years of the 1940's were the Great Divide for psychoanalysis and for societal changes. When I began with Clara in 1942, I was impressed with the very alive professional role of women psychoanalysts—there were Karen Horney, Clara Thompson, Janet Rioch, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann. Clara was both sensitive and sturdy, pragmatic in the best sense and romantic. In fact, if not in label, she was an early feminist and saw the strength in women, and was very sensitive to and caring for men. My attraction to Clara had begun with the warmth of her voice over the phone and was re-enforced by the presence of Masha, her cat. Clara and I shared an abiding interest in felines. Harry Stack's devotion was to dogs. Clara described Harry Stack Sullivan as a genius based in Chestnut Lodge (which was the first I heard of either)—the genius "who is making revolutionary changes in the psychotherapy of schizophrenia." My