Edgar A. Levenson, M.D. An Appreciation*

Along time ago, when I had the good fortune of being the editor of this journal, I invited Phyllis Grosskurth, who had written a splendid biography of Melanie Klein, to review Edgar Levenson's Ambiguity of Change (1983). I had sent her a copy, hoping that I would have an eloquent essay in my hands to grace the pages of the next issue. Her demurral detailed her time commitments and regrets, but also expressed that had she the leisure, she would love to meet with the author and discuss the things about psychoanalysis he seemed interested in.

Levenson has that quality of attractiveness. You want to meet with him, listen to him, talk over things with him, and then go back to the confines of your own consulting room, to muse about what he said, not necessarily in agreement, but in respectful contemplation of the consequences of the questions he raises, and their influence in your recognizing and then reorganizing what's going on with your work. For his is a coruscating fire-cracker of a broadly informed, most curious mind that raises questions, seeks no final answers in the therapy, only challenges, stimulating more and more questions, and hence, loosens up previously rigid ways of thinking, all in good humor and literate erudition. I hadn't met many, in my career in clinical psychology and at the White Institute, who could quote Groucho Marx, Wolfgang Pauli, and Confucius with equal ease, gusto, and aplomb. Grosskurth picked this up as one of his essential ingredients, and this was all too evident in her politely rejecting letter to me.

I came to the same conclusion as she some forty years ago when I joined him and a few other young, energetic colleagues on the clinic's Young Adult Drop-Out project at White. Here was a literate fellow, I thought (my god, the guy knew about Sean O'Casey and William Butler Yeats), who talked straight, had a refreshing point of view, kept his eye