Joyce McDougall-Supervisor and Friend

Before computers and e-mail, before consultation by Skype or phone, there was in-vivo consultation with foreign analysts. Visitors from Europe would come to New York City for a sojourn, open a temporary office at a colleague's suite or midtown hotel, and keep busy discussing clinical material with domestic analysts who were eager for a fresh reading of some of their ongoing cases.

I met Joyce McDougall in the early 1980s, at the inception of what would become her recurrent visits to the Big Apple. My contact person was a French-born analyst, a resident of New York City, who facilitated these meetings by managing Joyce's demanding schedule.

The study group of which I was a part at the time was focusing on the topic of perversions. To the extensive reading list that included pioneering works by Freud, Stoller, Kahn, and Chasseguet-Smirgel, among others, we added Joyce's Plea for a Measure of Abnormality. The book generated numerous questions and heated discussions as to what was to be considered a perversion. Joyce challenged the existing boundary between normality and abnormality in sexual and gender development. Her pioneer contributions had a profound impact in our field, and Plea continues to nurture lively debates in analytic circles.

Moreover, the sexual revolution, the feminist movement, and the DSM dropping homosexuality from the category of perversions made it necessary to expand theoretical horizons. Consulting with the author who was attempting to make distinctions between perversions and what she termed “neo-sexualities,” seemed to meet our needs as clinicians and theoreticians. Accordingly, a meeting with Joyce McDougall was scheduled for us. It was to occur at the Manhattan hotel where she stayed and did her work.

After a short wait in the Beaux Arts-style Algonquin hotel lobby, we headed upstairs to her suite. A vivacious, smiling woman, elegantly dressed with a diaphanous scarf around her neck, opened the door. She made us feel welcome from the start, and