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I have two Memories of Ruth Moulton. These memories, spanning twenty years, say as much about me, my sense of changes in the culture, and the status of women as they do about Ruth Moulton.1 As such, they also provide my own starting point for this essay—an inquiry into the evolution of feminist interpersonal psychoanalytic theory and theorists.
My first memory is not of a specific moment, but of a cluster of impressions of Dr. Moulton seen from afar in the early 1970s at the William Alanson White Institute. I was a graduate student at the time and would anxiously frequent the Friday night colloquia at the Institute. I always felt a bit out of place then, self-conscious and in awe of the “real,” “grown up” analysts who might one day have a say in my future. There weren't many women faculty and supervisors then, although there were certainly more professional women than I was used to seeing collected in one place. I was especially conscious of the women as I scanned the room in search of role models: Anna Antonovsky, Marianne Eckardt, Geneva Goodrich, Anna Gourevich, Janet Jeppson, Ruth Moulton, Natalie Shainess, Rose Spiegel, Alberta Szalita, Ann Ruth Turkel; and from the next generation, Leah Davidson, Harrict Field, Gloria Friedman, Elaine Grimm, Roberta Held-Weiss, Helene Kafka, Marylou Lionells, Carola Mann, Marcia Rosen, Anita Tenzer, Hazel Weinberg. My search was accompanied by a fear that these “real” women might recognize me as an impostor, a girl (cf. Dinnerstein, 1976; Riviere, 1927; Horner, 1972; Horner & Walsh, 1974; Symonds, 1971). I believed that these older female analysts would not be taken in by me, that they could see through me.