A Few Things I Learned from Esther Menaker

The competition for supervisors during the year I began my psychoanalytic education at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis (NYU Postdoc) was fierce. I was worried about it. It was 1988 and the entering class numbered 33. It was the year that the Relational orientation formally became a track alongside the Freudian, the Interpersonal/Humanistic/Existential, and the Non-Aligned Tracks. Since it was founded in 1961, NYU Postdoc was structured to be unstructured. Its educational philosophy assumed that by the time one arrived at postdoctoral training, one did not need to be told which courses to take or which analyst, supervisor, or teachers to seek out. This adult approach to psychoanalytic learning appealed to me. I did not know anyone in the program. My wife had graduated from it years earlier but she was relatively unconnected to the people and current activities there.

Formally, I did not even have to begin seeing a psychoanalytic patient until the second year of training. Since I had come of age in Greek diners and learned immigrant business skills early, my thinking was that what I charged for a clinical hour would be more as I progressed through the program, and thus it made sense to me to begin meeting my clinical practice requirements early. The short-order cook at my cousin's restaurant on 18th and Broadway agreed. He knew nothing about American professionals' ways, but knew a lot about working hard, making money, and saving. So I started calling up supervisors.

I began with a list of names I recognized from books I had read. Lacking a network, however, I struck out four times. One person I called implied that I was looking for status. Ouch! Fortunately, when I phoned Esther Menaker and introduced myself, she said in a deliberate and sweet voice, “You are Greek? Yes, let's arrange a time to meet and we will see.” We did arrange a time and met for about 90 minutes. Esther always extended her appointments. I loved that